The Shadow of the Great Hereafter.
From Pleasant Lake, North Dakota, came a registered letter which contained ten dollars. An accompanying note was evidently in the handwriting of a very old man. He added the pathetic postscript:
"There is a lot more due in the near future. All of us become honest as we near the Great Hereafter. I need only sign my name as 'Conscience.'"
Collectors of customs throughout the United States, and particularly along the Canadian border, frequently receive sums of money sent to them anonymously, with the request that they be forwarded to the Conscience Fund at Washington. Some of these officials state that passengers, including fashionably dressed women, come hurriedly into the office of the collector, nervously hand in sums of money to relieve their conscience, and depart without any explanation other than at some previous time they have smuggled goods into the country.
The largest sum, briefly referred to above, was for fourteen thousand two hundred and twenty-five dollars and fifteen cents. It was sent to the Conscience Fund by the Rev. Prebendary Bariff, Vicar of St. Giles' Church, Cripplegate, London, who explained that the sum was entrusted to him by a person who declined to disclose his identity, but who said that he had come into the possession of that amount by defrauding the United States government.
Some of the penitents confess to odd offenses. A Chicago man sent one dollar to the Conscience Fund with the statement that years before he had taken a small apple-tree from the government orchard at Fort Sheridan, and that he now wished to make compensation for it. A few weeks ago Secretary Shaw received a letter from the West, stating that many years before the writer had stolen two sheets and a pillow-case from an Indian school. This penitent also sent one dollar to cover the value of the stolen goods.