Since that time thousands of men have been engaged in fighting this fire without complete success, for it still burns, and a fortune has been expended in the conflict.
What a price to pay for a foolish act! All acts of carelessness are not followed by such serious consequences, but there is always an element of risk in doing the wrong thing.
In how many lives has the fire of sin been kindled by some deed of folly in early life, and it still smolders in the soul, cursing the man’s whole being.—Onward.
(319)
CAREERS CONTRASTED
In the year 1877 two young men stood up with the rest of their class at Bowdoin University to receive diplomas. One was called Bob, the other was called Charlie. They were Maine boys, both of them, and of about the same age. Within the last few weeks those two boys, now grown into grizzled men in the early fifties, have been conspicuous in the news of the day.
One of them, Bob, went in for fame, and after devoting the best years of his life to wrestling with arctic storms, throwing dice with death, enduring the very limits of privation and hardship, more than once glad to chew tanned leather or bite into rancid blubber, he emerged the other day with a story of discovery which thrilled the whole world, and will send his name, Robert E. Peary, sounding down the ages to the end of time.
The other boy, Charlie, went in for fortune. He had already developed the knack of the money-maker, and he did not tie up his talent in a napkin. He sold candy. He sold ice. He sold lumber. He acquired banks and trust companies and juggled stocks and bonds until he amassed a fortune of twenty millions. Then something happened. On the day after New-year’s day of this year (1910), his money gone, his reputation destroyed, his liberty lost, he took the 10:43 train on the Southern Limited, escorted by a United States marshal and two deputies, on the way to the Federal prison at Atlanta, Ga., to which he had been sentenced for a term of fifteen years. Every legal device to save him had been tried, and had failed, and Charles Wyman Morse has now become convict Number 2814—that is all.—Current Literature.
(320)
CARGOES THAT WRECK