The Middleburgh post. [volume] (Middleburgh, Snyder Co., Pa.) 1883-1916, 1897-07-29
SOME RAMBLING THOUGHTS.
BY MEMO"
Iio2r :nred by Dewe & Taber.l

;o2r r ;hted by Dewe Taber.l
Is there not in your neighbor-
mood a person whose past has a blot
.on it, and whose name is mention
ed with look OF holy horror by
,cromes when together for chat ?
1t is of such persons ! would write
this week, and may my pen be
dipped IN power for the task.
II man commit crime, be Civ
en- a fair trial, be found guilty, and
be condemned, what becomes of
him? He goes toprison and works
out his sentence. And then? Then
he is guiltless in the eye of the law,
and he is as though he lad done no
wrong thing. His retention in pris-
ssn has expiated his crime he is a
pure member of society. But what
says society through YOU? The
answer by deeds i. this ; "The stain
of that wrong shall stay on him for
ever; he shall be hampcred in every
way he shall be prevented from
getting an honorabl, position by
meddlesome tongues reviving the
story ofthe past; he shall behonnd-
ed by the voices of those who say,
q am holier than thou' he shall be
made to feel that the world is too
small to hide himself, and the grave
too shallow to purify him; tor the
stigma of crime shall fasten even
on his children after him."
If a man commit sin and no
one knows it, he is as pure as the
unsullied snow in the eyes of the
world but if it he known, though
he weep over it until its very sub
stance is washed away by the flood
OF grief, though he agonize with re-
grets, though he spendhis last effort
to right a wrong, yet in every
neighborhood are those whose mem
.nnies are long as death or whose
hearts are hard as adament, whose
cool, calculating ways save them
from sin or whose clever conceal
ments save them from discovery
these Pharisees, l say, will summon
the ghosts of a mans past from tire
grave, though it be buried deep be-
meath accumulated years of remorse
and unhappiness. Like mythical
gouls and real hyenas, these lovers
of carrien will dig till they find the
treasure they ask, the sin spot ; and
they rejoice with howlings that all
the world can hear.
- ,
II a life of probity be lived for
.25 years or more, and the deeds of
good be plentiful as grain in har-
vest time if the citadel of character
he held by keen conflict with evil,
aIntil some weary moment OF sloth,
and evil then rush in through some
nnguardcd spot, though only for IL
few moments, the world through
'the deeds of the world, says that
the years of probity count tornaught.
Thereafter the spot shall be larger
tlan the whole, the five minutes of
eril blot out the the whole memory
sof a quarter of a century of good.
An earthquake rends in a moment
the works put up by Il patient pro-
cess OF accretion, and there is moth
ing then but dust and disaster where
beauty stood before and SO is it
with the dazed man who is the suf-
ferer from the moral upheaval of
bitterness and uncharity in a COM
mlnity. One moment he rightly
stands before them all, worthy of
confidence and recognized as pow
er for good, the next moment his
character lies. bruised and mangled,
never to be we'll again so far as the
Levites and Pharisees care, never to
live and move and have full being
again unless some barred-oat Sa-
"A naritan with goodness, far excelling
Il, 1t of these aloot' ones, comes to the
r,xa lie with sympathy and love.
.Ifis, girl kept Intentionally ig-
noyopt.n herself, by those who
train her, {. nd who know not the
rs etWppn IGNORANCE and