Frequently we meet people who possess a morbid propensity to commit crime. On some things they are perfectly rational, on others they are incapable of acting correctly. You can safely say, they are mildly insane! Here is a lady on the street with a chatelaine bag dangling around her waist. The thief presumes that it contains money and other valuables. The owner is unconsciously tempting a poor weakling. From our standpoint this is a dangerous expedient. By and by there comes along a poor, hungry, homeless, penniless creature. He possesses criminal instincts. He sees the pocket-book in the lady’s possession. It is a well known fact that the sight of money awakens the worst passions of men. An evil impulse takes possession of him. He seizes the money and runs away. This is not an exceptional case. The criminal annals of New York can furnish hundreds of such cases, where men were seized with an impulse to commit a crime that sent them to prison for many years. We knew personally the cases of two young men, bank messengers, who were bonded in a surety company for five thousand dollars each, but had only a salary of eight dollars per week. They were entrusted with large sums of money daily, which they received in collections. Both claimed at different times, to have been seized with an evil impulse to abscond with the money, which they did. The first took $5,000 and left the city. He went to Chicago, then to a southern city. Here he considered what he had done, in the light of cold reason. He sent a dispatch to the bank, saying that he would return with the money in two days. He did so. He accounted for all he took away except the railroad fare and hotel bills, which his people made good. That young man had always borne a splendid reputation for honesty and truthfulness. When I asked him why he left the city with other people’s money, he replied, “An irresistible impulse came over me and for a time I was like a crazy man under a spell. It is all a dream to me. I cannot understand it.” The second lad had gone away with $56,000, $6,000 of which was in hard cash and the balance in bonds. He returned the bonds to the bank by a messenger. They were really useless to him. When he had spent nearly all the money he concluded to give himself up. A poor unfortunate who was sent to prison for a long term for pocket-book snatching explained his conduct by saying, “I was cold and hungry. All at once I was seized with an uncontrollable impulse to take by force what did not belong to me. It came over me like a spell.” Under ordinary circumstances, I am not inclined to take much stock in this “spell” theory. I think that in most cases, we can restrain ourselves when these impulses come over us.