 THE MEANING AND METHOD OF SPIRITUAL LIFE by Annie Besant In considering the meaning and the method of the spiritual life, it is well to begin by defining the meaning of the term spiritual, for on that there exists a good deal of uncertainty among religious people. We constantly hear people speaking of spirit and soul, as though they were interchangeable terms. Man has a body and a soul, or a body and a spirit, they say, as though the two words spirit and soul had no definite and distinct meaning. And naturally, if the words spirit and soul are not clearly understood, the term spiritual life must necessarily remain confused. But the Theosophist, in dealing with man, divides him in a definite and scientific way, both as regards his consciousness and as regards the vehicles through which that consciousness manifests, and he restricts the use of the word spirit to that divine in man that manifests on the highest planes of the universe, and that is distinguished by its consciousness of unity. Unity is the key note of spirit, for below the spiritual realm all is division. When we pass from the spiritual into the intellectual, we at once find ourselves in the midst of separation. Dealing with our own intellectual nature, to which the word soul ought to be restricted, we at once notice that it is, as is often said, the very principle of separateness. In the growth of our intellectual nature, we become more and more conscious of the separateness of the eye. It is this which is sometimes called the eyeness in man. It is this which gives rise to all our ideas as to separate existence, separate property, separate gains and losses. It is as just as much a part of the man as spirit, only a different part, and it is the very antithesis of the spiritual nature. For where the intellect sees eye and mind, the spirit sees unity, non-separateness. Where the intellect strives to develop itself and assert itself as separate, the spirit sees itself in all things, and regards all forms as equally its own. It is on the spiritual nature that turn all the great mysteries of the religions of the world, for it is a mystery to the ordinary man, this depth of unity in the very center of his being, which regards all around it as part of itself and thinks of nothing as separately its own. That which is called in the Christian religion the atonement, belongs entirely to the spiritual nature, and can never be intelligible so long as man thinks of himself as a separate intellect, an intelligence apart from others. For the very essence of the atonement lies in the fact that the spiritual nature, being everywhere one, can pour itself out into one form or another. It is because this fact of the spiritual nature has not been understood, and only the separation of the intellect has been seen, that men, in dealing with that great spiritual doctrine, changed it into a legal substitution of one individual for other individuals, instead of recognizing that the atonement is wrought by the all-pervading spirit which by identity of nature can pour itself into any form at will. Hence we are to think of the spirit as that part of man's nature in which the sense of unity resides, the part in which primarily he is one with God, and secondarily, one with all that he lives throughout the universe. A very old appana-shot begins with the statement that all this world is God-invaled, and going on then to speak of the man who knows that vast pervading all-embracing unity, it bursts into a cry of exultation. What then becomes of sorrow, what then becomes of delusion, for him who has known the unity? That sense of oneness at the heart of things is the testimony of the spiritual consciousness, and only as that is realized is it possible that the spiritual life shall manifest. The technical names by which we, as theosophists, mark out the spirit matter not at all. They are drawn from the Sanskrit, which for millennia has been in the habit of having definite names for every stage of human and other consciousness. But this one mark of unity is the one on which we may rest as the sign of the spiritual nature. And so again it is written in an old English book that the man who sees the one self in everything, and all things in the self, he seeeth verily, he seeeth. And all else is blindness. The sense of separation, while necessary for evolution, is fundamentally a mistake. The separateness is only like the branch that grows out of a trunk, and the unity of the life of the tree passes into every branch and makes them all a oneness. And it is the consciousness of that oneness, which is the consciousness of the spirit. Now in Christendom the sense of oneness has been personified in the Christ. The first stage, where there is still the Christ and the Father, is where the wills are blended. Not my will, but thine be done. The second stage is where the sense of unity is felt. I and my Father are one. In that manifestation of the spiritual life we have the ideal which underlies the deepest inspiration of the Christian sacred writings. And it is only as the Christ is born in man, to use the Christian symbol, that the truly spiritual life begins. This is very strongly pointed out in some of the epistles. Saint Paul writing to the Christians, and not the profane or heathen, to those who have been baptized, who are recognized members of the church, in a day when membership was more difficult to gain than it is in later times, says to them, ye are not spiritual, ye are carnal. And the reason he gives for regarding them as carnal and not spiritual is. I hear that there be divisions among you, for where the spiritual life is dominant, harmony and not division, is to be found. And the second great stage of the spiritual life is also marked out in the Christian scriptures, as in all the other great world scriptures. When it is said that, when the end cometh, all that has been garnered up in the Christ, the Son, is garnered up yet further into the Father, and God shall be all in all. Even that partial separation of Son and Father vanishes, and the unity is supreme. So whether we read the Aponoshats, the Bhagavad Gita, or the Christian New Testament, we find ourselves in exactly the same atmosphere as regards the meaning, the nature of the spiritual life. It is that which knows the oneness, that in which unity is complete. Now this is possible for men, despite all the separation of the intellect, and of the various bodies which borr us out, the one from the other. As in the heart of our nature we are divine, that is the great reality on which all the beauty and power of human life depend. And it is no small thing whether, in the ordinary thought of a people, they rest upon the idea that they are divine, or have been deluded into the idea that they are by nature sinful, miserable, and degraded. Nothing is so fatal to progress, nothing so discouraging to the growth of the inner nature, as the continual repetition of that which is not true, that man fundamentally and essentially is wicked, instead of being divine. It is a poison at the very heart of his life. It stamps him with a brand which is hard indeed for him to throw off. And if we want to win even the lowest and most degraded, to a sense of inner dignity, which will enable them to climb out of the mud in which they are plunged, up to the dignity of a divine human nature, we must never hesitate to preach to them their essential divinity. And that in the heart of them they are righteous and not foul. For it is just in proportion as we do that, that there will be within them the faint stirrings of the spirit, so overlaid that they are not conscious of it in their ordinary life. And there is only one duty of the preacher of religion more vital than another. It is that all who hear him shall feel within themselves the stirring of the divine. Looking thus at every man as divine at heart, we begin to ask, if that be the meaning of spirit and spiritual life, what is the method for its unfolding? The first step is that which has just been mentioned, to get people to believe in it, to throw aside all that has been said about the heart of man being so desperately wicked, to throw aside all that has been said about original sin. There is no original sin save ignorance into which we are all born, and we have slowly to grow out of it by experience which gives us wisdom. That is the starting point, as the conscious sense of unity is the crown. And the method of the spiritual life is that which enables the life to show forth in reality as it ever is in essence. The inner divinity of man, that is the inspiring thought which we want to spread throughout all the churches of the West, which too long have been clouded by a doctrine exactly the reverse. When man once believes in self-divine, he will seek to justify his inner nature. Now the method of the spiritual life in the fullest sense cannot, I frankly admit, be applied to the least developed among us. For them the very first lesson is that ancient lesson, cease to do evil. And one of my favorite apanachats, when it speaks of the steps whereby a man may search after, and find the self, the God within him, the first step, it is said, is to cease to do evil. That is the first step towards the spiritual life, the foundation which a man must lay. The second step is active, to do the right. These are two commonplace which we hear on every side, but they are no less true because commonplace, and they are necessary everywhere, and must be repeated until the evil is forsaken and the good embraced. Without the accomplishment of these, the spiritual life cannot begin. And then, as to the later steps, it is written that no man who is slothful, no man who is unintelligent, no man who is lacking in devotion, can find the self. And again it is said that, the self is not found by knowledge nor by devotion, but by knowledge wedded to devotion. These are the two wings that lift the man up into the spiritual world. To fill up these broad guidelines which are set to guide us to the narrow ancient path, we must find a mass of details in the various scriptures of the world. But what is specifically needed just now? Is the way in which people living in the world, bound by domestic ties, and ties of occupation of every sort, how these people may have a method by which the spiritual life may be gained, by which progress in real spirituality may be secured. It is true that in all the different religions of the world there has been a certain inclination to draw a line of division between the life of the world and the life of the spirit. That line of division which is real is, however, very often misunderstood and misrepresented, and is thought to consist in circumstance, whereas it consists in attitude, a profound difference, and one of the most vital import to us. Owing to the mistake that it is a difference of circumstances which makes the life of the world and the life of the spirit, men and women in all ages have left the world in order to find the Divine. They have gone out into desert and jungle and cave, into mountain and solitary plain, imagining that by giving up what they call the world, the life of the spirit might be secured. And yet if God be all pervading in everywhere, he must be in the marketplace, as much as in the desert, in the house of commerce, as much as in the jungle, in the court of law, as much as in the solitary mountain, in the haunts of men, as well as in the lonely places. And although it be true that the weaker souls can more easily sense the all-pervading life where the jangle of humanity is not around them, that is a sign of weakness and not a sign of spirituality. It is not the strong, the heroic, the warrior, who asks for solitude in his seeking for the spiritual life. Yet in the many lives that men lead in their slow climbing to preparation, the life of the solitary has its place, and often a man or woman for a life will go inside into some lonely place and dwell their solitary. But that is never the last and crowning life. It is never the life in which the Christ walks the earth. Such a life is sometimes led for preparation, for the breaking off of ties which the man is not strong enough otherwise to break. He runs away because he cannot battle. He evades because he cannot face. And in the days of the weakness of the man, of his childhood, that is often a wise policy. And for any one over whom temptations have still strong power, it is very good advice to avoid them. But the true hero of the spiritual life avoids no place and shuns no person. He is not afraid of polluting his garments, for he has woven them of stuff that cannot be soiled. In the earlier days sometimes flight is wise, but it should be recognized as what it is, weakness and not strength. And those who live the solitary life are men who will return again to lead the life of the world, and having learned attachment in the solitary places will keep that power of detachment when they return to the ordinary life of men. Liberation, the freeing of the Spirit, that conscious life of union with God, which is the mark of the man become divine, that last conquest is one in the world, it is not one in the jungle and the desert. In this world the spiritual life is gradually to be one, and by means of this world the lessons of the Spirit are to be learned, but on one condition. This condition embraces two stages. First, the man does all that he ought to be done because it is duty. He recognizes, as the spiritual life is dawning in him, that all his actions are to be performed, not because he wants them to bring him some particular result, but because it is his duty to perform them. Easily said, but how hard to accomplish. The man need change nothing in his life to become a spiritual man, but he must change his attitude to life. He must cease to ask anything from it. He must give to it everything he does, because it is his duty. Now that conception of life is the first great step towards the recognition of the unity. If there be but one great life, if each of us is only an expression of that life, then all our action is simply the working out of that life within us, and the results of that working are reaped by the common life and not by the separated self. That is what is meant by the ancient phrase, give up working for fruit. The fruit is the ordinary result of action. This advice is only for those who will lead the spiritual life, for it is not well for people to give up working for the fruit of action until the more potent motive has arisen within them that spurs them into activity without the prize coming to the personal self. Activity we must have at all hazards. It is the way of evolution. Without activity the man does not evolve. Without effort and struggle he floats in one of the backwaters of life and makes no progress along the river. Activity is a law of progress. As a man exercises himself, new life flows into him, and for that reason it is written that every slothful man may never find the self. The slothful, the inactive man, has not even begun to turn his face to the spiritual life. The motive for every action for the ordinary man is quite properly the enjoyment of the fruit. This is God's way of leading the world along the path of evolution. He puts prizes before men. They strive after the prizes, and as they strive they develop their powers, and when they seize the prize it crumbles to pieces in their hands, always. If we look at human life we see how continually this is repeated. A man desires money, he gains it, millions are his, and in the midst of his millions a deadly discontent invades him and a weariness of the wealth that he is not able to use. A man strives for fame and wins it, and then calls it a voice going by to be lost on an endless sea. He strives for power, and when he has striven for it all his life and holds it, power falls upon him, and the wearied statesman throws down office, weary and disappointed. The same sequence is ever repeated. These are the toys by holding out which the father of all induces his children to exert themselves, and he himself hides within the toy in order to win them, for there is no beauty and no attraction anywhere save the life of God. But when the toy is grasped and the life leaves it, and it crumbles to pieces in the hand, and the man is disappointed, for the value lay in the struggle and not in the possession, in the putting forth of powers to obtain and not in the idleness that waits on victory. And so man evolves, and until these delights have lost their powers to attract, it is well that they shall continue to nerve men to effort and struggle. But when the spirit begins to stir and to seek its own manifestation, then the prizes lose their attractive power, and the man sees duty as motive instead of fruit, and then he works for duty's sake as part of the one great life, and he works with all the energy of the man who works for fruit, perhaps even more. The man who can work unwaryingly at some great scheme for human good, and then, after years of labor, see the whole of it crumbling to pieces before him and remain content. That man has gone far along the road of the spiritual life. Does it seem impossible? No. Not when we understand the life and have felt the unity, for in that consciousness no effort for human good is wasted, no work for human good fails of its perfect end. The form matters nothing, a form in which the work is embodied may crumble, but the life remains. And in order to make it very clear that such a motive may animate men even outside the spiritual life, we may consider how sometimes, in some great campaign of battle, it is realized that success and failure are words that change their meaning when a vast host struggles for a single end. Sometimes a small band of soldiers will be sent to achieve a hopeless and important task. Sometimes to a commanding officer may come an order which he knows it impossible to obey, carry such and such a place, perhaps a hillside, bristling with cannon, and he knows that before he gained the top of that hill his regiment will be decimated, and if he presses on, annihilated. Does it make any difference to the loyal soldier who trusts his general and leads his men? No. The man does not hesitate when the impossible task is put before him. He regards it only as proof of the confidence of his commander, that he knows him strong enough to fight and inevitably fail. And after the last man dies and only the corpses remain, have they failed? It looks so to those who have only seen that little part of the struggle, but while they held the attention of the enemy, other movements had been made unnoticed, which rendered victory secure, and when a grateful nation rises the monument of thanks to those who have conquered, the names of those who have failed in order to make the victory of their comrades possible will hold a place of honor in the role of glory and of the nation's gratitude. And so with the spiritual man, he knows the plan cannot fail. He knows that the combat must in the end be crowned with victory, and what matters it to him, who has known the oneness, that his little part is stamped by the world as failure, when it has made possible the victory of the great plan for human redemption, which is the real end for which he worked. He was not working to make success here, to found some great institution there. He was working for the redemption of humanity, and his part of the work may have its form shattered. It matters not. The life advances and succeeds. That is what is meant by working for duty. It makes all life comparatively easy. It makes it calm, strong, impartial and undaunted, so the man does not try to cling to anything he does. When he has done it, he has no more concern with it. Let it go for success or failure as the world counts them, for he knows the life within is ever going onwards to its goal. And it is the secret peace and work. Because those who work for success are always troubled, always anxious, always counting their forces, reckoning their chances and possibilities. But the man who cares nothing for success, but only for duty, he works with the strength of divinity, and his aim is always sure. That is the first great step. And in order to be able to take it, there is one secret that we must remember. We must do everything as though the great power were doing it through us. That is the secret of what is called inaction in the midst of action. If a man of the world would become truly spiritual, that is the thought that he must put behind all his work. The counsel, the judge, the solicitor. What must be the motive in each man's heart if in these ordinary affairs of life he would learn the secret of the spirit? He must regard himself simply as an incarnation of divine justice. What a man says, in the midst of law as we know it? Yes, even there imperfect as it is, full of wrongs as it may be, it is the justice of God, striving to make itself supreme on earth. And the man who would be a spiritual man in the profession of the law must think of himself as an incarnation of the divine justice, and always have at the heart of his thought. I am the divine hand of justice in the world, and as that I follow law. And so and all else, take commerce. Commerce is one of the ways by which the world lives, a part of the divine activity. The man in commerce must think of himself as part of that circulating stream of life by which nations are drawn together. He is the divine merchant in the world, and in him divine activity must find hands and feet. And all who take part in the ruling and guidance of the nations, they are also representatives of the divine law-giver, and only do their work a right as they realize that they incarnate his life in that aspect towards his world. I know how strange this sounds when we think of the strife of parties and of the pettiness of politicians, but the degradation of man does not touch the reality of the divine presence, and in every ruler or fragment of a ruler, the divine law-giver is seeking to incarnate himself in order that the nation may have a national life, noble, happy, and pure. And if only a few men in every walk of life strove thus to lead a spiritual life, if casting aside all fruits of individual action, they thought of themselves as only incarnations of the many aspects of the divine activity in the world. How then would the life of the world be made beautiful and sublime? And so in the life of the home, the head of the household, the husband, incarnates God in his relation of supporter and helper, of the life of his universe. So much of this has been seen in older days that the logos of the universe, God manifest, is said in one old Hindu book to be the great householder, and so should every husband think of himself as incarnating the divine householder, whose wife and children exist not for his comfort or delight, but in order that he may show out the divine as perfect man, husband and father. And so also the wife and mother should think of herself as the incarnation of the other side of nature, the side of matter, the nourisher, and show out the ceaseless providing of nature for all of her children's needs. As the great father and mother of all protect and nourish their world, so are the parents to the children in the home where the spiritual life is beginning to grow. Thus might all life be made fair, and every man and woman who begins to show the spiritual life becomes a benediction in the home and in the world. The second great step that many men take when duty is done for duty's sake is that which adds joy to duty, the fulfillment of the law of sacrifice, the noblest, highest view of life, which sees one's self not as the divine life merely in activity in the world, but as the divine life that sacrifices itself, that all may live. For it is written that the dawn of the universe is an act of sacrifice, and the support of the universe is the continual sacrifice of the all-pervading spirit that animates the whole, and when that mighty sacrifice is realized as the life of the universe, what joy more full and passionate than to throw oneself into the sacrifice and have a share in it, however small, to be part of the sacrificial life by which the worlds evolve, while might it be said by those who see life and realize what it means. Where then is sorrow? Where then delusion? When once the oneness has been seen? That is the secret of the joy of the spiritual man, losing everything outside, he wins everything within. I have often said, and it remains true ever, that while the life of the form consists in taking, the life of the spirit consists in giving, and it is that which made the Christ, as the type of the spiritual giver declare, it is more blessed to give than to receive. For truly, those who know the joy of giving have no hankerings after the joy of receiving. They know the upwelling spring of joy unfailing that arises within the heart as the life pours out, for if the divine life could flow into us, and we keep it within ourselves, it would become even as the mountain stream becomes, if it be caught in some place, once it may not issue, and gradually grows stagnant, sluggish, dead. But the life through which the divine life pours on ceasing, knows no stagnation and no weariness, and the more it out pours, the more it receives. Let us not then be afraid to give. The more we give, the fuller shall be our life. Let us not be deluded by the world of separateness, where everything grows less as we give it. If I had gold, my store would be lessened with every coin that I give away. But that is not so with things of the spirit. The more we give, the more we have. Each act of gift makes us a larger reservoir. Thus we need have no fear of becoming empty, dry, exhausted. For all life is behind us, and its springs are one with us. Once we know the life is not ours, once we realize that we are part of a mighty unity, then comes the real joy of living, then the true blessedness of the life that knows its own eternity. All the small pleasures of the world, which once were so attractive, fade away in the glory of the true living, and we know that those great words are true. He who looseth his life shall find it unto life eternal. End of THE MEANING AND METHOD OF SPIRITUAL LIFE by Annie Besant Recording by Andrea Fiore Romance and Eyeglasses from The Champagne Standard by Mrs. John Lane This is a LibriVox recording, or LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Romance and Eyeglasses It is curious to observe that even the greatest realists do not venture to bestow eyeglasses on their heroines. It is rather odd, too, seeing how many charming women do in real life wear them, nor are they debarred by them from the most dramatic careers and the most poignant emotions. But while the modern novelist has bestowed eyeglasses on everybody else, he has not yet had the hardy-hood to put them on the nose of his heroine. Why? It is a problem which again shows the unquestionably undeserved and superior position of man. For a novelist does not hesitate to put him behind any kind of glasses, and leave him just as fascinating and dangerous as he was before. Eyeglasses are so much the common lot of humanity these degenerate days that babies are nearly born with them, to judge at least from the tender age of the bespectacled infants one sees trundled past in their perambulators. And there is no doubt that the time will come if the strain on the hearing increases from the diabolic noises in the streets, that the next generation's hearing will be as much affected as our eyes are now. The result will be that all the world will be using ear trumpets, and the novelist of the future, the accredited historian of manners, will be obliged, if he is at all accurate, to have his love-sick hero whisper his passion to the heroine through an ear trumpet. However, it is a comfort not to be obliged to solve the riddles of the future. Still, if it is inevitable that the future deaf hero will have to fall in love with a deaf heroine, why should not the present astigmatic hero in novels be permitted to fall in love with a beautiful creature in glasses? He certainly does it often enough in real life. Of course it would not do for a heroine to have a wooden leg, I grant, and yet I have met a hero with a wooden leg, and I am quite sure I know several who have lost an arm. Why then should it be required of us poor women to be so perfect? If a man can wear spectacles without forfeiting his position as a hero of romance, I demand the same right for a woman. Why? A man can even be bald and she will love him all the same. Now I ask, would the hero love her under the same circumstances? There is no use arguing, for that very fact proves that there are laws for men and laws for women. The truth is she will love him under every objectionable kind of circumstance, both in real life and in novels. Has not a thrilling romance of recent years produced a hero without legs and made him all the more hideously captivating to the patron of the circulating library? Now what novel reader would, even under the auspices of so gifted a novelist, take any stock in a heroine similarly afflicted? Yes I fear, though it is neither here nor there, that men also have it their own way in literature. To be sure there are instances of blind heroines inspiring a passion, and also I believe of lame heroines limping poetically through the pages of a novel, as well as burdened with other disabilities which apparently never take away from their chance. But I know of no heroine whom the novelist has endowed with a pan's nays. Now why are glasses and literature so incompatible with romance in a woman, while they never damage a man? Why can a man look at the object of his passionate adoration through all the known varieties of glasses, and yet not lose for an instant the breathless interest of the most gushing of novel readers? His eyeglasses may even grow dim with manly tears, and the lady reader's own eyes will be blurred with sympathetic moisture. But let the heroine weep behind her glasses, and the most inveterate devourer of novels will close the book in revolt. It is no use to describe how the heroine's great brown eyes looked yearningly at the hero behind her glasses, nor how they swam in tears behind those same useful articles. The reader refuses to read, and even if the heroine is only 19 and bewitchingly beautiful, she is at once divested of any romance. What a mercy for the novelist in this age of perpetual repetition of twice-told tales if he might give his heroine a new attribute. One feels sure that if eyeglasses and their variations were permitted, they would produce quite a new kind of heroine to the immense advantage and relief of literature. Of course the novelist has to keep up with the times. It is as imperative for him as for the fashion books, for it is from him alone that future generations will learn how we lived, dressed, and looked, and what were our favorite sufferings. So the novelist cannot of course ignore what is so common as eyeglasses, and he has in turn bestowed them on all his characters except his heroines. One can understand his hesitation when one tries oneself to put glasses on the noses of one's own literary pets, and then realizes how they wore with romance. Put a pair on the nose of the loveliest Rosalind who ever wandered through the enchanted forest of Arden, or let the most pathetic Ophelia look through them at Hamlet with grief-stricken eyes, and I am quite sure that even Shakespeare's poetry would not survive the shock. But if eyeglasses are tabooed by novelists, what shall we say of spectacles? What gallery would accept a Juliet with spectacles? For a woman in literature to wear spectacles is to put her out of the pale of romance at once. Even in real life spectacles are a problem, but to the heroine of a novel they are impossible. No novelist with an irregard for his publisher or his sales would venture to give his heroine gold spectacles. The only ones I remember as the property of a heroine of fiction belong to the heroine when she repented, and they more than anything else prove the sincerity of her remorse. And these were the famous blue spectacles in East Lynn that worked such an amazing transformation upon that erring and repentant lady. Yes, a heroine can be repentant behind spectacles, but I defy her to be alluring. I was struck by their sobering effect on studying the head of the Venus de Medici, decorated with a pair in the window of an inspired optician. They so changed her expression that she might have successfully applied for a position in a board school. It is possibly a digression, but I should like to know why opticians and corset makers look upon the young Augustus and Clyti who loved Apollo the Sun God as especially created to exhibit their wares. It seems but a pitiful ending to the career of a Roman emperor to show the passing multitude how to wear spectacles or to prove the superior excellence of a certain kind of green shade for weak eyes. And why should Clyti, with her face shyly downbent, as well it may be, be obliged to appear in the newest things in stays in Great Portland Street? I wonder. To return to glasses, perhaps the only thing in glasses on which a rationalist might venture is a monocle. I have not yet met a feminine monocle in fiction, but we all know its entrancing effect when worn by a man. It gives a man a kind of moral support and even changes his character. I have seen meek and rather ordinary men stick in a monocle and it at once gave them that fictitious fascination that, so to speak, go to the devil impudence which is so irresistible. It is the aid to cite essentially of the upper classes or of the best imitation and as such it naturally inspires the confidence of society. Of course the feminine monocle is not adapted to all costumes, but there is about it a rapishness, a cockatry particularly suited to a riding habit. The suggestion is quite at the service of any harassed novelist. It may be quite as much a help to cite a spectacles, but oh, the difference. A woman buries her youth behind spectacles, but she can cock it to the very end behind the monocle. A charming creature used to pass my window every day on horseback. I had a distant vision of a rounded figure in the perfection of a habit. A silk hat at just the right angle and the monocle. I wove romances about her. She was Lady Guy Spanko and all the rest of those manish and dangerous cockets of whom I had read. Yesterday we met at a mutual greengrocers. She was elderly and she had discarded the monocle for a pair of working eyeglasses with black rims, through which she studied the vegetables with the eye of experience. She also wore a wig, a black wig. I was so aghast that I stared speechlessly at the greengrocer, who patiently offered me cabbages at Tuppence a piece. It can't be, I said, still staring. I beg your pardon, madam, he said, quite offended. It's the usual price. It must be the monocle, and I pursued my train of thought aloud. No, the greengrocer retorted with some impatience. It's a Savoy. But it is only the monocle that has that rejuvenating effect. The other day I called on the loveliest woman I know, and who has always seemed to me the picture of exquisite and immortal youth. She looked up from the corner of a couch, sumptuous with brilliant cushions. She had been reading, and she laid aside her book and something else. I followed her hand and felt as guilty as if I had been caught eavesdropping. There lay a pair of gold spectacles, and I saw a red line across the bridge of her lovely nose. Those wicked spectacles. How they took away the bloom of her youth. To me, she will never seem young again, only well preserved alas. How tragic to think that even beauty comes to spectacles at last. Now, how different it is with men. If they do have to wear spectacles, they do boldly, and not on the sly. And yet they always find someone to love them. So the novelists prove, and they ought to know. But a hero with spectacles, that is a different thing. What novelist has the courage for such an innovation? Even realism, which we know usually stops at nothing, does draw the line there. Now, I do ask in all seriousness, are eyeglasses in fiction really so incompatible with romance? End of Romance and Eyeglasses by Mrs. John Lane. Recording by Marion Martin. Spearing Fish on Indian River by Mrs. C. F. Latham. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Spearing Fish on Indian River. Last evening, my husband said, It's a good night for a jack light. Let us go fishing. I donned my fishing suit. We got into the rowboat and went outside of Scott's Park, as that is the best fishing grounds at Oak Lodge. We lit the pitch pine in the firebasket. I paddled the boat slowly while he stood in the bow, spear in hand, watching the bottom. Here, the patches of sand showed up clear, and the water was calm. Drifting slowly along, about fifty feet from shore, my husband calls out, steady now, which meant to hold the boat still by sticking the oar in the bottom of the river to hold the boat solid while he quickly plunged his spear into a big red bass. He held it down till he thought it was drowned, then reached over the side of the boat, down the spear until he reached the fish. The next act was to take it with thumb and fingers in the eyes, and lifting with the spear, land the fish in the boat. But alas, it was the old story over again. Man proposes, etc. Just as he hoisted that big fish into the boat, there was a change of base. The fish gave a mighty flop, and I heard my husband say something that did not sound like a Thanksgiving sermon. On we went a little further, when, steady again, and this time a four pound sheep head lay in the boat. Drifting slowly along, my husband said, Great Scott, look at the sheep head around that old snag. Can't get them all. Here goes for the biggest one. It don't pay to be too greedy, even when spearing fish. I think he tried to spear two at once, and his spear came up empty. This time it was Thanksgiving and Christmas combined. And he did not call himself a person sound in the upper story. Another snag. Mr. Fish lay motionless. Its death was swift. Wait four pounds. He threw the spear at a huge red bass, but that fish had a call to his club. Now the fun commences. Fish all around. We get excited. Flop flop came the sheep head into the boat. Here comes a school of mullet. We get one of them. A big sea trout broke from the spear. So we did not have to clean that fish. I proposed just one more fish. But my husband said, I guess we have all we need. He took the oars and pulled for home. We had been gone one hour and a half and had caught one mullet, weight three pounds and six sheep head total weight 23 pounds. End of Spearing Fish on Indian River by Mrs. C. F. Latham. Read by Bologna Times. A Study in Finance by Arthur Train. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. True Stories of Crime from the District Attorney's Office by Arthur Train. A Study in Finance. He that make a haste to be rich shall not be innocent. Proverbs 28 verse 20. The victim of over strain is the central figure in many novels and countless magazine stories. In most of them he finally repents him fully of his sins passed and returns to his former or to some equally desirable position to lead a new and better life. The dangers and temptations of the street are, however, too real and terrible to be studied other than in actuality. In the fall of hundreds of previously honest young men owing to easily remedied conditions should teach its lesson not only to their comrades, but to their employers as well. The ball and chain quite as often as repentance and forgiveness ends their experience. No young man takes a position in a banking house with the deliberate intention of becoming an embezzler. He knows precisely as well as does the reader that if he listens to the whisper of temptation he is lost and so does his employer. Yet the employer who would hold himself remiss if he allowed his little boy to have the run of the jam closet and then discover that the latter's lips bore evidence of petty larceny or would regard himself as almost criminally negligent if he plays to priceless pearl necklace where an innocent chimney sweep might fall under the hypnotism of its shimmer will calmly allow a condition of things in his own brokerage or banking office where a $15 a week clerk may have free access to a million dollars worth of negotiable securities and even encouraged the latter by occasional sure tips to take a flyer in the market. It is a deplorable fact that the officers of certain companies occasionally unload undesirable securities upon their employees and in order to boom or create a movement in a certain stock will induce the persons under their control to purchase it. It would be a rare case in which a clerk who valued his situation would refuse to take a few shares in an enterprise which the head of the firm was fathering. Of course such occurrences are the exceptions, but there are plenty of houses not far from Wall Street where the partners know that their clerks and messengers are playing the market and exert not the slightest influence to stop them. When these men find that they and their customers and not the clerks and messengers are paying the loss accounts of the latter, they are very much distressed and tell the district attorney with regret that only by sending such wicked and treacherous persons to the state's prison can similar dishonesty be prevented. Not long ago the writer became acquainted with the young man who, as Lone Clerk and a trust company, had misappropriated a large amount of securities and had pleaded guilty to the crime of grand larceny in the first degree. He was awaiting sentence and in connection therewith it became necessary to examine into the conditions prevailing generally in the financial district. His story is already public property, for the case attracted wide attention in the daily press, but in as much as the writer's object is to point to moral rather than adorn a tale, the culprit's name and the name of the company with which he was connected, need not be given. He is now serving a term in state's prison and is, the writer believes, sincerely repentant and determined to make a man of himself upon his release. For present purposes, let him be called John Smith. He was born in New York City, in surroundings rather better than the average. His family were persons of good education and his home was a comfortable and happy one. From childhood he received thorough religious instruction and was always a straightforward, honest and obedient boy. His father, having concluded from observation that the shortest route to success lay in financial enterprise, secured a place in a broker's office for his son after the latter's graduation from the high school. John began at the bottom and gradually worked up to the position of assistant loan clerk in a big trust company. This took fifteen years of hard work. From the day that he started infilling inkwells and cleaning out ticker baskets, he saw fortunes made and lost in a twinkling. He learned that the chief business of a broker is acting as go-between for persons who are trying to sell what they do not own to others who have not the money to pay for what they buy. And he saw hundreds of such persons grow rich on these fictitious transactions. He also saw others wiped out. But they cheerfully went through bankruptcy and began again, many of them achieving wealth on their second or third attempt. He was earning five dollars a week and getting his lunch at a vegetarian health restaurant for fifteen cents. The broker, for whom he ran errands, gave away thirty-five cents cigars to his customers and had an elaborate lunch and served in the office daily to a dozen or more of the elect. John knew one boy of about his own age who, have he made a successful turn, began as a trader and cleaned up a hundred thousand dollars in a rising market the first year. That was better than the cleaning up John was used to. But he was a sensible boy and he made up his mind to succeed in a legitimate fashion. Gradually he saved a few hundred dollars and, acting on the knowledge he had gained in his business, bought two or three shares in his security which quickly advanced in value and almost doubled his money. The next time as well fortune favored him. And he soon had a comfortable nest egg, enough to warrant his feeling reasonably secure in the event of accident or sickness. He had worked faithfully, had given great satisfaction to his employers, and presently had a clerical position in a prominent trust company offered to him. It seemed in advance. The salary was larger, even if absurdly small, and he gladly accepted the place. Shortly after this he had his first experience in real finance. The president of the company sent for him. The reader will remember that this is a true story. And the boy entered his private office and came into the august presence of the magnet. This man is today what is commonly known as a power in Wall Street. My boy, said the president, you have been doing very well. I have noticed the excellence of your work. I want to commend you. Thank you, sir, said John modestly, expecting to hear that his salary was to be raised. Yes, continued the great man, and I want you to have an interest in the business. The blood rushed to John's head and face. Thank you very much, he asked. I have allotted you five shares in the trust company, said the president. If you take them up and carry them you will feel that you have a real connection with the house and it will net you a handsome return. Have you any money? It so happened that at this time John's savings were invested in a few bonds of an old and conservatively managed railroad. His heart fell. He didn't want to buy any bank stock. No, he answered. My salary is small enough and I need it all. I don't save any money. Oh, well, said the magnet. I will try and fix it up for you. I will arrange for a loan with the blank bank on the stock. Remember, I'm doing this to help you. That is all. You may go back to your books. Next day, John was informed that he had bought five shares of blank trust company stock in the neighborhood of 300. And he signed a note for $1,425 and endorsed the stock over to the bank from which the money had been borrowed for him. The stock almost immediately dropped over 50 points. John paid the interest on the note out of his salary and the dividends as fast as they were declared went to extinguish the body of the loan. Sometime afterward he learned that he had bought the stock from the magnet himself. He never received any benefit from it, for the stock was sold to cover the note and John was obliged to make up the difference. He also discovered that 10 or 15 other employees had been given a similar opportunity by their generous employer at about the same time. John, in prison, says it was a scheme to keep 50 or 100 shares where it could easily be controlled by the president without risk to himself in case of need. Of course, he may be wrong. At any rate, he feels bitterly now toward the big men who are at large while he is in jail. John continued to keep up with the acquaintances formed during his years in the broker's office, many of whom had started little businesses of their own and had done well. Part of their stock in trade was to appear prosperous and they took John out to lunch and told him what a fine fellow he was and gave him short tips. But John had grown wise. He had all the chances of that sort he wanted, and from a bigger man than any of them. He ate their lunches and invited them in return. Then he economized for a day or two to even up. He was not prosperous himself, but he did not accept favors without repaying them. One thing he observed and noted carefully. Every man he knew who had begun a brokerage business and kept sober, who attended to business and did not speculate, made money, and plenty of it. He knew one young firm which cleared up 15,000 in commissions at the end of the second year. That looked good to him, and he knew, besides, that he was sober and attended to business. He made inquiries and learned that one could start in, if one were modest in one's pretensions, for $2,500. That would pay office rent and keep things going until the commissions began to come in. He started to look around for some other young man who could put up the money in consideration of John's contributing the experience, but all the man he knew had experience without money. Then by chance he met a young fellow of bright and agreeable personality whom we shall call Prescott. The latter was five or six years older than John, had had a large experience in brokerage houses in another city, and had come to New York to promote the interest of a certain copper company. John had progressed and was now assistant loan clerk of one of the biggest trust companies in the city, which also happened to be transfer agent for the copper company. Thus John had constantly to handle its certificates. Prescott said it was a wonderful thing that some of the keenest men in the street were in it, and although it was a curb stock, strongly advises new friend by all he could of it. He assured John that, although he was admittedly interested in booming the stock, he was confident that before long it would sell at four times its present quotation. Meantime the stock, which had been listed at two and a quarter, began to go rapidly up. Word went around the trust company that it was a great purchase, anywhere below ten, and John, as well as the other boys employed in the company, got together what money he could, and began to buy it. It continued to go up. They had unconsciously assisted it in its assent, and they bought more. John purchased seventy-five shares, all the way up to eight and nine. One of his friends took eight hundred, and had dropped out of sight. They hadn't time to get out, and John, in prison, has his yet. But he still had faith in Prescott, for he liked him, and believed in his business capacity. The stock operation over, Prescott began to prospect for something new, and suggested to John that they form a brokerage house under the latter's name. John was to be president at a fixed salary. Sounded very grand. His duties at the trust company began to seem picayune. Moreover, his loss in copper had depressed him, and he wanted to recoup, if he could. But how to get the two thousand five hundred dollars necessary to start in business? Prescott pleaded poverty, yet talked constantly of the ease with which a fortune might be made if they could only once get in right. It was a period of increased dividends, of stock-jobbing operations, of enormous magnitude, of fifty point movements, when the lucky purchaser of only a hundred shares of some inconspicuous railroad sometimes found that he could sell out next week with five thousand dollars profit. There seemed full of money. It appeared to reign banknotes and stock certificates. In the loan cage at the trust company, John handled daily millions in securities, a great part of which were negotiable. When almost everybody was so rich, he wondered why anyone remained poor. Two or three men of his own age gave up their jobs and other concerns and became traders, while another opened an office of his own. John was told that they had acted on good information, had bought a few hundred shares of Union Pacific, and were now comfortably fixed. He would have been glad to buy, but copper had left him without anything to buy with. One day Prescott took him out to lunch and confided to him that one of the big speculators had tipped him off to buy cotton, since there was going to be a failure in the crop. It was practically a sure thing. Two thousand dollars margin would buy enough cotton to start them in business, even if the rise was only a very small one. Why don't you borrow a couple of bonds, asked Prescott? Borrow from whom, inquired John? Why, from some customer of the trust company. No one would lend them to me, answered John. Well, borrow them anyhow. They would never know about it, and you could put them back as soon as we closed the account, suggested Prescott. John was shocked and said so. You are easy, said his comrade. Don't you know that the trust companies do it themselves all the time? The presidents of the railroads use the holdings of their companies as collateral. Even the banks use their deposits for trading. Didn't old blink, dump a lot of rotten stuff on you? Why don't you get even? Let me tell you something. Fully one half of the men who are now successful financiers got their start by putting up as margin securities deposited with them. No one ever knew the difference, and now they are on their feet. If you took two bonds overnight, you might put them back in the morning. Everyone does it. It's part of the game. But suppose we lost, asked John? You can't, said Prescott. Cotton is sure to go up. It's throwing away the chance of your life. John said he couldn't do such a thing, but when he returned to the office, a cashier told him that a merger had been planned between their company and another, a larger one. John knew what that meant well enough. Half the clerks would lose their positions. He was getting thirty-five dollars a week at Marity Young White, and, as he had told the magnet, he needed it all. That night, as he put the securities from the loan cage back in the vault, the bonds burned his fingers. They were lying around loose. No good to anybody, and only two of them overnight maybe would make him independent of salaries and murders, a free man and his own master. The vault was in the basement just below the loan cage. It was some twenty feet long and ten wide. There were three tiers of boxes with double-combination doors. In the extreme left-hand corner was the loan box. Near it were two other boxes in which the securities of certain customers on deposit were kept. John had individual access to the loan box and the two others, one of which contained the collateral, which secured loans that were practically permanent. He thus had, within his control, negotiable bonds of over a million dollars in value. The securities were in piles, strapped with rubber bands, and bore slips on which were written the names of the owners. Every morning John carried up all these piles to the loan cage, except the securities on deposit. At the end of the day he carried all back himself and tossed them into the boxes. When the interest coupons on the deposited bonds had to be cut, he carried these also upstairs. At night the vault was secured by two doors, one with a combination lock and the other with a time lock. It was as safe as human ingenuity could make it. By day it had only a steel wire gate which could be opened with a key. No attendant was stationed at the door. If John wanted to get in, all he had to do was to ask the person who had the key to open it. The reason John had the combination of these different boxes was in order to save the loan clerk the trouble of going downstairs to get the collateral and stuff. Next day when John went out to lunch he put two bonds belonging to a customer in his pocket. He did not intend to steal them or even to borrow them. It was done almost automatically. His wealth seemed subjugated to the idea that they were to all tents and purposes his bonds to do as he liked when. He wanted the feeling of bonds in his pocket. As he walked along the street to the restaurant it seemed quite natural that they should be there. They were nearly as safe with him as lying around loose in the cage or chucked into a box in the vault. Prescott joined him full of his new idea that cotton was going to jump overnight. If you only had a couple of bonds aside, then somehow John's legs and arms grew weak. He seemed to disintegrate internally. He tried to pull himself together, but he had lost control of his muscles. He became a dual personality. His own John heard Prescott's John say quite naturally, I can let you have two bonds, but mind we get them back tomorrow or anyhow the day after. John's John felt the other John slip the two American navigation 4S under the table and Prescott's fingers closed upon him. Then came a period of hypnotic paralysis. The flywheel of his willpower hung on a dead center. Almost instantly he became himself again. Give him back, he whispered hoarsely. I didn't mean you should keep them. And he reached anxiously across the table. But Prescott was on his feet halfway toward the door. Don't be a fool, Smith, he laughed. What's the matter with you? It's a cinch. Go back and forget it. He shot out of the door and down the street. John followed, dazed and trembling with horror at what he had done. He went back to the cage and remained the rest of the day in terror lest the broker who owned the two bonds should pay off his loan. But at the same time he had quickly made up his mind what he should do in that event. There was more than one loan secured by American navigation 4S. He loosened a couple in one of the other piles. If the first broker came in, he would take two bonds from one of these. But the broker did not come in. That night John wandered the streets till nearly daylight. He saw himself arrested, ruined, in prison. Utterly fag next morning he called up Prescott on the telephone and begged him to return the bonds. Prescott laughed at his fears and assured him that everything was all right. Cotton was sure to go up. An hour later the broker who owned the bonds came in and took up his loan and John removed two American navigation 4S from another bundle and handed them to the loan clerk. Of course the numbers on the bonds were not the same. A few persons would notice a little thing like that, even if they kept a record of it. They had the bonds, that was the main thing. Once more John rushed to the phone, told Prescott what had occurred and besought him for the bonds. It's too late now, grove Prescott. Cotton has gone down. I could only get one back at the most. We had better stand pat and get out on the next bolt. John was by this time almost hysterical. The perspiration broke out on his forehead every now and that and he shuddered as he counted his securities and entered up his figures. If Cotton should go down some more, that was the hideous possibilities. They would have to put up more margin and then down in the vault where the depositors bonds were kept were two piles of overland 4S. One contained about 200, the other nearly 600 bonds. The power value of these negotiable securities alone was nearly $800,000. Twice a year John cut the coupons off of them. Each pile was marked with the owner's name. They were never called for it and it appeared that these customers intended to keep them there permanently. John realizing that the chances of detection were smaller, removed two bonds from the pile of 200 overlands and substituted them with Prescott for the two navigation 4S. Then Cotton went down with a slump. Prescott did not wait even to telephone. He came himself to the trust company and told John that they needed two more bonds for additional margin to protect their loan. But he said it was merely temporary and that they had better even up by buying some more cotton. John went down into the vault and came back with four more overland 4S bonds under his coat. He was in for it now and might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb. He was beginning to get used to the idea of being a thief. He was, to be sure, wretchedly unhappy, but he was experiencing the excitement of trying to dodge fate until fortune looked his way. Cotton still went down. It never occurred to him that Prescott perhaps had not bought all the cotton. Now that he is in prison he thinks maybe Prescott didn't. But he kept going down into the vault and bringing up more bonds and getting reckless bought more cotton quantities of it. In a month sixty bonds were gone from the pile of two hundred. John, a nervous wreck, almost laughed grimly at the joke of his being short sixty bonds. At home they thought he was getting run down. His wife, he was so kind and thoughtful that she had never been so happy. It made her fearful that he had some fatal disease and knew he was going to die. Up at the bank John made a separate bundle of sixty bonds out of the pile of six hundred so that he could substitute them for those first taken if the owner called for them. It was not likely that both owners would call for their bonds on the same day so that he was practically safe until one or the other had withdrawn his deposit. About this time the special accountants came around to make their annual investigation. It was apparently done in the regular and usual way. One examiner stood inside the vault and another outside surrounded by four or five assistants. They investigated the loans. John brought them out in armfuls and the accountants checked them off and sent them back. When John brought out the one hundred and forty bonds left in the bundle of two hundred overland four ash, he placed on top of them the pile of sixty bonds taken from the other bundle of six hundred. Then he took them back, shifted over the sixty and brought out the bundle of six hundred overland four ash made up in part of the same bonds. It was the easiest thing going. The experts simply counted the sixty bonds twice and John had the sixty bonds or Prescott had them down the street. Later the same firm of experts certified to the presence of three hundred thousand dollars of missing bonds counting the same bundle not only twice but five and six times. You see Prescott's John had grown wise in his generation. After that he felt reasonably secure. It did seem almost unbelievable that such a situation could exist but it was nevertheless a fact that it did. He expected momentarily that his theft would be detected and that he would be thrown into prison and the fear of the actual arrest, the moment of public ignominy, the shock and agony of his wife and family, or what drove him sleepless into the streets, and every evening to the theaters to try to forget what must inevitably come but the fact that he had gone wrong, that he was a thief, that he had betrayed his trust, had lost its edge. He now thought no more of shoving a package of bonds into his overcooked pocket than he did of taking that garment down from its peg behind the door. He knew from inquiry that men who stole a few hundred dollars, him or caught, usually got as long as term as those who stole thousands. If he stole one bond he was just as likely to get ten years in state's prison as if he stole fifty. So he stole fifty and when they were wiped out he stole fifty more. And well if the reader is interested he will learn before the end of the story just what John did steal. Somehow Prescott's speculations never succeeded. Occasionally they would make a good turn and get a few bonds back but the next week there would be a new fiasco and John would have to visit the Overland 4S again. That performance of the occultants had given him a huge contempt for bankers and banking. He knew that if he wanted he could grab up a million any day and walk off with it but he didn't want to. All he desired now was to get back to where he was before. All the speculation was in the hands of Prescott and Prescott never seemed worried in the least. He called on John almost daily for what extra bonds were needed as additional collateral and John took his word absolutely as to the result of the transactions. He could not do otherwise for one word from Prescott would have ruined him. Before long the pile of 200 Overland 4S was gone. So was a large quantity of other securities for John and Prescott had dropped cotton and gone plunging into the stock market. Here however they had no better success than before. Of course a difficulty arose when the interest on the Overland 4S gained due. The coupon had to be cut by someone in the bank and although John usually cut them he did not always do so. Sometimes the loan clerk himself would take a hand and call for a particular lot of bonds. John however was now fertile in devices. The owner of the larger pile of 600 bonds usually wrote to have his coupons cut about the 27th of April. John would make up a collection of 600 bonds of the same sort, carry them up and cut the coupons in the loan cage. The other man generally sent in a draft for his interest on the 2nd or 3rd of May. But now the bonds were away, scattered all over the street. So John started a new operation to get the bonds back and straighten out the coupon tangle. He substituted with the brokers an equal number of bonds of other companies, the interest of which was not yet due. There was a large block of Electric 5S and Cumberland 4S which served his purpose admirably. Thus he kept up with the game. When the coupons became due on the latter he carried back the first. It kept him and Prescott busy most of the time juggling securities. At least John knew he was kept busy and Prescott claimed to be equally so. There were many loans of brokers and others all secured by the same sort of collateral. Most of these John appropriated. When it was necessary to check off the loans, John having retained enough of the same kind of bonds to cover the largest loan would bring up the same bundle time after time with a different name upon it. If one of the customers wanted to pay off a loan and his bonds were gone he would be given someone else's collateral. Apparently the only thing that was necessary was to have enough of each kind of security on hand to cover the largest loan on the books at any given time. Once when the examiners were at work on the vault John had to make up $100,000 in Overland 4S or 5S from the different small loans in the loan vault and put them in a package in the deposit vault in order to make it appear that certain depositors bonds were all there. The most extraordinary performance of all was when upon one of the annual examinations John covered the absence of over 50 bonds in the collateral covering a certain loan by merely shoving the balance of the securities into the back of the vault so that it was not examined at all. He had taken these bonds to substitute for others in different broker's offices and it so happened that there were no similar securities in the building. Thus the deficiency could not be covered up even by John's expert sleight of hand. Of course if there had been other bonds of the same kind in another vault it would have been a simple matter to substitute them but there were not. So John pushed the remaining 150 bonds into a dark corner of the vault and awaited the discovery with throbbing pulses. Yet, strange to relate, these watchdogs of finance did not see the bonds which John had hidden and did not discover that anything was wrong since, for purposes of its own, the bank had neglected to make any record of the loaning question. It would really have been safer for John if he had taken the whole pile but then he did not know that the accountants were going to do their business in any such crazy fashion. The whole thing came to seem a sort of joke to John. He never took any bonds for his own personal use. He gave everything to Prescott and he rarely, if ever, saw Prescott accept a hand him securities. One day Prescott walked right into the bank itself and John gave him 165 bonds which he stuffed under his overcoat and carried away. Remember, this is a fact. The thing which began in August 1905 dragged over through the following year and on into 1907. John weathered two examinations by the accountants, the last being in October 1906, when they certified that the company was absolutely okay and everything intact. On that particular day John had over $300,000 in Overland 4s and 5s scattered over the street. In the first six months they lost $100,000 in cotton. Then they played both sides of the market in stocks and got badly bitten as bears in the temporary bull market in the autumn of 1906, selling Union Pacific at 165 which afterward went to 190, Northern Pacific at 185 which went to a 200 etc etc. Then they shifted their position, became bulls, and went long of stock just at the beginning of the present slump. They bought Reading at 118, American Smelters at 126, Pennsylvania at 130, Union at 145 and Northern Pacific at 180. At one time John had $550,000 in bonds out of the vaults. The thing might have been going on still had it not been for the fact that the anticipated merger between John's company and another was put through and a new vault and a new building prepared to receive the securities. Of course on such an occasion a complete examination would be made of all the securities and there would be practically no chance to deceive the accountants. Moreover a part of the securities had actually been moved when the worst slump came and they needed more. It was obvious that the jig was up. A few more days and John knew that the jies would be upon his wrists. Prescott and he took an account of the stock they had lost and went into committee on ways and means. Neither had any desire to run away. Wall Street was a breath of life to them. Prescott said that the best thing to do was to take enough more to stand off the company. He cited a case in Boston where a clerk who was badly in was advised by his lawyer to take $125,000 more. Then the lawyer dickered with the bank and brought it to terms. The lawyer got $25,000. The bank cut the rest and the thief was let go. Prescott said they ought to get away with enough more to make the bank's loss a million. He thought that would make them see what was the wise thing to do. Prescott also said he would try to get a lawyer who could bring some pressure to bear on the officials of the company. It would be a rather unpleasant situation to have brought to the attention of the State Superintendent of Banking. John agreed to get the additional securities and turn them over to Prescott. Unfortunately, almost everything had by this time been moved into the new vault. And all John could get was a stock certificate for 1,500 railroad shares standing in his own name and $75,000 in notes. These he gave to Prescott, thus increasing the amount stolen from the bank without discovery to between $600,000 and $700,000. This was on the day before the actuaries were to make their investigation. Knowing that his arrest was now only a question of time, John, about 11 o'clock on the following morning, left the trust company for the last time. He was in telephonic communications with Prescott, who in turn was in touch with their lawyer. Unfortunately, the President of the company had gone out of town over Sunday, so that again their plans went awry. For nearly two years John had not known an hour devoid of haunting fear. From a cheerful and contented youth he had become despondent, taciturn, and nervous. He was the same affectionate husband and attentive son as before, and his general characteristics remained precisely the same. He was scrupulous to a penny in every other department of his life, and undoubtedly would have felt the same pricks of conscience had he been guilty of any other act of dishonesty. The affair at the bank was a thing apart. The embezzler of $600,000 was not John at all, but a separate personality wearing John's clothes and bearing his name. He perceived clearly the enormity of his offense. But because he was the same John, in every other respect, he had a feeling that somehow the fact that he had done the thing was purely fortuitous. In other words, that the bonds had to be taken were going to be taken anyway, and that fate had simply elected him to take them. Surely he had not wanted the bonds, had had no intention of stealing half a million dollars, and in short was not the kind of man who would steal half a million dollars. Each night he tossed, sleepless, till the light stole in through the shutter. At every corner on his way uptown he glanced over his shoulder behind him. The front doorbell never rang that his muscles did not become rigid, and his heart almost stopped beating. If he went to a theater or a pond in excursion he passed the time wondering if the next day he would still be a free man. In short he paid in full in physical misery and mental anxiety and wretchedness for the real moral obliquity of his crime. The knowledge of this maddened him for what was coming. Yet he realized that he had stolen half a million dollars, and that justice demanded that he should be punished for it. After leaving the bank John called up Prescott and learned that the plan to adjust matters with the President had miscarried by reason of the latter's absence. The two then met in the saloon, and here it was arranged that John would call up the loan clerk and tell him that something would be found to be wrong at the bank, but that nothing had better be said about it until the following Monday morning, when the President would return. The loan clerk, however, refused to talk with him and hung up the receiver. John had nowhere to go, for he did not return home, and spent the afternoon until six o'clock riding in streetcars and sitting in saloons. At that hour he again communicated with Prescott, who said that he had secured rooms for him and his wife at a certain hotel, where they might stay until matters could be fixed up. John arranged to meet his wife at 42nd Street with Prescott and conductor to the hotel. As fate decreed, the loan clerk came out of the subway at precisely the same time, saw them together and followed them. Meantime a hurry call had been sent for the President, who had returned to the city. John, fully aware that the end had come, went to bed at the hotel, and for the first time since the day he had taken the bonds two years before, slept soundly. At three the next morning there came a knock at the door. His wife awakened him, and John opened it. As he did so, a policeman forced his way in, and the loan clerk, who stood in the corridor just behind him, exclaimed theatrically, Officer, there is your man! John is now in prison, serving out the sentence, which the court believed it necessary to inflict upon him as a warning to others. Prescott is also serving a term at hard labor, a sentence somewhat longer than John's. The trust company took up their accounts, paid the losses of the luckless pair, annoying to a rise in prices which came too late to benefit the latter, escaped with a comparatively trifling loss of a little over one hundred thousand dollars. At once every banking house and trust company upon the street looked to its system of checks upon the honesty of its employees, and took precautions which should have been taken long before. The story was a nine days wonder. Then Union Pacific dropped twenty points more. The tide of finance closed over the heads of John and Prescott, and they were forgotten. Had the company, instead of putting itself at the mercy of a thirty-five dollars a week clerk, placed double combinations on the loan and deposit vaults, and employed two men, one to act as a check upon the other, to handle its securities, or had it merely adopted the even simpler expedient of requiring an officer of the company to be present when any securities were to be removed from the vaults, John would probably not now be in jail. It would seem that it would not be a difficult or complicated matter to employ a doorkeeper who did not have access himself to stand at the door of the vault, and check off all securities removed therefrom, or returned there, too. An officer of the bank should personally see that the loans earned up to the cage in the morning were properly returned to the vaults at night, and secured with a time lock. Such a precaution would not cost the stockholders a tenth of one percent in dividends. It is a trite saying that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. But this is as true, in the case of financial institutions, at least, from the point of view of the employee as of the company. It is an ingenious expedient to ensure oneself with a fidelity corporation against the possible defaultations of one's servants, and doubtless certain risks can only be covered in some such fashion. These methods are imminently proper so far as they go. But they, unfortunately, do not serve the public purpose of protecting the weak from undue and unnecessary temptation. Banks and trust companies are prone to rely on the fact that most speculations are easily detected and severely punished, but the public interest demands that all business, state, municipal, and private should be so conducted that dishonesty may not only be punished, but prevented. A builder who took a chance on the strength of a girder would have small credit in his profession. A good bridge is one which will bear the strain not only of the pedestrian, but of the elephant. A deluge or an earthquake may occur and the bridge may tumble, but next time it is built stronger and better. Thus science progresses and the public interest is subserved. A driver who overloads his beast is regarded as a fool or a brute. Perhaps such names are too harsh for those who overload the moral backbone of an inexperienced subordinate. Surely the fault is not all on one side. While there are no formulas to calculate the resiliency of human character, we may demand the same prudence on the part of the officers of financial institutions, as we do from nursemaids, lumbermen, and manufacturers of explosives. Though we may have confidence in the rectitude of our fellows, we have no right to ignore the limitations and weaknesses of mankind. It would not outrage the principles of justice if one who placed needless and disproportionate strain upon the morals of another were themselves regarded as an accessory to the crime. End of A Study in Finance by Arthur Train. Read by Craig Campbell in Appleton, Wisconsin, in 2009. Read by Bologna Times. 10 Great Films from the Late 1940s. Adams Rib. Lowe's Incorporated. Copyright. 1949. 101 Minutes. Sound. Black and White. 35mm. MGM Picture. Summary. A marital comedy. On opposing sides in a bitter court battle, a district attorney and his law-your-wife match wits on equal rights for women. Credits. Producer. Lawrence Weingarten. Director. George Cukor. Screenplay. Ruth Gordon. Garson Kanan. Music. Music. Mikolas Rosa. Film Editor. George Bumler. Cast. Spencer Tracy. Catherine Hepburn. Judy Holliday. Tom Yule. David Wayne. Lowe's Incorporated. November. 49. LP. 2615. Beauty and the Beast. La Belle et Labette. Andre Pauvet. France. 1946. Released in the U.S. by L'Opère Films Incorporated. 1947. 90 Minutes. Sound. Black and White. 35mm. In French with English titles. Based on the tale by Madame Le Prun de Beaumont. Summary. A fantasy in which a household drudge is delivered into the hands of a monster who falls in love with her and is eventually revealed as a handsome prince. Credits. Director of Production. Emile Derban. Director. Story. Dialogue. Jean Coteau. Music. George Oric. Editor. Claude Iberia. Cast. Jean Moret. Josette Day. Marcel Andre. Mila Parli. Nan German. L'Opère Films Incorporated. December. 46. LP. 1722. Black Narcissus. The Archers Film Productions. London. Released in the U.S. by Universal International. Copyright 1948. Presented by J. Arthur Wreck. 99 Minutes. Sound. Color. 35mm. Based on the novel by Rumer Godin. Summary. A drama about five Anglican nuns who organize a convent school in an abandoned palace in the Himalayan Mountains. They experience loneliness and ultimate failure and attempting to cope with ignorance, delinquency, cynicism, and human passions. Credits. Produced, directed, and written by Michael Powell. Emerick Pressburger. Editor. Reginald Mills. Music. Brian Isdell. Cast. Debra Carr. Sabu. David Ferrar. Flora Robson. Esmond Knight. Applied author. Universal Pictures Co. Incorporated. Independent Producers Limited. 3 June 48. LP 1925. A Double Life. Universal Pictures Company. Incorporated. Copyright 1948. 103 Minutes. Sound. Black and White. 35mm. A Canon Production. Summary. Reality and illusion become indistinguishable in the mind of an actor playing the part of Othello. After strangling an offstage sweetheart, he returns to the theatre and stabs himself fatally during a performance. Credits. Producer. Michael Cannon. Director. George Kuecher. Script. Ruth Gordon. Garson Cannon. Music. Miklis Rosa. Film Editor. Robert Parrish. Cast. Ronald Coleman. Signa Hasso. Edmund O'Brien. Shelley Winters. Ray Collins. Universal Pictures Co. Incorporated. And Canon Productions. 8 March 48. LP 1706. I Remember Mama. RKO Radio Pictures Incorporated. Copyright 1948. Presented by Dore Sherry. 134 Minutes. Sound. Black and White. 35mm. Based on the play adapted by John Van Druten from the novel Mama's Bank Account by Catherine Forbes. pseudonym of Catherine Anderson McLean. Summary. The Experiences of a Norwegian Family Living in San Francisco in the 1910s. Credits. Executive Producer and Director George Stevens. Producer. Harriet Parsons. Screenplay. DeWitt Bodine. Music Score. Roy Webb. Music Director. C. Bakalinkov. Film Editor. Robert Swink. Cast. Irene Dunn. Barbic Belgeddes. Oscar Homalka. Phillip Dorn. Sir Cedric Hardwick. RKO Radio Pictures Incorporated. 11 March 48. LP 1606. In the Good Old Summertime. Lowe's Incorporated. Copyright 1949. 103 Minutes. Sound. Color 35mm. And MGM Picture. A new version of the 1940 motion picture, the shop around the corner. Based on a play by Miklos Laszlo. Summary. A musical comedy about two male-ordered lovers who unknowingly work in the same office. Setting. Chicago at the turn of the century. Credits. Producer. Joe Pasternak. Director. Robert Z. Leonard. Screenplay. Samson Raefelsen. Adaptation. Albert Hackett. Frances Goodrich. Ivan Tours. Music Director. Georgie Stoll. Film Editor. Adrienne Fezon. Cast. Judy Garland. Van Johnson. S. Z. Cuddles. Sakal. Spring Bynton. Clinton Sunberg. Lowe's Incorporated. 23 June 49. LP 2370. Key Largo. Warner Brothers Pictures Incorporated. Copyright 1948. 101 Minutes. Sound. Black and White. 35mm. Based on the play by Maxwell Anderson. Summary. A cynical young army officer arrives by chance on Key Largo off the coast of Florida. He aligns himself on the side of law and order when he finds that the island is the rendezvous of a gang of counterfeiters. Credits. Producer. Jerry Wald. Director. John Houston. Screenplay. Richard Brooks. John Houston. Music. Max Steiner. Orchestrations. Murray Ketter. Film Editor. Rudy Fair. Cast. Humphrey Bogart. Edward G. Robinson. Lauren Bacall. Lionel Barrymore. Claire Trevor. Warner Brothers Pictures Incorporated. 31 July 48. LP 1750. The Pale Face. Paramount Pictures Incorporated. Copyright 1948. 91 Minutes. Sound. Black and White. 35mm. Summary. A burlesque of the horse opera. A timid, traveling dentist, mistaken for a federal agent, despite gun duels and an attempted burning at the stake, escapes the Indians on the warpath, outwits the ought laws, and wins the love of a gun-toed and cowgirl. Credits. Producer. Robert L. Welch. Director. Norman Z. McLeod. Original screenplay. Edmund Hartman. Frank Tashlin. Music score. Victor Young. Editor. Ellsworth Hoagland. Cast. Bob Hope. Jane Russell. Robert Armstrong. Iris Adrienne. Robert Watson. Paramount Pictures Incorporated. 24 December 48. LP 2183. The Paradigm Case. Vanguard Films. Incorporated. Copyright. 1947. 132 Minutes. Sound. Black and White. 35mm. Based on Robert Hitchens' novel. Summary. A melodrama in which a famous lawyer becomes infatuated with his client, a woman accused of murdering her blind husband. Glimpses of gay, luxurious living contrast with the principal setting, a courtroom in Old Bailey, London. Credits. Producer. David O. Selznick. Director. Alfred Hitchcock. Screenplay. David O. Selznick. Adaptation. Alma Ravel. Music. Franz Wachsman. Film Editor. Hal C. Kern. Cast. Gregory Peck. Ann Todd. Charles Lutton. Charles Coburn. Ethel Barrymore. Vanguard Films. Incorporated. 27 December 47. LP. 1489. The Velvet Touch. Independent Artists. Limited. Copyright. 1948. 97 Minutes. Sound. Black and White. 35mm. Summary. When Valerie Stanton and actress strikes her bullying producer a single blow with a metal statuette, he falls dead at her feet. Thereafter, Valerie's tortured conscience gives her no peace, and she confesses to the police in the moment of her greatest triumph. Credits. Producer. Frederick Bresson. Director. John Gage. Story. William Mercer. Annabel Ross. Screenplay. Leo Rostin. Adaptation. Walter Riley. Music Director. C. Bakalenekov. Music Score. Lee Harlin. Film Editor. Chandler House. Cast. Rosalind Russell. Leah Jen. Claire Trevor. Sydney Green Street. Leon Ames. Independent Artists. Limited. 4 August 48. LP. 1762. End of 10 Great Films of the Late 40s by Library of Congress Copyright Office.