Morning journal and courier., 1886-03-18
WHOSE FAULT IS HIT
A Little Sermon by Robert J. Bur
 dette, Humor1st and MoraItst.

From the Brooklyn Eagle.
 My son, it is comforting doctrine, and one that men often preach to each other, that man deserves all credit for everything good that he does and for all the good that he is, but that somebody else is to blame for criticised for saying-and they were his last words-''Y Young man. make your record clean" The prophets who speak eomforta- bly say that the young man cannot make his record clean when his father makes bad record before him, that society and the evil tendencies of it, and something the scien- tists call his ''environment," write the young mans record bad in spite of him. Oh, nay dear boy, this is doctrine too cowardly for young man to accept. Ever since Adam, the founder of society and the inventor of the first record ever made in the world, man without an "envirGnment" to his back, made bad record and then said, "The wo- man thou gavest ts he with me, she" did it all, men have always plead the irresistible force of surroundings and circumstances. The woman was younger than Adam, she was weaker, many wise men say she is intel lectually the inferior of man, she was a new conner in the garden, and yet how glad your old grandfather was to say that it all your grandmother's fault, and that being thus led astray by influence and examples which no man could control or exist, he should not be teld responsible for his diso- bedience. And in her turn your grand mother laid it on to the snake, just as to- day, in the office of the Sun and in Chris tian homes all over this land, the evil deeds of men and servants are laid to the cat But, for all this excuse, Adam was fired out of the garden and served him right. Now, my boy, the other man may eat forbidden fruit until he founders, and not q bite that he swallows is going to hurt you. A dose of strychnine big enough to kill a COW won't hurt you-if you don't swallow any of it. When you swear you do your own swearing; you can't borrow another mans tongue to damn beggar with. When you get drunk. you get drunk. The law doesn't fine the man who sells the whiskey; it fines the man who drinks it. When you steal anything, from pin to the Broadway road, you do your own stea1ing-in the case of the pin, at least the law holds you responsible for it, not the man who coaxed you to steal, nor yet the citizen who by owning valuable property which you could not buy thereby tempted you to steal it. You are the fellow who does all the wickedness that is wrought by your hands and your lips. It tires me to hear man always excusing himself and ci- ting some dreadful, wicked Jeroboam which made him to sin. Not, indeed, that we hold the Jeroboams guiItless. 'sIt must needs be that otfenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh!' But because the mill stone and soft place in the sea is the proper combination for the man who helps you to stumble you do not go free. I have no right to turn cross dog into the street. but if do he will bite you if you go fooling around him. Wherefore, ''Cave canem,'' which, by interpretation is, Don't monkey with the dog" IS the dog will not beware of you do you beware of the dog. You may have noticed on the sacerdotal garments of your instructor, my son, some queer, un- slightly splashes here and there. We'll, put them on myself. Without the assistance or by the fault of any man, I did it. And if there are any more to go on before I have it am the only fellow who can put them there. Now you may go and play and have fun, and don't let me ever again hear you say that you would be the best boy in the world if only all the other boys were dead.