University of Virginia Library

“IN SEARCH OF THE MAN OF SIN.”

A LECTURE

DELIVERED IN MUSIC HALL, BOSTON, DEC. 29, 1870.

I do not wish to be considered egotistic, for of all junior
blemishes in human nature egotism is to my mind the most
objectionable. He who stands perpetually and perpendicularly
as the capital letter I, with an exclamation point after it (the
latter calling attention to the former), is an unmixed nuisance
to society at large, and a particular and especial nuisance to
all with whom he may come into more immediate contact. The
honesty that needs self-proclamation will bear watching; the
man who blows his own trumpet generally plays a solo; and
besides, he adds falsehood to egotism, for he seldom has the
virtues he proclaims. Honest merit is always retiring and
shrinking, — which explains the cause of my being so little
known.

Yet a man may at times properly speak of himself; and this
is one of the times. That you may start fairly with me I must
refer to myself; but I shall do it with that modesty for which
I — and George Francis Train — are so celebrated, and touch
it as lightly, briefly, and delicately as possible.

I am a most excellent man — indeed, I know of no one who
has more qualities to be commended, and fewer to be condemned.
I commenced being good at a very early age, and
built myself up on the best models. I was yet an infant when
I read the affecting story of the hacking down of the cherry
tree by George Washington, and his manly statement to his

father that he could not tell a lie. I read the story, and it
filled me with a desire to surpass him. I was not going to
allow any such boy as George Washington, if he did afterwards
get to be a President, to excel me in the moralities. Immediately
I seized an axe and cut down the most valuable cherry
tree my father had; and more, I dug up the roots, and burned
the branches, so that by no means could the variety be preserved;
and I went a skating one Sunday, that I might confess
the two faults, and be wept over and forgiven on account
of my extreme truthfulness. The experiments were, I regret
to say, partial failures. I was very much like George Washington;
but the trouble was, my father didn't resemble George
Washington's father to any alarming extent, which was essential
to the success of the scheme.

“Did you cut down that cherry tree?” asked he.

“Father, I cannot tell a lie. I did it with my little hatchet,”
I answered, striking the proper attitude for the old gentleman
to shed tears on me. But he didn't shed. He remarked that
he had rather I had told a thousand lies than to have cut down
that particular tree, and he whipped me till I was in a state of
exasperating rawness. As he gave me the last cut, he remarked
that the next time I wanted to give my virtues an
airing I had better select a less valuable tree. My skating
idea was no less a failure. I broke through the ice that Sunday
and was pulled out with difficulty — and a boat-hook. As
I lay sick for a month with a fever, I didn't get a chance to
get off the Washingtonian remark that time.

In addition to my excellence — I might say, absolute perfection
— of character (I put it, you see, as mildly as possible,
for modesty prevents me from saying all that I might of myself)
to these qualities of the heart, I have wisdom — natural
and acquired. Natural wisdom, for I was born in Maine,
which is proof positive, for doth not the Scriptures say the
wise men came from the East? (Their leaving the East was
then, as now, the great proof of their wisdom.) Acquired
wisdom, in proof of which I cite the fact that I went to Indiana
a married man, and after a residence of two years returned
with the same wife. I also went to the far West, and came
back without investing in a single corner lot. And that, too,

in towns where the speculative proprietors have the thing
brought down to so fine a point that they ship the bodies of
those who die in them to the East, that the reputation of their
embryo cities for health may not be called in question. I
might also say that I am able to put those champion nuisances
of the age, life insurance agents, to route, but I will not, for you
wouldn't believe it.

I am a friend of humanity. I weep with such ease, and so
continuously, at the sight of distress, that I am known among
my intimate friends as that “benevolent old hydraulic ram.”
No man living has shed more tears over the woes of humanity,
and no man has collected more money — of his neighbors —
to relieve those woes.

That I am a patriot, I showed by not volunteering in the late
war after I was drafted, but by sending a substitute. So
much did I desire the success of the national cause, that I
wanted only good men at the front. The company that I was
to have gone in thought as I did, as the resolution they passed,
thanking me fervently for sending a man, instead of going myself,
sufficiently attests.

I have lived for many years in an obscure village in Vermont,
in which I am a man of some note. It don't take much
of a man to be of some note in a village of six hundred people.
I have a house there, in which I dwell all alone with my
books and my virtues — studying the one with profit, and contemplating
the other with delight. I have a farm and a stone quarry
there, though it puzzles visitors to determine just where the
farm ends and the stone quarry begins; and though I don't raise
much, I manage to eke out a comfortable existence by selling
one thousand-dollar sheep and Early Rose potatoes to western
farmers, and acting as solicitor for a theological seminary, lecturing
on temperance, and organizing Sunday schools, sandwiching
in between the two the selling of washing-machines.

I was entirely satisfied that I was devoid of sin, and believed
(not going out much) that there was none to speak of
in my neighbors. But I was aware that outside of our little
world wickedness had a vigorous existence and was rampant.
“There are,” I said to myself, “1,000,000,000 of people in the
world, my village included, of whom 999,999,400 are morally

bound to share the fate of the wicked; five hundred and ninety-nine
may possibly get through by a close shave, and one
will be certain of a blissful future. I had no doubt of the triumphant
escape of one from all the evils which follow wickedness,
nor need I say that that one, that perfectly pure man
— was myself!

But the existence of sin, even at a distance, worried me.
I desired to have the whole world as pure, as good, at least, as
my neighbors; nay, I would, were such a thing possible, have
the whole world as pure and as good as myself, though I dared
not to hope for so much.

I determined to reform the world, or at least do something
towards it. Knowledge of what one is to do is essential to
success, and that I might get that knowledge I deliberately
left my home and wandered out in search of the man of sin.

Where should I go? To the islands of the sea, where the
rude islanders disport themselves on the burning sands, in
wretched ignorance of pantaloons, and the cheerful fact that
there is a lake of fire and brimstone in which they will eventually
be plunged? No! The missionaries convey to them
the catechism, and teach them to make themselves uncomfortable
in pantaloons; the merchant follows quickly with that
other civilizing agent, rum, which to their untutored stomachs
is lightning, and those not converted by the one are killed by
the other. The islanders are provided for. To Rome? To
Paris? To Boston? To the Indians of the West? No! The
Italians don't know any better, so they are not responsible;
the Parisians may plead temptations too great to be resisted,
for they have the plucking of all the rich idiots in the world.
I asked a Boston man, and he indignantly denied that there
had been any sin in Boston since Fulton's time; and, as the
Indians of the West generally confine their tonsorial operations
to government agents, their love of murder becomes a virtue.

I went to none of these. He who goes in search of sin
purchases a ticket for New York — that is, if he desires to see
the article in all its native fierceness. Some one said to me
that New York was the place to find original sin; but I do not
so believe. I found there none but the improved article.

When boys of experience go swimming, they plunge into the

water all over, that they may take the shock at once and be
done with it. With the same idea, I wanted to see first the
hugest and largest specimen of wickedness I could find — the
Ichthyosaurus of iniquity — before taking the whales, the porpoises,
and the smaller fry.

“Show me the largest thing you have in wickedness,” said
I to my friend, who immediately tossed up a copper to determine
whether he should introduce me to a Wall Street gold
speculator, a railroad manager, a ward politician, or a burglar.
It was, he said, an even thing between them. The railroad
manager was indicated by the fall of coin, and I was introduced
to one. I found him at ten in the morning managing a
road to which he had not the ghost of a title; at eleven, lunching
with the ballet girls and their hangers on, who found employment
at his theatre, which, by the way, was purchased
with money earned by the railroad which the stockholders did
not get; at twelve, remorselessly ruining a score of brokers
who trusted his word; in the afternoon, dining with his corps
of ballet girls, and his own professional bullies; and going to
his bed in the morning, not for sleep, but for the quiet it afforded
him, to devise new and more startling rascalities. This
man was a rascal born. He was possessed of not a particle of
principle; there wasn't about him the slightest odor of honesty
— he would have said “taint” in place of odor; he was
rotten from top to bottom, and all through. He wallowed in
infamy, not from any necessity, but because he preferred and
liked it. He owned courts of justice, and controlled them; he
had judges in his hands and sheriffs at his beck, and with
these as his instruments he committed outrages, the lightest
of which, in a decently governed community, would have consigned
him to a cell in a penitentiary, and on the frontier would
have made him ornament a limb of a tree. Yet this man
was, and is, courted, and flattered, and feasted; statesmen sit
at his table; judges lunch with him, and New York feels honored
by his being a citizen.

I visited Vanderbilt, and inspected the leaky steamers he sent
to California, and from which, passage always being exacted
in advance, he made so much money. I gazed with wonder
at a brass statue of himself he erected over the Harlem depot.

I should have been pleased with the statue, and thanked the
Lord for it, had it been the work of his administrators.

I interviewed James Gordon Bennett, and spent two days
in Wall Street. Determined to know by actual experiment
how far brazen-faced imposition, deliberate insolence, and
swindling could go, I took rooms at a first-class hotel, where
the clerks wear diamond pins, and where, if you address them
as “clerk,” you will get no answer, as they insist upon being
recognized, not as “clerks,” but as “gentlemen connected
with the hotel.” That I might know how deep politicians
dive, I attended a Democratic caucus in the Sixth Ward, and a
few days after stood around the polls and saw the repeaters
vote. Following along in this channel, I was presented to
Fernando Wood and his brother Ben; and right here I desire
to pay a tribute to these men. It requires an intellectual man
to be a very bad man. The stupid bad man who merely drifts,
will strike occasionally some rich nuggets of sin; the quick
intellect knows where to go for them and how to unearth
them. The great bad man must have sense enough to distinguish
between right and wrong, cussedness enough to choose
the latter, and brains enough to do something startling in that
way. The brothers Wood possess all these qualities in an
eminent degree. There may be some sins that they have not
committed, but if there are, it is only because they could not
reach them, and they doubtless experience the pangs of remorse
as they are made aware of their inability.

I saw the Hon. John Morrisey, and made the acquaintance
of a dozen street contractors. My friend, who knew the object
of my coming, invited me to visit Water Street, and see
men of the John Allen stripe, and also to explore the Peter
Funk auction shops, but I declined. Why go from the greater
to the smaller? Why investigate small scoundrels after going
through the big ones?

I made the acquaintance of a distinguished pugilist who
was in training for a congressional nomination. He had committed
a magnificent burglary, which was complicated somewhat
with murder, had killed a man in a bar-room fight, and
was about to appear in the prize ring.

It was a blessed thing for me that I got out of New York as

I did. I hadn't been there three days before I felt an almost
irresistible desire to steal something; the fourth day I could
lie like a telegraph despatch, and I suppose in a week I should
have got to be as bad as the rest of them.

It was also a blessed thing that I did not go to Washington
during the administrations of Johnson or Buchanan. Going
when I did I saw enough. In that virtuous city my investigations
were confined to the three classes which make up its
resident population — namely, those who have been in office,
those who are in office, and those who want to be in office.
They may be distinguished by the paper collars they wear:
the first and last classes always wear dirty ones. The first
class spends its whole time in devising means to get away; the
second, in getting their salaries raised that they may live on
them, and in making their stay perpetual; the third, in getting
something to eat till they get into the second class. My investigations
were principally among the office-holders, and the
highest of them.

I saw cadetships sold for dollars; in fact, I was present at
one transaction of the kind where the buyer and the representative
who had the place for sale disagreed about twenty-five
dollars, the difference being almost enough to split the trade.
The man who wanted the cadetship swore roundly that he
could get one cheaper. The representative swore with equal
vehemence that it was impossible, as the vacancies had been
mostly sold, and there were but few in the market. The scene
reminded me so much of an encounter between two keen
horse-jockeys in my beloved Vermont, that, like the Swiss soldier
who hears the music of his native mountains, I wept.
The buyer insisted that he had been offered them for less,
whereupon the representative let him into a congressional
trade-trick. He revealed the fact that members who were in
arrears for board were in the habit of selling cadetships which
they didn't have. “Go,” said the virtuous member, “go and
buy a cadetship of one of them, but demand proof that your
son will be appointed, before you pay your money. You'll
come back to me quick enough, and be glad to deal with an
honest man.” The difference was finally compromised. The
buyer was one of the aristocracy of America, a manufacturer

of patent medicines, and he had some millions of circulars
which he desired to send through the mails. He paid the
twenty-five dollars, and in consideration thereof had the use
of the member's frank for twenty days.

I met judges of courts in the Southern States, who, ten
years ago, were hostlers in livery stables in the North, and
whose knowledge of criminal law they had gained from standing
in the prisoner's dock. I met other carpet-baggers, equally
meritorious, who overrun the conquered South like locusts,
and who were just as voracious. Here the simile ends. They
did not devour the green things they came upon — they preserved
them carefully for the sake of their votes.

I was mistaken twice for a correspondent, and was offered
a hundred dollars each time to write a speech for a member
who was never sober enough to do it for himself. The wife
of the member loved to live in Washington, and she felt that
her husband must deliver a speech for effect at home. She
assured me that, while that efficient lawmaker was never sober
enough to write a speech, she had sufficient confidence in her
strategic powers to believe she could keep him sober long
enough to deliver a short one. This woman was too devoted
to her husband, and was wonderful in the ingeniousness of
her apologies for his shortcomings. She insisted to his constituents
that he would never do anything wrong, but for
liquor. “He was in liquor when he did it,” was her excuse
for all his sins. When a temperance man reproached him for
breaking the pledge of total abstinence, which he took to secure
his renomination, she exclaimed, with touching pathos,
“O, sir, forgive him; he was in liquor when he broke that
pledge!”

I saw men who had the reputation of being tolerably honest
at home, voting away millions of acres of public lands to
swindling corporations; but I did not see the transfer to them
of their slice of the plunder. If I had seen this part of the
play, I would not have exclaimed against their stupidity and
carelessness, as I did at the time. In characterizing them as
stupid and careless I did them great injustice. Every man of
them knew what he was about; in fact, no one but a man who
knows what he is about can live in a gorgeous mansion, drink

champagne, and maintain such luxuries as carriages and
servants, in a high-priced city like Washington, on a salary of
five thousand dollars per year. It is true they have mileage
in addition, and it is true also that members from New York
go to Washington by way of New Orleans, and members from
Kentucky by way of Bangor, Maine, but that will not account
for their ability to meet such enormous expenditures. It is a
cruel injustice to stigmatize a man as stupid who goes to
Washington poor and returns rich on that salary.

I was particularly interested in men who had managed to
maintain their seats in Congress twelve years by riding one
hobby, and howling all those terrible years one cry. They
were political hand-organs, who could grind out only the tune
to which they were originally set, and, disprivacied or undisprivacied,
they ground out that tune with damnable sameness
and fiendish continuosity. These men were incapable
of voting intelligently on any question, and had not sense
enough to know that, when the institution, the denunciation
of which had made them, was dead, that they were dead, also.
They were political corpses; but instead of being content to
rest quietly in their graves, as gentlemanly and well-regulated
corpses do, they insisted upon walking up and down the earth
with their cerements clinging to them. They insisted upon
re-nominations and re-elections, shrieking that their fidelity to
principle, as they termed their extreme fidelity to themselves,
entitled them to a life-lease of a position in which they might
rattle around, but could never fill.

One man, who had represented an advanced anti-slavery
district, every voter in which was way beyond Wendell
Phillips in his abolitionism, claimed the admiration of the
world for having never wavered in his devotion to freedom,
and the people yielded their praise, forgetting that had he
ever wavered as much as a hair's breadth it would have been
his political death. Because he had always voted with his
party on the slavery question, which any man who can distinguish
between right and wrong may comprehend, he asked
to be allowed to continue in Congress and vote upon such
questions as banks, tariffs, and other nice points in governmental
matters, upon which men of ability have spent years

of earnest thought. One of this class, who was on the Committee
of Ways and Means, knowing me to be a man of
business, asked me to tell him something about the National
Debt.

This legislator explained to me his method of doing the
business of the public. He said that it was easy enough in
1866 to vote on the nigger question, even if it did get complicated
sometimes, for all he had to do was to vote as Thad
Stevens and Shellabarger did. The roll is called alphabetically,
R S T, &c. His name was fortunately Thompson, and
could only be called after Stevens. Had it been Adams, or
Albright, or Banning, or Brown, or Curtis, or Channing, he
would have been compelled to resign. But being Thompson,
and T coming in the alphabet after S, it was easy enough.
Stevens, yea; Shellabarger, yea; Thompson, yea; and vice
versa.

But the poor man was now in a bad way. Stevens is dead,
and gone where all good men go. After a stormy life he is at
last in heaven and at peace. In heaven, for he always
fought for the right; at peace, for there are no pro-slavery
Democrats there for him to fight. Stevens is dead, and
Shellabarger is out of Congress, and the two Republican
Representatives in the House whose names begins with S,
are on different sides on all the questions of the day. Puzzled
which side to take, he turned to the platforms of the party, but
found, to his disgust, that they covered both sides, as all platforms
do. He had observed that the platforms were always
made by Federal office-holders, and singularly enough, that
whatever else they might contain, they invariably indorsed
the administration of President Grant, and he went to that
great man to find out, if possible, what the principles of the
party were. “With which wing do you hold?” asked the
perplexed Thompson.

“With which wing do I hold? I believe that Dexter is the
fastest trotting horse in America,” was the clear and satisfactory
response of this master of statecraft.

Thompson was an orator of the florid order, which oratory
was the cause of his being inflicted upon a long-suffering and

patient country. His speaking was corruscative. It was
lurid, loud, and fizzy, as though his parents, just before his
birth, had sold small beer at torchlight processions and campmeetings.
By virture of lungs alone, he had managed to pass
for something in this easily deceived world. He had maintained
his position all these years on the slavery question
alone. When the righteous Fifteenth Amendment was likely
to become law, he prayed that the Democracy might be able
to defeat it, for what could he do without that juicy old sin to
batter at? He was a reformer; and what is a reformer without
something to reform? One might as well be a corn-doctor
in a country where the women care nothing for small feet, and
the men all wear large and easy boots.

I met another class of politicians, who, to some extent,
deceived me. I observed a baker's dozen who damned, with
a vehemence that was edifying, Slavery and all its outgrowths.
They denounced it as vile, unholy, and unchristian, and the
least of its consequences as ruinous and destructive. They
stood a long way in advance of Garrison and Phillips, and
elbowed out of the way the oldest and most consistent anti-slavery
men, on the score of their lack of Radicalism. I was
lost in admiration, but I recovered myself when I learned the
fact that these men were, as late as March, 1861, defending
slavery from the Bible, and damning, with equal fervency,
every one who doubted its divinity, its righteousness, or its
expediency. Men who were ferocious, fire-eating, pro-slavery
men as late as March, 1861, by a sudden shift a month later,
won the opportunity of making sad failures as Major-Generals,
and afterwards by out-Heroding Herod in their dovotion to
liberty and equality, managed to occupy high seats in the
Republican synagogue, from which sublime heights they looked
down compassionately upon the old time Liberty-party men of
1836, and with contempt upon the Free-soilers of 1848, and the
Republicans of 1856. From this I gathered a valuable lesson,
namely, that in politics it is well to do the right thing and be
a good man, provided you don't commence doing right and
being good too soon. It is a good thing in the United States
to be an anti-slavery man, provided you were a fierce and
bitter pro-slavery man so late as 1861.

I was in Washington in the time of a lunatic named Jencks,
of Rhode Island, who, notwithstanding his experience in the
House, fancied he could get a bill through it that had common
sense in it. Laboring under that delusion, he introduced a
bill requiring persons aspiring to positions under the government
to appear before a Board of Examiners, and show that
they had fitness therefor. He called it a Civil Service bill.
The principle of the bill was so clearly right — so necessary
indeed — that I supposed, in my innocence, that it would
become law at once. I supposed that members would chafe
at the delay in pushing it through committees, and would
worry at the time necessary to be sacrificed to red tape before
they could get at it. I was the more certain that it would go
through, for I knew of persons occupying responsible positions,
who never would have been trusted by the men who
procured their appointments with any business of their own.
I knew of common gamblers and common swindlers in places
where they had the handling of government money, and as
they were buying farms in their native counties, on salaries
of eighteen hundred dollars per year, it was evident that
they handled to advantage. I found, in all the departments,
mediocres, imbeciles, incompetents, nothings, rakes, gamblers,
peculators, plunderers, scoundrels; and as this bill of Mr.
Jencks was intended to cure all this, I supposed, of course,
that it would pass — indeed, I wondered that it had not been
made law before. But it did not pass. One Representative
was shocked that any one could be so heartless as to propose
it. When I intimated that the interests of the people demanded
it, he promptly replied, with a show of much indignation,
that take away his patronage, which this bill did, and he
couldn't hold his position at all — indeed, without it he couldn't
be renominated.

“But,” said I, “I know of a Revenue Officer of your
appointing who is as complete a scoundrel as ever went
unhung.”

“True,” was the reply. “I know it, too; but he can carry
the delegates of the third ward of my city at any time, and
without him at my back I stand no chance whatever.”

I did not tell him, as perhaps I should have done, that while

a failure to secure a renomination might work badly for the
Representative himself, and possibly for his wife and eldest
daughter, and the ring of followers the possession of the offices
gave him, nevertheless the rest of the world would manage
to get along in some way if he were not renominated. I did
not intimate, which I might have done, that the very fact that
he could not be renominated but for the influence given him
by the offices he controlled, was a good reason why he should
not be renominated; indeed, a sufficient one. But this Representative
was laboring under the delusion that he was in
Washington solely for his own benefit, and I discovered that
perhaps half his associates cherished the same idea. I did
suggest to him that he might go out of Congress and go
home.

“But what could I do at home?” he asked.

The conundrum was too heavy for me, and I gave it up. I
couldn't really see what such a man could do at home. And
as I saw so many like him, it occurred to me that in half the
districts, at least, whenever they found a man absolutely good
for nothing that they knew of, they sent him to Congress, on
the principle that there must be some use for all men. And
in filling other official positions, the rule adopted was precisely
opposite that which governed men in the selection of men to
do their own business. The question of fitness was never
raised, and the strongest thing that could be said for a man
was, that he couldn't get a living at anything else. The offices
of the country were made into so many hospitals for genteel
imbecility.

I staid in Washington long enough to witness an effort to
repeal the franking privilege. I saw it stated — nay, proven
— that members had sold the use of their franks to lottery
dealers, to bogus publishers, to patent medicine men — to all,
in short, who desired the free use of the mails. I waded
through columns of figures, showing the cost of delivery of
thousands of tons of that delightful and improving literature
— Patent Office Reports and Statistics of Commerce — to the
people (the statistics of commerce going invariably to farmers,
and the agricultural reports to merchants), the printing and
carrying of which was to be charged directly to this privilege.

I saw tons of public documents, in their original wrappers,
piled up in the shops of the dealers in old paper, all of which
the government paid a dozen prices for, as it does for everything
else. I knew one young man in my native town, born
of poor but honest parents, who had ambition to rise. He
supposed that a careful reading and study of the reports was
necessary to his being well informed, and with a heroism that
would have made him great, had it been properly directed, he
did read all that his Congressman sent him. In one year that
hapless youth was in a lunatic asylum, and his Representative
wasn't much of a man for sending documents either. I
saw the poor fellow a week ago sitting by a table in a state of
hopeless lunacy, muttering to himself something about the imports
of hides from Brazil. As in the case of the Civil Service
bill, I supposed the repeal would pass at once, but I was undeceived
one night. I was present at a caucus called to strangle
it by the loudest-mouthed advocates of the measure. I
was made aware that the proposition to repeal was merely a
tub thrown to that stupid whale, the public, with which it
should amuse itself till the throwers got safely away with the
plunder they had previously grabbed. I saw the same thing
done with other measures in other ways. I knew one member
who had been elected by pledging himself to the repeal of a
law obnoxious to the people of his district, who called a
meeting of members to insure its defeat as soon as he should
introduce it. He secured enough votes to defeat it certainly,
and then brought in his bantling and made a sham fight over
it, in which there was much beating of rhetorical gongs, and
much blowing of oratorical trumpets, and he pretended to
weep with rage when it was strangled. The ingenious man
was, of course, applauded by his constituency for his manly
struggle in defence of the right, and triumphantly re-elected.
His constituents denounced bitterly, by resolution, the members
who voted against the measure, but as they represented
other districts it didn't hurt them much.

“Why,” I exclaimed in wonder, “doesn't some honest member
expose these scoundrelly practices?”

“Where will you find the honest member?” was the pertinent
interrogatory in answer.

I saw offices created for the sole purpose of making places
for the adherents of members. I attended caucuses, and found
that, in the discussion of pending measures, the only question
was, “How will this affect the party?” I saw measures, the
success of which seemed to me to be of the highest and gravest
importance, slaughtered mercilessly, that the re-election of
one member might be assured; and I saw the nation made absurd
in the eyes of the world, because one member had a
thousand Irish votes in his district which he was trying to
catch by baiting them with thin buncombe. I saw members
from one State agree to vote for swindles proposed by members
from other States, upon condition that the favor should be
returned on demand. I saw women of doubtful character —
no, there was nothing doubtful about that — carrying swindles
through Congress by force of their blandishments, and I saw
gamblers and pugilists wielding an influence that Clay and
Adams never possessed.

When I went to Washington I leaned towards the idea of
universal salvation — I left as rigidly orthodox as the most
rigid could desire. I was convinced that if there was no lake
of fire and brimstone, and a very hot one, in the future, there
had been a gross error made. Afterwards I returned to my
original belief; but in view of the fact that even Congressmen
were to be eventually saved with others, I had to recall the
other fact that the thieves on the cross were pardoned, before
I could comprehend the depths and breadth of infinite mercy.

My soul was debilitated with the quantity and quality of the
depravity I had taken in, and I wanted a moral tonic. I left
Washington and went to Trenton, the capital of New Jersey,
to recuperate. I tarried in Trenton, believing that members
of the State legislature, being chosen from the rural population,
in coming to a State capital I had struck the right shop
for virtue. I was undeceived — indeed, I was in the business
of being undeceived.

Before I had been about the State House a day I saw enough
stupidity, peculation, and corruption to make me almost despair
of popular government. “Thank God!” I exclaimed, “that
Japanese customs do not prevail in New Jersey.”

“To what particular customs do you allude?” asked a New

Jersey man, who had spent a whole winter in a vain attempt
to restrain a monopoly which was devouring his substance.

“I allude to that one which compels a Japanese official to
rip his bowels the moment he commits a blunder or a crime.
I thanked the Lord that it did not obtain here, for if it did,
there never would be a quorum in the New Jersey legislature.”

Never shall I forget the look of indignation that venerable
man fixed upon me.

“You are a man,” said he, “and doubtless had a mother.
Can you cherish such a hatred of the people of New Jersey
as to thank God that the lack of a custom so wholesome as
the one you mention entails upon them such a legislature?”
And he lifted up his hands in horror.

I saw a bill introduced contracting the privilege of a monopoly.
I saw the attorney of that monopoly meet the members
who had introduced and advocated the bill, and ask in plain,
unvarnished English, without circumlocution or attempt at disguise,
how many dollars paid in hand they would take to kill
it. One new member — he was in his first session, and was
therefore virtuous — opposed the sale vigorously. He was
offered one hundred dollars, but he refused, denouncing the
monopoly as odious. At two hundred and fifty dollars, he
wasn't quite certain that it was a monopoly; at five hundred
dollars, he knew it wasn't a monopoly, but he thought that the
interests of the people demanded a curtailment of privilege,
at least in part; at seven hundred and fifty dollars, he really
did not know what to do about it — it was a puzzling thing,
and required thought; at one thousand dollars he swore that
the company was a blessing to the State, and that the attempt
to injure it by imposing legislative restrictions was an outrage,
and he voted against the bill with thundering emphasis. This
man's sense of right, like an old musket, was honeycombed,
and not strong enough at the breech to bear a severe trial
without bursting. One thousand dollars was too much pressure
on the square inch, and it exploded. The money was
paid, the bill was defeated by the men who introduced it, and
that night the hotels swam in champagne.

“If there is no virtue in rural legislators,” I asked myself,
“where will you look for it?”

I pondered on this conundrum, and finally got an answer.
Less should be expected of a ruralist than of the more wealthy
dweller in cities. Human nature is the same in city and country.
It takes less to make a yeoman rich than it does a banker
or merchant, and consequently it takes less to buy him.

“But don't the perpetrators of all this iniquity get fearful
sometimes of being brought to account?” I asked.

“No,” was the answer. “Firm in the belief that mankind
is divided into two classes, rascals and ninnies, they march on
confident and secure. They fleece the ninnies, and divide
with the rascals, which is the sum total of New Jersey legislation.”

“But reputation?” I said, inquiringly.

My friend replied with an anecdote after the manner of Lincoln.
Two fellows were in a lock-up one night, a policeman
having picked them up for being drunk and disorderly. One
of them was in that peculiar stage of drunkenness in which
the victim feels he is abused.

“This is infamous,” he said. “My reputation is lost!”

“Lost! — your reputation's lost!” exclaimed the other with
a thick voice, as he clung swaying to the bars. “Your reputation's
lost! There ain't nothing mean about me, Harry; take
mine!”

“There isn't,” said the cynic, “a member of the body
who wouldn't be glad to trade his reputation for anybody
else's.”

I went sadly on. Sadly, for in my investigations I had
found a thousand times more of iniquity than I had any idea
could have existed. I had not calculated on the certainty of
the crop or the enormity of the yield. I started out, like the
naturalist, in search of what I supposed to be a rare plant, and
I found myself in a wilderness of it. I expected to browse
about the world, taking here a nip and there a nip of iniquity,
but I found myself, whichever way I turned, in broad meadows
of it, like a horse in clover. I had found the man of sin honored
in business circles in New York, honored and applauded
at the National capital, and in the State capitals. He had been

introduced to me as a merchant, as a railroad manager, as a
banker, as a representative; I found him in the senate, in the
cabinet, and on the supreme bench; I saw him sitting in force
in both branches of a State legislature; I found him everywhere.

On my way home I stumbled into a convocation of reformers,
who had gathered to organize for the promotion of an object
in which I could see great good. I seated myself as gladly in
their midst as a traveller in the great desert sits down by the
side of running water and under the grateful shade of trees.
Here, I thought, there can be neither envy, malice, ambition,
or self-seeking, for these labor for humanity; each will insist
not upon his own good, but the preferment of others. I expected
to find so much of self-abnegation that I was troubled
when I thought how much valuable time would be wasted in
vain attempts to organize, as each would be determined to
force the honor of the movement upon others.

There were seventy present, and it was agreed to elect the
officers of the association by ballot. Alas! for my belief.
When the ballots were counted out it was found that sixty-nine
of the seventy had each just one vote for president, and
the handwriting on the ballots betrayed the awkward fact that
each had voted for himself. One had two votes, — his own and
mine, — which elected him; whereupon the meeting broke up
in disorder, and each of the sixty-nine started a society of his
own, of which he could be the head.

All my life I had occupied what might be called a neutral
position on the Woman question. I had been what might be
called a Conservative-Radical; or, to state my position more
definitely, for I like to be accurate, a Radical-Conservative. I
had not so high an opinion of the sex as some of my friends,
or so low as others. There are those who are so crazy in their
adoration of the sex, as to assert that no man ever met a woman
without being the better for it. These I always crushed, by
asking them if Adam was the better for having met Eve? On
the other hand, when a railer at the weaknesses of the sex
would assert that no woman ever kept a secret, I crushed them,
by demanding the name and post-office address of any unmarried
woman above twenty-five who had ever divulged her age,

or any woman, married, single, or divorced, who ever confided
to any one the fact that her hair, teeth, or complexion were
artificial. I held, and had always, that the virtues were inherent
in woman, and so believing, felt it unnecessary to look for
sin among them, that is, to any alarming extent.

My experience in New York, Washington, and Trenton
shook my faith in woman somewhat. I discovered that women
can be wicked, and when they are wicked they are very wicked.
I found that they are not all truthful; and that when they
set out to lie, they do it with an ease, a grace, a smoothness
that sugar-coats the most audacious falsification, and makes it
go down as easily as the sweetest truth. I found them horribly
insincere in everything relating to the stronger sex. They
would flirt and trifle with them, and I never heard but one
who even condemned the practice, and her condemnation, severe
as it was, did not count when I cited it, for she was
thirty-nine, and had had small-pox, and cross-eyes, and wore a
wig, and was thin and angular, and had freckles, and very
sandy hair, and her nose turned up, and her teeth were bad,
and she didn't know how to dress, and had large feet, and
very large, bony hands, and a stoop in her shoulders, and some
other defects in her person unnecessary to enumerate, as from
what I have said regarding her you may infer that she was not
the belle of her native village. She protested vehemently
against this thing of ensnaring young men, and when they had
lost all control of themselves in their adoration, of casting
them off heartlessly. She had never done it, nor never would
— she had always blasted their budding hopes at the beginning.
When I repeated this noble resolution to a bevy of
girls, dressed artlessly in ringlets and white muslin, they
winked at each other and tittered. The noble example I set
before them did not produce the effect I hoped.

I found them vain. I knew women between the ages of
eighteen and twenty-four who habitually consumed four hours
each day in adorning their persons, that they might enjoy the
ecstasy of a half hour's promenade to show their feathers.
They never returned in good humor — they were invariably
disappointed. If there should be no crowd to gaze upon them,
they lost the object of their going; if there was a crowd, they

always encountered some woman arrayed still more gorgeously,
which was poison. Then, again, they lack judgment as to the
men upon whom to lavish their admiration. They esteem appearance
and pretension more than they do real manly beauty
and intellect. I have known them to pass ME by with the
merest and coldest nod, and blossom out all over with smiles
at the approach of a fop, whose mustache was like a base ball
club, nine on a side, and whose other points were as weak as
his mustache.

But these were the lightest of the sins I found I would have
to charge to them. I found that they were sometimes avaricious,
and that when avaricious, for absolute downright stinginess
and closeness the most intense miser was an infant beside
them. As their capacity for good was greater and
higher than man's, so was their capacity for evil, which
made me thank the Lord that physically they are weaker, and
that home influences set the most of their heads in the right
direction, and the lack of opportunity keeps them following
their noses. But I saw fearful evidences of their capacity for
making trouble. I met one beautiful girl, so modest in appearance
as to disarm suspicion that she could do anything that
savored of worldliness, who sued a rich widower for breach of
promise. This modest, shrinking, delicate girl was at that
very time engaged to a penniless young man whom she really
loved. To make sure that the damages to be wrested from
the rich widower would be large enough to set her affianced
up in business, she got judge and jurymen crazy in love with
her, and engaged herself to every one of them. Each one
now had a direct interest in the verdict, for each one expected
to marry the plaintiff, and a verdict would be her dowry. The
judge annihilated the gay old Lothario in his charge, and the
jury, without leaving the box, decided that her heart had been
broken, and that twenty thousand dollars wwas the least salve
that could be applied to the breach. The jurymen were heart-broken
when they found her married to her young man; the
extent of the chagrin of the judge may be inferred from the
fact that he resigned his office — a thing never done save when
a lacerating necessity exists. The widower was heart-broken
when the amount of the verdict was announced, and at the

loss of reputation; the girl and her new husband, who had invested
largely in furniture and things on the strength of the
verdict, were heart-broken when they discovered that the defendant,
against whom they had judgment, had been speculating
in gold, and had taken Jim Fisk's word, and consequently
was not worth a dollar in the world. And all this misery resulted
from the duplicity of one woman.

My attention was, however, directed more particularly to
their intolerable extravagance and recklessness in expenditure,
at which my soul groaned.

I observed women whose chignons were larger than themselves,
whose ordinary dress cost more than an ordinary farm,
and whose habits had become so luxurious as to make the support
of one a matter of grave consideration. Particularly was
I shocked to notice in all cases that trimming — the mere ornamentation
— cost twice or thrice as much as the dress itself,
and that the labor of making and attaching this ornamentation
was more than either. I saw genius employed, not in permanently
beautifying the world, but in decking a weak woman for
an afternoon walk or drive. I wept bitter tears as I saw on their
heads false hair, on their cheeks artificial color, and over all
dress, the primary object of which was appearance. I cast up
in my mind the cost of apparel which would serve all the real
uses of clothing, namely, the protection of the body from the
elements, and sighed as I compared it with the bills of the
dressmaker. And all this extravagant expenditure in a world
in which there are thousands in darkness for want of means to
enlighten them, and thousands starving for want of food.

When I reached home I thanked the Lord that I brought
with me a moral constitution sound and unimpaired. As I
neared my village, and saw the spire of the church rising
above the grove in which it nestled, I involuntarily thanked
Heaven that I could lay me down that night where there was
no sin.

During my absence I had acquired a habit of observation
which I could not help indulging, and I commenced making
notes of what few trifling departures came under my notice.

I did observe that Seth Robinson, — Deacon Robinson, — one
of our two merchants, was given to covetousness, and nourished

too strong a desire for worldly goods. To get gain he
would rise every morning at the unchristian hour of four to
set his store in order, and the hours between four and seven
he passed in nervous misery, waiting for customers who were
yet taking that last delicious nap before rising which all properly
constituted and evenly-balanced men and women so highly
appreciate. Then he pursued his business all day so eagerly,
was so careful that in every transaction the odd penny should be
turned in his favor, held open his place of business so late
in the night to catch the last late buyer, and finally closed so
regretfully to think that eight long hours would elapse before
there could be more money-getting.

Of all this I could hardly approve. It is well for the new
beginner to have all this care, and be at all these pains for
dollars, for he hath his fortune to make. It would be well for
one advanced in years, who was accumulating money for some
great charity, to be thus eager in pursuit of coppers; but the
Deacon is not only rich, but he is sixty. He can't enjoy
the money he has on this earth; he cant't take it with him;
and if he could it would do him no good — it would melt! He
will hold to every dollar he can make so long as there is
strength in his fingers. Money-getting, in his case, is simply
avarice, — the desire to get money for the sake of money, —
which is about the lowest and the meanest of the vices. What
better is the Deacon than Fisk or Vanderbilt, save in the extent
of their operations? The one grasps dollars, the other
pennies; but they both grasp, and therein is the sin. The
Deacon is a small Vanderbilt; but unfortunately sins are estimated
as are eggs — by count, not weight. The sin is as
heinous if it does not produce such great results.

I turned from Robinson, and contemplated his rival in business
— Bibney. Bibney was the opposite of Robinson, and to
me a more pleasing picture to look upon. He was noted
for his charity, and was regarded by his neighbors as one
whose soul melted with love to all mankind. I saw him give five
dollars to a poor man who had fallen on the street, and I warmed
towards him, for the man was needy, and I was exercised in
my mind for fear that some of my neighbors would not relieve
him. I would have liked it better had he slipped the money

quietly in his hand and passed on. I thought at the time that
he was rather loud-mouthed in his pity, and that he brandished
his bank-note in the faces of the crowd that had gathered
twice or thrice too many times, but he gave the five dollars.
I was astonished, and confess grieved, on tracking this charity
to its hole, — for it ended in a hole, — to find that he paid the village
editor twice the amount of the gift to have a circumstantial
account of the transaction published to the world. I was
more astonished and more grieved at unearthing the fact that
he had arranged with the mendicant to fall where he did, that
a crowd might be gathered to witness his generosity. I noticed
also that the fifteen dollars had been well expended, for
his store was crowded for a week.

Bibney's wife belonged to the Presbyterian church, but he
attended them all. He had the reputation of giving liberally
to all, but the acute man managed to maintain a reputation for
liberality without giving to any. The Presbyterians never got
anything, “for you know,” he would say, “I have to give to
all of them, and really it is too much of a tax.” To the others
he would plead his wife's membership with the Presbyterians,
and the fact that it took all that he could afford from other charities
to keep “our own church going.” I saw him once walk
a square out of his way for a week to avoid the necessity of
dropping a small coin into the box of a disabled soldier, who
was grinding a livelihood out of an exasperating hand-organ.

I found an admirable contrast to Bibney in Mrs. Virginia
Swan, the gifted writer of spiritual hymns. “There,” said I
to myself, “must be a perfect character. These outgushings
of love for her kind, these verses swelling with love, gentleness,
and goodness, can only flow from a pure soul. The
fountain must be pure if the stream is.” I found that this
theory will do better in the matter of streams than in souls —
that very barren souls are full of sentiment, and gush, and
gush, and do nothing else. When I got to the bottom of
it, I found that Mrs. Swan wrote her beautiful spiritual hymns
in the coldest-blooded business way imaginable. She panted
for fame, and had the knack of writing hymns. Determined to
make a name, she commenced writing comic songs, and would
have continued had she made a success. But she did not;

and she attempted blood-and-thunder novels, till Sylvanus
Cobb drove her from that field, when she struck the spiritual
vein, and worked it to great advantage. She would have written
bacchanalian odes just as soon if it would have given her
the same notoriety. The soul of the poetess would shed the
sweetest charity, and pity, and love, and so forth, but the hand
of the poetess never shed bread and meat and potatoes enough
to keep her servant girl plump in her clothes. I was compelled
to give her up. Spiritual hymns can't be offset against
starving servant girls, until the reading of spiritual hymns
will make them as plump as will the meat and potatoes they
ought to have.

The Reverend Elnathan Black, I thought, would help me out
of my trouble, for he had always been to me the chief among
ten thousand, and the one altogether lovely. I supposed him
to be a perfect man, if such there could be on the face of the
earth. But, alas! I was mistaken in this as in everything else.
A close examination — a little stripping off of veneering here,
and a little digging out of putty there, showed me the ugliest
and most ungainly piece of moral furniture I had ever seen.
He had plastered pretence over meanness, and his protestations
of goodness covered his daily violation of everything
good. He wore his piety on the same principle that governed
the Quaker when he said to his son, “John, if thee has a particularly
bad horse to trade off, put on thy broadest hat.” The
Elder always had a bad horse to trade off, and he wore, habitually,
a broad hat, and an ugly looking sinner he was without
it.

Deacon Kitt served to prolong my investigation just a minute.
Professing temperance in all things, he was a glutton,
and carried a red nose. He took his rations regularly, but not
honestly. He did not confess to himself that he really loved
stimulants, but he was perpetually persuading himself that he
had the dyspepsia, and needed it. He wasn't ingenious even
in his excuses for drinking, for when reproached with taking
liquor raw, he stammeringly replied that he didn't dare to put
water in it for fear of dropsy. His entire devotion to drink I
noticed the first time the unsophisticated man was given a
mint julep, which he said he took for dyspepsia. With the

taste of the delicious compound titillating his palate, — the
coolness of the ice struggling with the genial warmth of the
liquor, — the fragrance of the mint assailing one sense, while
the other ingredients held mastery over the others, the poor
man dropped his glass and burst into tears. “And there ain't
none of this in the next world,” gasped he. “I never dreaded
death as much as now.” He was trying to deceive the world,
and succeeded, as is always the case, in deceiving himself.
His neighbors were certain of his being a confirmed drunkard,
long before he began to suspect it.

I was by this time in a state of disgust. I had gone abroad
for sin, and had found it; and I had found under my very nose
almost every sin that had startled me abroad. But one thought
gave me comfort — there could be no political iniquity in our
community.

Walking out one afternoon, I found myself in a crowd, who
were listening to an orator, who proved to be none other than
Cicero Leatherlungs, my cousin, who had served one term in
Congress, and was a candidate for re-election. I had never
given Cicero credit for being much of a patriot, and was
therefore delighted at the amount of it he exhibited, as well
as with the eloquence with which he adorned it. He denounced,
in burning words, the corruption of which his opponent
had been guilty — the said denunciation including not
only the particular species of corruption his opponent was
charged with practising, but all other kinds. Particularly was
the use of money in elections denounced as anti republican,
and calculated to sap the very foundations of the government.
I was so delighted at this, that the very moment he had
finished I rushed up to congratulate him. “Your noble
sentiments,” I said, — but I never finished the sentence. He
hurried away to a tavern hard by to meet his committee. I
followed and got inside just in time to see that pure patriot —
that incorruptible man — pull from his breast pocket a plethoric
pocket-book, and distribute money to the most villanous and
brutish men I had ever seen, and of whose existence I had
been ignorant up to this moment. He gave this one one hundred
dollars to be offered Jones for the use of his doggery on
election day; that one fifty dollars to keep the Irish laborers

in Johnson's stone-quarry drunk till after they had voted;
another one hundred dollars for carriages and men to bring to
the polls the idiots and lunatics from such of the county poor-houses
as were under the control of his friends; winding up
with the remark, as he put up his pocket-book, that by the
time he got the other four counties fixed, he would have spent
every last cent of the money he got for his vote in favor of the
Aurora Borealis Railroad Land Grant.

These things had all been charged upon Cicero, and I discovered
that the best and most intelligent of his supporters
knew the charges to be true; but they were supporting him
nevertheless, for he was “our candidate.”

“But how came so bad a man to be our candidate?” I
asked; the answer to which was, that when he was nominated
the first time his worthlessness was not known; that when
his bad qualities were discovered, he declined to be dropped.
He had the appointing of all the Federal officers in the District;
— these officials were strong and active enough to control
the conventions that nominate candidates for the elective
offices, and these two classes of officials control the Congressional
nominating convention. In short, I ascertained the
important fact that, let a bad man once get into Congress,
he can, if he is shrewd, stay there a long time, for the
government kindly furnishes him the means to perpetuate
his stay.

By this time I had determined in my own mind that there
wasn't a particle more of sin abroad than at home. Every sin
that I discovered abroad, I found duplicated at home, and its
growth was just as rank and vigorous. The plant was native
to all soils: the only difference was in size, resulting from the
strength or weakness of the soil in which it was planted.

Grieved as I was, I took comfort in the thought that I, at
least, was free from it. That thought gave me unspeakable
happiness, and I determined that my household should be
as free from it as myself.

My wife was a woman, and I noticed that she nourished all
the follies of the sex. She was as extravagant in dress as any
of her friends, and I took her to task for it. I told her that
there were thousands of suffering poor in the world whose

necessities could be relieved by a tithe of what she wore that
was unnecessary. I reminded her of the fact that flounces,
furbelows, jewelry, false hair, &c., were totally useless, and
could be dispensed with as well as not, and how much better
would it be to use the money they cost in charitable works.
And I showered over her much wisdom of this kind. She was
an obedient wife, and bowing her head submissively, retired to
her room, from which she emerged in a few minutes. She had
carried out my wishes to the letter. She was without hoops,
and her dress hung limp about her person. Her chignon,
which was her crowning glory, was gone, and her natural hair
was twisted into a small and insignificant knot at the back of
her head. She had no collar, no cuffs, no rings, pins, in short
she was divested of all those helps to figure and form which
the sex know so well how to employ.

Ordinarily she was counted a handsome woman; — as she
stood before me in that shape, I confess I was astounded at
her superlative ugliness.

“Come,” said she, meekly. “It is time we were on our way
to the concert.”

I did not go to the concert with my wife in that guise. On
the contrary, with much hemming and hawing, — for no man
likes to go back on himself, — I meekly asked her to resume her
natural garb.

My experiment at reform with the female part of my household
had the appearance of a failure. I was compelled to confess
that, after all, we, the stronger sex, who rail at the extravagance
of women, are in the main responsible for it; that the
average woman dresses herself more to please the average
man than to please herself; and further, that the average man
likes her a thousand times better for the additional beauty
and grace that dress gives her, all of which she perfectly
understands.

Still I felt that the wants of the poor must be relieved, and
that the relief ought to come out of our superfluities. I therefore
nerved myself to make a sacrifice. I sold my gold watch
and purchased a silver one in its stead, and the difference — I
invested in government bonds, which were at that time at a
discount, with a certainty of a rise.

My habit of investigation had got possession of me. While I
was congratulating myself on my righteousness, and deploring
every one else's sin, it so happened that I was bargaining for
a piece of real estate adjoining my own. In the course of the
making of the bargain, I caught myself deliberately underrating
the property, and most zealously endeavoring to get it for
less than I knew it to be worth. My late experience had given
me a sharp scent for sin, and I had learned to detect it at sight.
I was astonished at the richness of the vein I struck, even
in myself. I found that in my own case I had mistaken dyspepsia
for humility, obstinacy for devotion to principle, and
conceit for righteousness generally. I found, for instance,
that my sternness in withstanding public opinion was not so
much the willingness to be sacrificed for the sake of right, as
it was a mule-like disposition to stay where I had planted my
hoofs, from sheer stubbornness in refusing to admit that I had
ever been or ever could be in the wrong. I recalled the conversation
I had with my neighbor on the subject of the land,
and, to my horror, I found that within twenty-four hours I had
told sixty lies direct; one hundred and thirty by implication,
and had made two hundred misrepresentations, which the
recording angel doubtless counted as lies, though in this world
of gigantic falsification they hardly rise to that dignity. I
lied because I coveted my neighbor's land — two sins in one.
In what am I better than Robinson.

The very next day I found myself paying too close attention
to the wife of my neighbor Ames — Ames being in California,
and Mrs. Ames being a beautiful woman; and one more of the
pillars of my self-righteousness was knocked out from under
me. That same afternoon, in paying a note, I permitted a
mistake made by the holder thereof in computing interest
to go uncorrected, and I was compelled to confess myself
a thief.

The next day I tarried two hours and a half at dinner,
which stamped me as much of a glutton as Kitt. When the
blessing was asked, reference was made therein to Providence
for his good gifts. I only thought how good Providence was
that gave us asparagus in the spring, then in succession green
peas, strawberries, grapes, oysters, spareribs, hot whiskey, and

so on, an unending round of something good to eat and
drink. I was no better in this than Kitt — not a particle.
That very evening I colored the statement of the trouble
of a neighbor, whom I did not like, to his great disadvantage,
and brought myself in guilty of bearing false witness
against my neighbor; I caught myself in church estimating the
probable profits of a business operation I had just concluded;
which satisfied me that I had other gods than the one Living
One; in short, I discovered the alarming fact, that every
day of my life I committed all the sins in the Decalogue.
I had been horrified at the sin I had seen away; more so
at learning that all I had seen abroad was going on regularly
at home; and still more so to find that all I had found away and
at home existed in full force and vigor in myself; that I
cherished and practised in one form or another every sin
that I had seen in anybody else. And what humbled me
was the fact, that the knowledge that I had all these moral
blemishes was not confined to myself. My discovery of the
fact was recent — my neighbors had always known it.

I at last found the man of sin. I was the man. I am
now busily engaged in reforming, — not the world, but myself,
— and I hope I am succeeding. I succeeded in checking
myself in time to save lies only yesterday; I am now correcting
all errors in accounts that are in my favor; in short, by
dint of hard work and careful watching, I have got to a point
of excellence where it is perfectly safe to say that I am no
longer distinctively “the man of sin.” My hearers, all of you
who try hard enough and watch closely enough, may, in the
course of a great many years, if you are gifted and have
patience, get to be as good as I am. I know you will shrink
from a task so apparently hopeless, but I assure you the reward
is great enough to justify the trial.