The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-10-21
KNAvE AND FOOL.


Fidelity Trust Company, according to his
own confession, is a very commonplace fool
and cheap knave. He was knave enough
to rob his trust to pay for his ''fast horse"
debts and then fool enough to suppose
that his famous agreement" would be
legal immunity from punishment. The
utter cheapness Of the man is illustrated
by his virtuous reputation of the report
that he spent the money he stole on 'fast
women, diamonds. gambling or horse
races Fast horses" not fast
women he says, was his ruin.
It seems to an ordinary nina
that 1t is quite immaterial when q man
becomes rascal enough TO rob his trust
whether he was "ruined" by fast women
or fast horses; it is about as immaterial as
it would be for Judge in sending up "a
drunk" to consider whether he became in
toxicated upon champagne or "oid rye"
IF man stoops to steal and spend his en-
ployer's money it is merely a matter OF
temperament whether he spends the swag
on fast horses or fast women; whether he
loses it at the gambling table. the bagnio
or the race track.
There Is no moral difference between
the thieves; there is nothing but differ
ence of tastes, and yet this wretched little
knave and fool seems to think he has put
in plea of moral abatement of his offense
when he says that none Of the
money he stole went to diamonds. fast
women or faro. Granting this to be true,
it proves nothing save that a fast horse
had more charms for him than a fast
woman. This confession would seem to
prove nothing save that Albertson was
cold-blooded thief; his preference for fest
horses rather than fast women is rather
dubious compliment to the sex, who might
well halt and consider whether the Gus
tomary effort to soften the asperities of
prison life for scoundrels with bouquets
and bananas might not well be omitted in
the case of a man whose siren was not
woman but fast trotter.
Albertson is a type Of thousands of
fellows who have low ambition and
correspondingly low tastes. He had the
vacant mind, which has no capacity for
any enjoyment of decent character. A
man with wife and children that will
not employ his leisure to the end of culti-
waiting tastes that stand for increasing
intelligence, for moral and spiritual i'm
provement. Is a man heir to the tempera-
ment of gambler, rake, horse jockey
and an ultimate thief A man who is so
absolutely absorbed in the mere trivial
coincidents and superficial recreations of
life that he is always wrapped up in either
horses or dogs, or cards, or wine and
women, Is very cheap creature; he is
always one whose tumble into some ditch
of depravity or pitfall of crime is never
unexpected. Low ambition. low, trivial
tastes always imply puerile, aborted
brain, fellow full of vicious, worthless
''fads, that absorb his wretched, selfish
little soul. On such fellows the sunlight,
the flowers, the beauty of art and nature,
the stimulus to better living by knowledge
and contemplation of examples of he
roically upright living and holy. dying,
everything that makes for spiritual growth
and moral comfort, are utterly wasted.
What possibly can be expected of a man
mature enough to be a husband and
father, with schooling enough to be a bank
officer, whose brains find no better occu-
patton outside of business hours than fast
horses or faro and kindred frivolity. Such
fellows always end like Nero. who amused
himself by firing his own city and
fiddling as it burned. The man who loves
fast horses 50 passionately as 10 steal
money TO get them has set fire to his own
soul and is fdding over his own ruin.
When he is through dancing and fddlIng
over his own ruin he suddenly remembers
that he will be obliged TO pay for his fid-
die, and then he wishes he hadn't stolen
it. and proceeds to SWIVEL when the gray
walls of the penitentiary begin to loom up
through the mist of his stupid. selfish life.