Connecticut western news., 1898-08-11
authorit, then certainly the less.

nursery. DO not Dr1D6 your Cn1lur6n 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 a 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 q moral bankrupt.
 My charge is to you, in all depart ments of life, steer clear of bribery, all of you. Every man and woman at some time will be tempted to do wrong for compensation. The bribe may not be offered in money. It may be offered in social position. Let us remember that there is day coming when the most secret transaction of private life and of public life will come up for public rep rehension.
 Cannot Be Bribed.
 We cannot bribe death, we cannot bribe sickness, we cannot bribe the grave, we cannot bribe the judgments of that God who thunders against this sin "Fie,'' said Cardinal Beaufort. ''fiel Can't death be bribed? Is money nothingP Must I die, and so rioha If the owning of the whole realm would save me, could get it by policy or by purchase-by money" No; death would not be bribed then. He will not be bribed now. Men of the world often re- gret 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 hours that one of their chief sorrows is that they have to leave their money. break that delusion. 1 tell that bribe 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 resurrection, and there 1t will lie, not the cool. bright, shining gold as it was on the day when you sold your vote and your moral prin- ciple, but there it will lie, hot metal, burning and consuming your hand for ever. Or if there be enough of 1t for chain then it will fall over the wrist, clanking the letters of an eternal cap tivity. The bribe is an everlasting pos session. You take 1t for time, you take it for eternity. Some day in the next world, when you are longing for sym pathy, you will feel on your cheek kiss. Looking up, you will find it to be Judas, who took 30 pieces of silver as bribe and finished the bargain by put ting an infamous kiss on the pure cheek of his Divine Master.
 Another wrong use of money is 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 safety deposit. He Is an administrator and holds in his hand the interest of the family of de- ceased friend, or he is an attorney, 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 a charitable insti- tuition, and he holds aims contributed for the suffering, or he is an official of the city or the state or the nation. and taxes and subsidies and salaries and supplies are in his keeping.
 It is as solemn a trust as God can make it. It is concentered and multi piled confidences. On that man depends the support of a bereft household or the morals of dependents or the right move ment 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 mis- creant. How many widows and orphans ho{x fha, and starvation but a sewing machine or held up out of the vortex of destruction simply by the thread of a needle, red with their own hearts blood, who lit tie while ago had, by father and hus band, left them a competencyl What is the matter? The administrators or the executors have sacrificed 1t, running risk with it that they would not have dared to encounter in their own private affairs
 Betrayed Trusts.
 How often it is that man will earn livelihood by the sweat of his brow and then die, and within few months all the estate goes into the stock gam bling rapids of Wall street How often is it that you have known the man to whom trust funds were committed talk ing them out of the savings bank and from trust companies and administra- tors, turning old homesteads into hard cash and then putting the entire estate into the vortex of speculation? Embez- clement is an easy word to pronounce, but it has 10, 900 ramifcations. There is not city that has not suffered from the abuse of trust funds. Where is the courthouse or the city hall or the jail or the postoff1ce or the hospital that in the building of 1t has not had a political job2 Long before the new courthouse in New York city was completed it cost over $12, 000, ,000 Five million six hun dred and sixty three thousand dollars for furniturel For plastering and re- pairs, $2, 370, 900. For plumbing and gas works, $1,231,817. For awnings, l $23, 553. The bills for three months coming to the nice little sum of $13,- 151, 198.89 There was not an honest brick or stone or lath or nail or foot of plumbing or inch of pIastering or ink stand or doorknob in the whole estab- | lishment
 That bad example was followed in | many of the cities, which did not steal quite so much because there was not so ! much to steal. There ought to be clos ST inspection, and there ought to be less opportunity for embezzlement- Lest a man shall take cent piece that does | not belong to him the conductor on the | city horse car must sound his bell at ev- | cry payment, and we are very cautious abOut small offensas hr1t give plentv 0f | opportunities for sinners on large scale to escape. For boy who steals a loaf of bread from a corner grocer, to keep his mother from starving to death, a prison, but for defrauders who abscond with $500, 900 castle on the Rhine,- | or, waiting until the offense Is forgot | ten, n~castle on the Hudsonl