Life — March 18, 1897 — page 9: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ally for the profitable transaction of business, considering on the one hand how prone they are to forget their obligations as creatures of the public in their greed for profit, and on the other how lamentably they are har- ried by legislatures, boards and coun- cils, and by bosses small and great, who, under pretense of compelling them to the proper performance of their duties, keep them under con- stant tribute, and drive them to be- come, in self-defence, a source of direful and demoralizing cor- ruption. Let those of us who live in the State of New York acknowledge it as a sin in which, however unwillingly, we share, that the rulers in our State who are most powerful and most highly honored are such as honor corrupt men, Sea-horse: YOU HAVE THE LARGEST MOUTH I HAVE The Other; correct! “LIFE: and are either themselves smirched with dishonesty, or owe their ad- vancement toa carefully-matured sys- tem which rests on the perversion of power and the misuse of opportunity. If we have leisure to repent of more things, there are plenty that may engage us: our jingoes; our too general inability to get our ablest 211 and most upright men into public office; the danger to which we expose ourselves by sending so many unfit men to Congress, and especially to the Senate; our too great haste to be rich; our defective courtesy as a people; our lazy indifference to our rights, and still greater indifference to our duties. Peccavimus! peccavinus, O Dom- ine We are miserable sinners without a doubt, and not even the knowledge that all our contempo- raries now on earth are sinners also should excuse us from reckoning up our short- comings, and_ struggling after such amendment as a sincere contrition and \ diligent effort may en- able us to attain. E. Martin, VER Si I'M THE CHAMPION SUBMARIN E PUGILIST.