г SCENES WHERE THE TEMPTER HAS TRIUMPHED. BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE JAIL CHAPLAIN." NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 1849. INTRODUCTION. IT has often occurred to the writer, while holding painful and professional intercourse with the criminal, that the hope of impunity' prompts many a crime. True; want may supply a motive for the petty larceny; and revenge light up the neatly rounded rick or well plenished barn on the homestead of a grasping and tyrannical master; and sudden passion prompt the deadly grapple on the highway; but in the vast majority of instances which have come under my own observation, the persuasion that detection was highly improbable, if not impossible, fathered the offense. "I should not have tampered with that cash-box-not I had I thought it would have brought me here,"—was the frank but not penitent admission of one convict. "I would never have fingered that forged note had I known the bank was so particular, and their clerks so sharp," sighed another, "but I made sure it would pass safe enough for years to come, from hand to hand among other paper." "Who could have thought," said a third, "that that missing letter with money in it would have been traced to me? I fancied 'twas a thousand chances to one that I ever heard of it more." "Luck was against me; luck and nothing else," said a fourth, "for I've heard of men, and read of men, doing far worse than I have done, and prospering. Yes, prospering! As it is, I've ruined all belonging to me." "READ OF MEN." "Fons et origo malorum." That phrase reveals a prolific source of evil. Records loosely written of successful villainy poison the morals of an entire community. Vice should never be represented in the ascendant. He is a traitor to the best interests of his fellows who paints the position of the wrongdoer as secure. His triumph, under any circumstances, must be brief. An invisible and omnipotent influence is against him. A Being to whom crime is abhorent is pledged to his overthrow. To prove this by appeals to the past to show the short-lived success of crime by examples carefully selected from the career of those who have planned, and sinned, and suffered, is the object of the present publication. |