Читать книгу My Wayward Pardner; or, My Trials with Josiah, America, the Widow Bump, and Etcetery онлайн

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We are blind creeters, the fur-seein’est of us; weak creeters, when we think we are the strong-mindedest. Now, when we hear of a crime, it is easy to say that the one who committed that wrong stepped flat off from goodness into sin, and should be hung. It is so awful easy and sort o’ satisfactory to condemn other folks’es faults that we don’t stop to think that it may be that evil was fell into through the weakness and blindness of a mistake. Jest as folks fall down suller lots of times a gropin’ round in the dark tryin’ to find the outside door, and can’t. Doin’ their best to get out where it is lighter, out into the free air of Heaven, and first they know, entirely unbeknown to them, they open the wrong door, and there they are down suller, dark as pitch, and mebby with a sore and broken head.

And if a wrong is done wilfully, with a purpose, it is easy to think of nothin’ but the wrong, and not give a thought to what influences stood behind that soul, a pushin’ it off into sin. Early influences, sinful teachin’s drunk down eagerly before the mind could seperate the evil from the good. Criminal inheritances of depraved tastes, and wayward and distorted intellect, wretched, depressing surroundings, lack of all comfort, hope, faith in God or man, ignorance, blind despair, all a standin’ behind that soul pushin’ it forward into a crime. And then when we read of some noble, splendid act of generosity, our souls burn within us, and it is easy to say, the one who did that glorious deed should be throned and crowned with honor—not thinkin’ how, mebby unbeknown to us, that act was the costly and glitterin’ varnish coverin’ up a whited sepulchre. That deed was restin’ on self-seekin’, ambitious littleness.