The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1898-08-16

make them what we wish. L WISH tnal
there might come an old fashioned re-
vival of religion, that it might break
out in congress and the legislatures
and bring many of the leading Re-
publicans and Democrats down on the
anxious seat of repentance. That day
will come, or. something better, for the
Bible declares hat kings n queens
shall become nursing fathers and
mothers to the church, n if the
greater in authority then certainly the
less.
My charge also to parents is, remem-
Der that this evil of bribery often be-
gins in the home circle, and in the
nursery. Dc not bride your children.
Teach them to do that which is right,
and not because Of the 10 cents or the
orange which you will give them.
There is great difference between re-
warding virtue and making the profits
thereof the impelling motive. That
man who is honest merely because
honesty is the best policy is already
a moral bankrupt.
My charge is to you, in all depart
ments of life, steer clear Of bribery. all
of you. Every man n woman at
sometime will be tempted to do wrong
for compensation. The bride may not
be offered in money. 1t may be offer
ed in social position. Let us remember
that there is a day coming when the
most secret transaction of private life
and of public life will come up for pub
lie apprehension.
CANNOT BE BRIBED.
We cannot bride death, we cannot
bride sickness, we cannot bride the
grave, we cannot bride the judgements
of that God who thunders against this
sin. "Fie," said Cardinal Beaufort,
"fie, Cant Heath be bribed? Is mon
ey nothing? Must I die, and SO rich? If
the owning of the whole realm would
save me. ! could get it by policy or b.
purchase-by money" No; death would
not be bribed then. He will not be
bribed now. Men of the world often
regret that they have to leave their
money here when they go away from
the world. You can tell from what
they say in their last hoursthat n of
their chief sorrows is that they "a
to leave their money. 1 break that de-
fusion. I tell hat bride taker that he
will take his money with him. God
will wrap it up in your shroud or put
it in the palm of your hand in ressur-
r%ection, and there it will lie, not the
cool, bright, shining gold as it was on
the day when you sold your vote n
your moral principle, but there it will
lie, a hot metal, burning and consum-
ing you hand forever. Or if there be
enough of it for a chain then it will
fall over the wrist, clanking the letters
of an eternal captivity. The bride is
an everlasting possession. You take
it for time, you take it for eternity.
Some day in the next world, when yOu
are longing for sympathy, o will
feel on you cheek a kiss. Looking up
you will find it to be Judas, who tool
80 pieces of silver as a bride and fin
ished the bargain by putting an in
famous kiss on the pure cheek of his
Divine Master.
mother wrong use of honey rs seen
in the abuse of trust funds. Nearly
every man during the course of his
life, on a larger or smaller scale, has
the property Of others committed to his
keeping. He is so far a safety deposit.
He is ar administrator m holds in his
hand the interest Of he family Of
a deceased friend, or he is an at
torney, and through his custody goes
the payment from debtor to creditor,
or he is the collector for a business
house, which compensates him for the
responsibility, or he is treasurer for
charitable institution, and he holds the
aims contributed for the suffering, or
he is an official Of the city or the state
or the nation, and taxes n subsidies
and salaries and supplies are in his
keeping.
1t is as solemn a trust as God car
make it. 1t is cOncentered and multi
piled condolences. On that man de-
Ponds the support of a Dereft house
hold or the morals of dependents or the
right movement of a thousand wheels
of social mechanism. A man may do
what he will with his own, but he who
abuses trust funds in that one act
commits theft, falsehoOd, perjury, and
becomes, in all the intensity of the
word, a miscreant. How many widows
and orphans there are with nothing
between them and starvation but a
sewing machine or held up out of the
vortex of destruction simply by the
thread of a needle, red with thier own
hearts blood, who a little while ago
had, by father and husband, left them
a competency! What is the matter?
The administrators or the executors
have sacrificed it, running risk with
it that they would not dared to en-
counter in their WI private affairs.
BETRAYED TRUSTS.
How often it is that a man will earn
a livelihood by the sweat of his brow
and then die, and within a few
months all the estate goes into the
stock gambling rapids Of wall street!
How often it is that o have known
the man to whom trust funds were
committed taking them out of the sav-
ings bank and from trust companies
fIAlo oSoioS oiO IA
steads into hard cash and then put
ting the entire estate into the vortex of
speculation? Embezzlement is an easy
word to pronounce, but it has 10, 1000
ramifications There is not a city that
has not suffered from tn e abuse of
trust funds. Where is the courthouse
| or the city hall or the Jail or the post
office or the hospital that in the build
ing of it has not had a political job?
| Long before the new courthouse in
New York city vas completed it cost
OVERSIZE, 600, 900. Five million six hun
dred and sixty three thousand dollars
for furniture! For plastering and re-
pairs, s2,370, 900. For plumbing mad gas
works, s1,2S1,S17. For awnings, $23, 553
| The bills for three months coming to
the nice little sum of $13, ISL, 1913, 80
There was not an honest brick or lath
or nail or foot of plumbing or inch OF
plastering or inkstand or doorknob in
the whole establishment.
That bad example was followed in
many of h cities, which did not steal
quite SO much because there was no,