Mary Stewart Cutting

“ I am always thinking of Ernest, my boy so far away. In my thoughts I am fighting for him as I fought for the little boy Jake was hurting so long ago.
As I walk to and from the corner grocery with my paper parcels of butter and sugar—living is terribly high these days!—I find myself repeating over and ever to myself: "Lord, help my boy! I don't want anything for myself any more; only have mercy on my boy. Keep him straight—my life is over, but keep him straight. ”

“ It was not only my imagination that had shown Lessner, the president's son-in-law, with the same expression as my own—he had followed in my tracks. If the president himself had been honest, matters in the state they were could never have run on so long—the whole edifice was corrupt, as was the edifice of my boyhood's home, though it was only whispered by those who knew. I was let out on bail, furnished secretly to the ostensible bondsmen. I was forbidden to leave the jurisdiction of the city; I might be brought to trial at any moment.
When I went home eagerly to Marian, she was convalescent. ”

“ I could never take a vacation, the price of safety was in constant vigilance. In lieu of promotion, my salary had been raised to three thousand dollars.
Our children were all that Marian and I could wish; Ernest, my handsome boy, was the pride of my heart. But for the last few years luck, in spite of all my efforts, had gone against me. At the end of this time, strange as it may seem, I not only owed the bank more than a hundred thousand dollars, but I owed everyone else, too. Marian had accounts every- where; I speculated more and more heavily, only to lose and lose. ”

“ I dreaded nothing more than to have that sliding panel withdrawn.
When I did come back and found no suspicions raised against me, I felt justified in having taken the risk, and my thanksgiving to an ever-watchful Providence was deep and sincere. I fully intended to give up my private schemes for the future.
But circumstances were too strong for me. There were payments to be made on the house; my darling son Ernest was born; Marian had a long and expensive illness; two little girls succeeded the boy; I found it more and more expensive to support a family. ”

“ Like many young men, I had a great deal of imagination. The first time I took a couple of hundred dollars from the pile before me it seemed to be entirely the result of a natural sequence. I thought:—I will take this chance.—No, I will not.—Yes, I will. Why shouldn't I? There seemed no reasoning power to deter me. I felt the same exhilaration and excitement which had possessed me when I kept Miss Nannie's ten-dollar bill, added to a cool keenness of intention. The next day my broker bought for me; and with the proverbial luck of the beginner, my stock rose. ”

“ I cooked while my wife ran the machine, swept, took her work home, and carried brown paper parcels from the corner grocery. I tried to save her all I could, but I longed for a man's work.
I was beginning to get up courage again when that fatal blow fell which made an old man of me. I have found that there is no escaping the Law under which we all live; it takes its awful toll of us in one way or another. My bright boy, Ernest, was discovered robbing the stamp box, of a small amount indeed, but the fact remained. Ernest was a thief! ”

“ I HAVE been called an embezzler—and to be an embezzler has, on the face of it, an ugly sound; sympathy is alienated at the start. Yet as a matter of fact, most men step, on occasion, over the barrier that separates them from dishonesty; they may scramble back at once, but at some time in their lives they do step over. ”

“ I was one with half a dozen others who set fire to an unused barn, and nearly burned down a whole row of houses, the wind rising unduly high; and I secretly indulged in the practice of throwing stones at windows, at horses, and the persons of such children as I could attack in this way from behind a tree. I once, to my fright, nearly killed a boy by stretching a wire across the sidewalk in the path of his bicycle, which he had refused to let me ride—they were high bicycles in those days—but I was seldom found out. ”

“ But Jake never bullied me again after this. He said: "Why, old chap, I never supposed you had it in you!" and we became friends.
For a little while after that I felt in me a new self-respect, the knowledge of the joy of facing the worst——
I have sometimes thought since, oddly enough, that if I could have fought that fight out some higher spirit in me might have been set free. ...
One other incident stands out in this part of my history. At a crowded church fair I picked up a ten-dollar bill in the lobby and stuffed it in my pocket, filled with exhilaration and excitement at my luck. ”

“ I often erred—who has not? But I could always lay my sins at the feet of my Saviour, and rise forgiven. In my more prosperous years it was one of my most grateful pleasures to give liberally to the church and to missions; from a lad, I was constant in my attendance at service, leading often in prayer, and setting, as our pastor said, a needed example to other young men. It was one of the crosses of my later life that my own son remained deaf to the Heavenly Call.
I began my business life early, in a large bank in the city. A runner at first, I was gradually promoted. ”

“ I must bring this confession to a close. For ten years the sentence of the court has hung over me. If I had been an embezzler of consequence, many ways of making money might still have been open to me; as a discredited bank clerk of fifty, there were none, though I tried everywhere. We moved out of our house and went to a cheap flat in a poor part of the city. My wife took in sewing. One daughter went to live with a relative in the country; the other ran away at seventeen and married. Ernest, my boy, got a position with a broker, an old friend of mine. We managed to exist. ”

“ My experience of religion was sincere and deep, and in all the following chances and changes of my life that religion was my consolation and my mainstay. I have been called a hypocrite, and nothing could be farther from the truth to my own consciousness. ”

“ For all I worked so hard, the money I gained never seemed to be enough to do any real good. When I was "flush," I had to remember to spend the money cautiously; it would never do for a bank clerk to be prominently extravagant; but as a rule, I was always getting out of one hole into another.
Marian knew nothing of money, and little of my affairs ”

“ My mother, who was delicate, disliked the noise of children around the place, and in the houses and yards of other boys, where I mostly spent my time out of school, I was both louder and rougher than at home, and I was also more ingenious in evading the law than my playmates. ”

“ All childhood commits petty sins to which the tender mind gives pricking remorse; the best men, even, have small debts long ago incurred, small trusts miscarried, small dishonest occasions, so to speak, that always, through all the years, cannot change their shape, but, in spite of reason, remain ever the same. ... Fifteen years after, I sent a cheque for a hundred dollars, when I could not really afford it, to Miss Nannie—whom I had heard of as poor and an invalid—in remembrance of her kindness to me when a lad—but it was returned—Miss Nannie had died the week before. ”

“ Most business men, particularly those who seem to the outsider to be on an assured and prosperous basis, live, themselves, in an uncertain state from day to day, always engaged in half surmounting an endless chain of difficulties which stretch ahead to imperil the way at every step. ”