Page:Hine (1912) Letters from an old railway official.djvu/124



Chicago, June 17, 1911. My Dear Boy:—Not so very long ago the wife of a passenger conductor, running out of a large southern city, sought the assistance of her pastor, a noted divine. She was worried by the fact that her husband was stealing the company’s money. With a good woman’s intuition she knew that the wages of sin is death; that sooner or later her husband would lose his job and his family its legitimate income. To her good, old-fashioned, unspecialized conscience stealing is stealing, whether called “embezzlement,” “holding out,” or “trouble with the auditor.” The fearless evangelist shortly afterward preached a powerful sermon against stealing, and included passenger conductors in his warnings. So incensed was the conductor in question that he announced his intention of disregarding the protection carried by the clerical cloth and of knocking the minister down. When the two