The Investment of Influence: A Study of Social Sympathy and ServiceHillis, Newell Dwight
Philosophy
The Investment of Influence: A Study of Social Sympathy and Service
Hillis, Newell Dwight
Conduct of life
Walter Scott believes in moral retribution. He tells us of a youth who
deftly split an arrow at the point where it fitted the bow-string, that
when his brother, whom he hated, should bend his bow the arrow might
split and, rebounding, pass through his eye. Now it happened that the
brother returned from the hunt without using his weapon. That night,
alarmed at a commotion without, the youth seized his bow, and, chancing
to strike upon that very arrow, was himself slain by the stratagem that
he had wickedly planned for his brother. George Eliot, too, has
dedicated her greatest volume to the study of this principle. The
orphan child, Tito, is received into the arms of an adopted father, who
lavishes upon him all his wealth. But when the youth was grown to full
strength and beauty, one night Tito left his adopted father in slavery
and fled with his gold and gems into a foreign land. Years passed by
and, with his stolen wealth, Tito bought wife, palace, position, fame.
He had sown falsehood and cruelty, and nothing seemed so unlikely as
that he would reap a similar harvest. But one day the people
discovered his falsehood and attacked Tito. A mob pursued him through
the streets, and, knowing his strength as a swimmer, the youth cast
himself into the River Arno. When Tito had swum far down the river to
the other side, and, in his exhaustion, would go ashore, he looked up,
and, lo! he discerned the gray-haired father whom he had injured
trotting along the shore side by side with the swimmer. In the old
man's eyes blazed bitter hatred, in his hand flashed a sharp knife.
What the youth had sown years before now at last he was to reap. When
increasing weakness compelled him to approach the shore he looked
beseechingly to his father for mercy, but found only justice. With a
wild and bitter cry Tito reaped his harvest. Soon the mud of that
river filled the eyes and ears of him who years before had received
defilement into his heart. What seed he had sown, that Nature gave him
as a harvest--good measure, heaped up, and shaken together.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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