I did not remember having lent him the money, and so I told him. "But I want you to take it anyway," he said.
And then, brought face to face with the thief in the man, I replied:
"I cannot take from you money that is not honestly yours."
Flushing deeply he slowly placed the bill among some others, saying: "All right, but I wanted you to take it because I knew that you would make better use of it than I shall." Never had the actual dividing line between honesty and dishonesty been brought home to George as at that moment; I think for once he realized that right and wrong are white and black, not gray.
For some years after I had occasional notes from George; I answered them if an address was given, but his was then a roving life. Always at Christmas came a letter from him with the season's greetings to each member of the family, and usually containing a line to the effect that he was "still in the old business." When my sister was married, on my mother's golden wedding-day, among the notes of congratulation to the bride of fifty years before and the bride of the day was one from George; and through good or ill report George never lost his place in the regard of my mother.
His last letter was written from an Eastern Catholic hospital where he had been ill. Convalescent he then was "helping the sisters," and he hoped that they might give him employment when he was well. Helpful I knew he would be, and loyal to those who trusted him. I wrote him at once but received no reply; and the chances are, as I always like to think, that the last days of George were apart from criminal associations, and that the better elements in his nature were in the ascendant when the end came.
I believe George was the only one of my prisoners who even made a bluff in defence of the kind of life he had followed; and in his heart he knew that it was all wrong. I do not defend him, but I do not forget that the demoralization of the man, his lack of moral grip, was the logical product of the schools of crime, the jails, and prisons in which so much of his youth was passed. Yes, the life of George stands as a moral failure; and yet as long as flowers bloom in that garden where he and my mother spent so many pleasant hours helping the roses to blossom more generously, so long will friendly memories cluster around the name of George, and he certainly did his part well in the one opportunity that life seems to have offered him.