Kindly do not think it my purpose to coin words or phrases for the use or misuse of posterity, but I would, in all sincerity, warn the bankers of the land against a microbe which I will call “callousitis.” Keep it out of your business. See to it that bank employees be not infected with it. It is germinated in the rush of financial affairs--is given life through the constant handling of immense sums of money. Afflicted by the “callousitis,” the bank employee, who once realized a keen responsibility in handling one dollar of another’s money intrusted to his care, feels no added responsibility when he, through promotion perhaps, is called upon to manipulate a million dollars. In other words, he becomes callous to the fact that large sums of money are passing through his hands. As the laborer’s palms become callous through constant contact with rough surfaces, so the brain of a bank employee arrives at a stage of indifference through his daily mental contact with millions of dollars. The wood-chopper’s hands, once blistered with the friction of the axe helve, at last became hardened to the work and there was no more tenderness. Thereafter he wielded the axe industriously, without pain to his hands. The bank employee’s brain was awed at the first handling of a million dollars, but that sensation gave place to indifference, when in time he came to handle ten times a million dollars. And so he became, eventually, a victim of “callousitis.” Thus afflicted, the victim may or may not be aware of it, but in the majority of cases he is, and such a victim is very prone to be lax in business affairs, and such laxity eventually leads to disaster when thieves abound. Transcriber’s Notes Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed. Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained. Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained; occurrences of inconsistent hyphenation have not been changed. Text contains many occurrences of dialect and non-standard contractions. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of From Boniface to Bank Burglar, by George M. White and (Alias) George Bliss