“Poverty is a good thing, but not if it's achieved through the aid of a blackmailer,” I remarked. “Try some other scheme.” “But you must know the facts,” he went on. “At twenty-one I went into business with my father out in Illinois. He got into financial difficulties and committed a crime--forged a man's name to a note, intending to pay it when it came due. Suddenly, in a panic, he went on the rocks, and all his plans failed. He was up against it, as we say. There were many extenuating circumstances--a generous man, an extravagant family, of which I had been the most extravagant member; a mind that lost its balance under a great strain. He had risked all on a throw of the dice and lost. I'll never forget the hour in which he confessed the truth to me. It's hard for a father to put on the crown of shame in the presence of a child who honors him. There's no pang in this world like that. He had braced himself for the trial, and what a trial it must have been! I have suffered some since that day; but all of it put together is nothing compared to that hour of his. In ten minutes I saw him wither into old age as he burned in the fire of his own hell. When he was done with his story I saw that he was virtually dead, although he could still breathe and see and speak and walk. As I listened a sense of personal responsibility and of great calmness and strength came on me. “I took my father's arm and went home with him and begged him not to worry. Then forthwith I went to police headquarters and took the crime on myself. My father went to paradise the next day, and I to prison. I was young and could stand it. They gave me a light sentence, on account of my age--only two years, reduced to a year and a half for good behavior. My Lord! It has been hard to tell you this. I've never told any one but you; not even my own mother knows the truth, and I wouldn't have her know it for all the world. I cleared out and went to work in California, in the mines. Suffered poverty and hardship; won success by and by; prospered, and slowly my little hell cooled down. But no man can escape from his past. By and by it overtakes him, and in time it caught me. A record is a record, and you can't wipe it out even with righteous living. It may be forgiven--yes, but there it is and there it will remain.