"As the trustee, to whom dying men, with their last breath, intrusted the heritage of the orphan, you have in every case, plundered the orphan out of bread, out of education, and cast him ignorant and helpless upon the world. How many orphans, given into your charge, with their heritage, now rot in the grave, or in the felon's dungeon? Your history is written in their blood. Do you,--" the voice of the judge sank low,--"do you remember one orphan, whom, when a little child, her father gave to your care, and whom, when grown to young womanhood, you robbed of her heritage? Do you remember the day on which she died, the tenant of a brothel?" Once more the judge was silent, but Israel had no word of reply. As for the twelve listeners, they manifested their attention by an ominous murmur. "As the landlord, it has not been your object to provide the poor with comfortable homes, in exchange for their hard-earned rent-money, but to pack as many human beings as you might, within the smallest compass of brick and mortar,--to herd creatures made in the image of the living God, in narrow rooms, dark courts, and pestilential alleys, as never beasts were herded,--and thus you have sowed death, you have bred the fever, the small-pox, the cholera,--but _you have made money_." Seated in the shadow of the velvet canopy, from which his voice resounded, the judge again was silent. Israel, dropping his eyes, imitated the silence of the judge. The murmur of the twelve listeners was now accompanied by the sound of their clubs grating against the floor. "It is as a banker, however, that your appetite for money, made out of human blood, takes its intensest form of baseness. You started with a Savings Fund, chartered by a well-paid legislature, who transformed you into a president and board of directors, and divesting you of all responsibility, as a man, authorized you to coin money out of the blind confidence of the poor. Hard-working men, servant-girls, needle-women, and others of the poor, who gain their pittance by labor that never knows rest, until it sleeps in the grave, deposited that pittance in your hands. A pittance, mark you, not so remarkable for its amount, as for the fact, that it might, in some future hour, become bread to the starving, warmth to the freezing, home to the homeless. And how did you deal with the sacred trust? The earnings of the poor filled the coffers of your Savings Fund, until they counted over a hundred thousand dollars, and then, on the eve of a dreary winter, the Savings Fund _failed_. That was all. _You_ did not _fail_; oh, no; but the Savings Fund Corporation (into which a pliant legislature had transformed you),--it _failed_. And while you pocketed the hundred thousand dollars, you left the poor, who had trusted you, to starve, or beg, or die, as pleased them." Israel shaded his eyes with his hands; he seemed buried in profound thought.