The record-union., 1897-07-11
SOME RAMBLING THOUGHTS.
BY MEMO.

copyrighted by Dave & Taber)
Is there not in your neighborhood a
person whose past has blot on it, and
whose name is mentioned with a look
of holy horror by cronies when to-
gether for chat? 1t is of such per-
sons I would write this week, and may
my pen be dipped in power for the
task.
If man commit a crime, be given
a fair trial, be found guilty, and be
condemned, what becomes of him? He
goes to prison and works out his SEN
tence. And then? Then he is guiltless
in the eye of the law, and he is as
though he had done no wrong thing.
His retention in prison has expiated his
crime; he is a pure member of society.
But what says society through you?
The answer by deed is this: THE stain
OF that wrong shall stay on him forever;
he shall be hampered in every way; he
shall be prevented from getting an hon
orable position by meddlesome tongues
reviving the story of the past; he shall
be bounded by the voices of those who
say, I am holier than thou; he shall be
made to feel that the world is too small
for him to hide himself, and the grave
too shallow to purify him; for the stig-
mata of crime shall fasten even on his
children after him.
If man commit a sin and no one
knows it, he is as pure as the unSullied
snow in the eyes of the world; but if it
n
til it's very substance is washed away
by the food of grief though he agonize
with regrets, though he spend his last
effort to right wrong, yet in every
neighborhood are those whose meme
ories are long as death or whose hearts
are hard as adamant, whose cool, cal
culating ways save them from sin or
whose clever concealmentS save them
from diScovery-theSe PhariSeeS, l say,
Will summon the ghosts of a mans past
from the grave, though it all be buried
deep beneath accumulated years of re-
morse and unhappiness. Like mythical
ghous and real hyenas, these lovers of
carrion will dig till they find the treas
ure they seek the sin spot; and they re-
joice With howlings that all the world
can hear.
If a life of probity be lived for twen-
ty-five years or more, and the deeds of
good be plentiful as grain in harvest
time; if the citadel OF character be held
by keen conflict with evil, until some
weary moment of sloth, and evil then
rush in through some unguarded spot,
though only for a few moments, the
world through the deeds of the world,
says that the years of prObity count
for naught Thereafter the spot shall
be larger than the character it
is on, the fragment be larger
than the whole, the five minutes
of evil blot out the whole memory of
a quarter of a century of good. An
earthquake -rends in a moment the
works put up by a patient process of ac-
cretion and there is nothing then but
dust and disaster where beauty stood be-
fore; ard SO is it with the dazed man
who is the sufferer from the upheaval
of bitterne and uncharity in a commu-
nifty. One moment he rightly stands be-
fore them all, worthy of confidence and
recognized as a power 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-out Samari-
tan with goodness, far excelling that of