He did not remain in California three weeks, he said, before his conscience compelled him to return to Pennsylvania and restore the ill-gotten cash to its owner; which, he said, he had recently done.
He had now determined, he remarked, never to yield to temptation again, and was resolved to atone for the past by a future life of integrity and uprightness; he now had a position as salesman in a wholesale house in Saint Louis, and was doing well. He gave me the name of the house, and asked me to call and see him. He remarked that he could freely confide in one who had so readily overlooked his former disgrace.
I replied that, as a matter of course, it would injure him for his employers to know his past history, that I believed he was sincere in his good resolution, and that he need not feel apprehensive that I should ever cast a stumbling-block in his way.
The strictly “pious,” with the blindness that too often characterizes them, may censure me for not warning his employers; but let them do so. Do they think, that when a man commits one crime, he is necessarily lost, forever? Suppose I should have regarded it as a duty to go to his employers and tell them what I knew of Hague? He would have been discharged at once, because they could never have relied on him. He would then have despaired of recovering from the effects of that one error; and no matter how good his intentions might have been, while his prospects were bright, he would, probably, have turned a rogue again, on the first opportunity, because he had no other alternative.
It is a fearful mistake to thrust a man down at once, for his first crime, instead of taking him by the hand and lifting him up: it is that unchristian-like policy that fills our penitentiaries, and gives such frequent employment to the hangman. Frown on vice as much as you please; but do not frown on all who once yield to temptation. If you hope or wish to save them, display some forbearance. Remember we all have our faults. And we are all only too apt to
“Compound for sins we are inclined to, By damning those we have no mind to,”—
“There is none good: no, not one.” We have all committed bad deeds, of some kind or other, whether they come within the pale of the law or not. If you demand strict _justice_, look to yourself. “Use every man after his desert,” says Hamlet, “and who shall ’scape whipping?”