Guy Wetmore Carryl

“ It is hard — God only knows how hard — but listen to Alleghenia’s bidding! Justitia, Lex, Integritas, — equity, the code, and good faith, in the sight of God and man, heaven and earth, the American people and the commonwealth of Alleghenia. God save the state!”
“John,” whispered the girl brokenly, — “John, you’re right. God save the state!”
Slowly, tenderly, the Governor of Alleghenia led her back to the table, and taking up a pen, with a firm hand wrote five words, heavily underscored, at the head of the Cavendish petition. ”

“ Strive to elude truth as we will, it remains eternal truth, and cannot be evaded in the end. And where it seems to be beyond us, all we can do is to strive to find the silken thread which will surely lead us out of the labyrinth into the searching light of day. ”

“ The next day Spencer Cavendish was sentenced to be executed on the thirtieth of the following month at the State’s Prison at Mowberly.
Then followed the most remarkable manifestation of popular sentiment ever known in Alleghenia. As Barclay had once said of them, the citizens of his long degraded state were less vicious than callous, and their callousness was effectively cured by the dramatic event which had removed a corrupt official from the head of the state government, and put in his place a man whose first acts were proofs positive of strength, integrity, and singleness of purpose. ”

“ But — don’t you see? — no sophistry, no contemplation of the results achieved, can ever make it justifiable for a man to arrogate to himself the power of taking human life, which is the prerogative of God and the law alone. The peculiar circumstances of Cavendish’s crime plead eloquently, almost irresistibly, for his pardon. ”

“ And yet — listen to me, dearest! — in what he strove to do he has failed utterly, if in removing a corrupt official who made a mockery of Alleghenia’s law he has not replaced him by one who with all the force of his conscience and all the power of his influence will see that law administered. ”

“ No matter how confused a question may seem to us, there must absolutely, when we come to think of it, be some one great elemental principle upon which it not only can, but must, be decided — some boundary line between justice and injustice which we may be too blind to see, but which exists, and calls for observance, none the less. ”

“ I should have remembered how in my darkest hours they went before me as a pillar of fire, how in the famine of my soul these words were the manna of encouragement, how in my thirst they struck clear water from the rock of adverse circumstance. But the Israelites came back to their true God at last ”

“ They have managed to find the excuse, or they think they have, which, so far as their personal convictions are concerned, amounts to about the same thing. And I’ve been saying to myself that when public opinion points out a course as justifiable it can hardly be possible for a single individual to say that it is not. ”