Rensselaer Union, Volume 10, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 November 1877 — The Sad Results of Crime. [ARTICLE]

The Sad Results of Crime.

Could persons who premeditate crime foresee the sad results which are almost certain to follow the infringement of the law's of God and man, they would hesitate ere plunging into the abyss of ruin. Such hesitation would induce reflection, and slumbering conscience would assert its supremacy. Unfortunately, he who lapses from rectitude is seldom the only sufferer; the innocent wife and children, in fact, all the members of his family, feel the degradation more keenly than the man whose evil deeds have placed him within the clutch of the law. Had Wm. C. Gilman reflected ere giving way to temptation—had he foreseen the deplorable consequences of the forgery he was about to commit—a shudder of horror would have caused him to drop the forger’s pen, and, humbly falling on his knees, he would have exclaimed: “ Oh, God, forgive me! My mother taught my youthful lips to utter the Biblical command, * Thou shalt not steal!’ And now, forgetting God’s injunction, my mother’s teaclungs and the duty I owe myself and my relatives, what was I about to do? Disgrace my innocent family, doom myself to a convict’s cell, and by the same wretched deed dethrone the reason of my beloved wife!” Now, when it is too late, Wm. C. Gilman bitterly realizes that, all this has 'come to pass. His children are disgraced, homeless and worse than orphaned; he occupies a convict’s cell, and his wife is the inmate* of a lunatic asylum. Let those "who are tempted pause. Think of the loved ones who may suffer for your crime. Turn aside from the path which leads to disgrace and ruin, and devoutly exclaim, “ God forgive me! What was I about to do? ‘Get thee behind me, Satan!’ Slumbering conscience is at last aroused; I am a man again, and cannot be lured to dith honof. 7 K Weekly.