The Arkansaw traveler., 1886-05-01
WHOSE FAULT IS IT ?
rBur,lette. in Brooklyn Eagle.


 My son, 1t is a comforting doctrine, and one that men often preach to each other. that a 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 all the evil i'll him. Mir Cough has been criticised for saying and they were his last words Young man make your record clean. The prophets who speak comfortably say that the young man cannot make his record clean, when his father makes a bad record before him, that society and the evil tendencies of il. and something the scientists call his environment, write the young man record bad in spite of him. oh, my dear boy, this is doctrine too cowardly for a young man to accept Ever since Adam, the founder of society and the inventor of til" first record eyer made in this world d man without an environ meni to his back, made a bad record and then said The woman thou gavest to be with he, she did it all men have always plead the irresistible force of surroundings and circumstances. The woman was younger than Adam, she AdS N Ntdhttf llidIlN Nlet llltli NtlN NlI' lN intellectually the inferior of man, she was d new conner in the garden, and yet how glad your old grandfather was to say that it was all your grandmother's fault and that tiItj, being led aStraE by influences and examples which no man could control or resist. he should not be held responsible for his disohedience. And in her turn your grandmother laid 1t onto the snake, just as to-day in the office of the Sun and in Christian homes all over the 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 bite that he swallows is going to hurt you A dose of strychnine big enough to kill COW won't hurt you; if you don't swallow any of it. When you swear, you do your own swearing; you can borrow any man tongue to damn a began with When you get drunk, you get drunk The law doesn't fine the man who sells the whisky, it fines the man who drinks it. When you steal anything, from pin to the Broad way road you do your own stealing and in the case of the pin, at least, the law holds you responsible for it, not the man who coaXcd 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 lips. It tires me to hear d man always cXcusing himself and citing some dreadful. wicked .IerohOam which made him to sin. Not, indeed that We hold Iero- boams guiltless " It must needs be that ofienses come but Woe to that man by whom the oitense comethi But because the milestone and soft place in the sea is the proper combination for the man who helps you to stumble, you do not go free. have no right to turn a cross dog into the street, but if do, he will bite you if you go tooling around him. Wherefore, "carc cdHen. which, by interpretation Is Don't monkey with the dog As 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, unsghtly splashes here and there. Well, put them on myself Without the assistance or by the fault of any man, did it. And if there are any more to go on before have it renovated am the only fellow who can put them there. Now you may go and play and have fun, and don 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