"And so he went on until he was tangled inextricably in the net, and felt that he was a rascal, and a lost, not a successful one. Remorse seized him, but not repentance; for still he went on in his guilt. Indeed, he was more reckless than ever, struggling to get out of the meshes. Gay to excess at times, then gloomy; his temper became unequal, and to drown reflection he sometimes drank to excess. He was a ruined man—ruined before exposure, for that only opened the eyes of others—his own down-fall had already taken place.
"I am told that when the proofs of his guilt were laid before him, and his confession was made, his pleadings for mercy were most pitiful. Stewart & Gamble had a stern sense of justice, and their indignation was in proportion to their former confidence. They were determined that he should not escape, and that, not so much from personal vengeance as because they thought it wrong to interfere with laws due and wholesome in themselves, and necessary to deter others from evil doing. He was committed to prison, a trial took place, and poor Willing was sentenced to five years in the penitentiary.
"When he first stood up for trial, he Was alone; all the friends of his prosperity had forsaken him. He was thoroughly stricken down, abashed, shame-faced, not lifting his eyes to the crowd in court; and no one of his intimates care to claim acquaintance with a felon. I could not hold back; much as I hated the crime, I could not hate the criminal. My schoolmate, my playfellow, stood there, alone, forsaken, despised; crushed to the ground, ready to despair. I went to him, gave my hand and stayed, while his case was up. Never shall I forget the look of mingled gratitude and hopelessness in his haggard eyes which had scarcely known sleep since his disgrace.
"O, it is well to be just! No doubt of that. The law should be sustained, and no sentimental pity should interfere. We must not condone crime, or the very object of law and penalty will be annulled. Philanthropy should be tender, but not weak; and if tears are shed and bouquets of flowers sent, it should rather be to the victims of crime, than to the criminal. But when a man is crushed with a sense of guilt, and down on the ground, that is not the time to spurn him; when disgrace is added to trouble, friends must not stand aloof. Many a poor fellow is driven to suicide by this course who might have been saved by kindness and brought to repentance.
"Willing's dashing friends, by whose example he had been helped in the downward career, who had eaten his dainty little suppers and enjoyed his society, now forsook him and held up their hands in horror at his conduct—it was so disreputable! I may be wrong, but I can't help despising men and women who share a poor fellow's prosperity and fall off in his adversity; giving an additional kick, if need be, to send him down the hill. Of all his gay companions not one stood by him on his trial, or said one word of pity, hope, or cheer, when he was condemned. The friendship of the world is a hollow thing, more unsubstantial than a bubble. It seems to me that nothing is so hardening to the heart as self-indulgence, luxurious living, idleness, the absence of any high aim in life, or any earnest effort for the life beyond. Certain it is the summer friends all vanished; their friendship wilted like flowers before a frost.
"That was the time for Howard and me to act like men. We were busy, very busy, but we took turns to stand by him, and show that we had not forgotten 'auld lang syne' and boyish days. Poor fellow! he wept then. Well did he know that we would be the last to extenuate his crime, but he saw that we pitied him while we condemned his sin. He spoke the first words of genuine repentance, or what looked like it, then and there.
"After his condemnation, when immured in prison walls, dressed in convict garb, and fed on prison fare, we visited him whenever the rules allowed it. We found him quite broken up—thoroughly humiliated, ready to despair of God's mercy as well as man's forgiveness. He was in the depths of trial, all the waves and the billows had gone over him, the deeps had swallowed him up, as the Psalmist poetically and truly says. We could not in conscience say one word that might lessen the weight of his guilt, but we could point him to the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin not of one only, but of the whole world. We could tell him that Christ came, not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance, to which he promptly added, and from the heart, 'Of whom I am chief.'
"Calamity, sorrow, reverses and all the punishments due to iniquity, can never be relied upon to bring men to repentance; but in this case they worked well, and Willing became a new man. It was a great pleasure to us to see the change in his very countenance, wrought out by the inward principle, and that his sorrow, as time went on, was not so much for his punishment and disgrace as for his guilt. He made no effort to get a commutation of his sentence, saying, It was all right; he had deserved that and much more.
"Of course our pity was much excited for his poor little wife, who seemed almost heart-broken. My dear Lucy and John's wife, who had never cultivated intimacy with her in their prosperous days, now came forward in true womanly style, and made her feel that she had sisters in heart, whom she had not known. She had no near kindred, and the few relatives she had held aloof. Truly she might say, 'My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my sore; and my kinsmen stand afar off.' No one offered her help or shelter, of all those who had enjoyed her elegant hospitality.
"Immediately upon the conviction of her husband she wrote to Stewart & Gamble, offering to give up all her handsome furniture and pictures, and even her jewels, as a small indemnity for their losses; but they very nobly refused to accept it, advising her to sell and invest the proceeds. John and I, acting under the direction of our wives, who were enthusiastic in their admiration and pity for Olive Willing in her trouble, told her to pack her trunks at once and come to our house, where we had room enough and to spare, and that we would attend to the sale. She could scarcely believe she heard aright, and was full of surprise and gratitude, and, of course, accepted the offer.