Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1899-07-17

skillful enough to steal $4,000 from
the city, you make candidate for the
! state legislature.
Omnipotent Indignation.
There is a good deal of uneasinesS
| and nervousness now among some peo-
| pie in our time who have got I'M
righteous fortunes, great deal of IN
! easiness about dynamite. l tell them
that God will put under their I'M
righteous fortunes something more ex-
pIosive than dynamite, the earthquake
of his omnlpotent indignation. 1t is
| time that we learn in America that sin
is not excusable in proportion as it de-
clares large dividends and has outrid-
ers in equipage. Many a man is rid
ing to perdition position ahead and
lackey behind. To steal one copy of
newspaper is a gnat; to steal many
| thousands of dollars is a camel There
is many a fruit dealer who would not
| consent to steal a basket of peaches
from a neighbor's stall, but who would
not scruple to depress the fruit mar
ket, and as long as I can remember
we have heard every summer the
peach crop of Maryland is a failure,
and by the time the crop comes in the
misrepresentation makes a difference
| of millions Of dollars. A man who
would not steal one basket of peaches
steals $4,000 baskets of peaches.
Go down into the public library, in
| the reading rooms, and see the news
paper reports of the crops from all
parts of the country, and their phrase
| ology is very much the same, and the
| same men wrote them, methodically
and UNANIMOUSLY carrying out the huge
| lying about the grain crop from year
to year and for q score Of years. Aft
er awhile there will be a corner" in
the wheat market, and men who had
a contempt for petty theft will bur-
glarize the wheat bin of nation and
commit larceny upon the American
corn crib, and some of the men will sit
in churches and in reformatory insti-
tutions trying to strain out the small
gnats of scoundrelism, while in their
grain elevators and in their store
houses they are fattening huge camels
| which they expect after awhile to
swallow. Society has to be entirely re-
constructed on this subject We are
to find that a sin is inexcusable In pro-
portion as tt Is great. I know in our
time the tendency Is to charge reli-
gious frauds upon good men. They
say, "Oh what a host of frauds you
have in the Church Of God in this
dayr And when an elder Of church,
or a deacon, or q minister Of the Cos
pei, or a superintendent of q Sabbath
school turns out defaulter what dis
play heads there are in many of the
newspapers. Great primer type. Five
line plea. Another Saint Abscond
ed" Clerical Scoundrelism," "Reli-
gion at a Discount" Shame on the
Churches" while there are a thousand
scoundrels outside the church to one
inside the church, and the misbehavior
of those who never see the inside Of a
church is so great that it is enough to
tempt man to become a Christian to
get out Of their company. But in all
circles, religious and irreligious, the
tendency is to excuse sin in proportion
as it is mammoth. Even John Milton
in his Paradise Lost" while he con-
dennis Satan, gives such a grand de-
ScriptiOn of him you have hard work
to withhold your admiration. Oh, this
straining out Of small sins like gnats
and this gulping down great iniQuities
like camels!
Gallery of Pictures.
This subject does not give the pic
ture of one or two persons, but is
gallery in which thousands of people
may see their likenesses. For instance,
all those people who, while they would
not rob their neighbors of farthing,
appropriate the money and the treas
ure of the public. A man has house
to sell, and he tells his customer it is
worth $4,000. Next day the assessor
comes around, and the owner says it
is worth $4,000. The government of
the United States took off the tax from
personal income, among other reasons
because so few people would tell the
truth, and many a man with an in
come of hundreds of dollars a day
made statements which seemed to i'm
ply he was about to be handed over to
the overseer of the poor. Careful to
pay their passage from Liverpool to
New York, yet smuggling in their Sar-
atoga trunk ten silk dresses from Paris
and a half dozen watches from Gene
va, telling the custom house officer on
the wharf, "There is nothing in that
trunk but wearing apparel" and put
ting a So gold piece in his hand to
punctuate the statement.
Described in the text are all those
who are particular never to break the
law Of grammar and who want all
their language an elegant specimen of
syntax, straining out all the inaccura-
cies Of speech with a fine sieve of lit
erary criticism, while through their
conversation go SANDER and innuendo
and profanity and falsehood larger
than whole caravan of camels, when
they might better fracture every law