pure
honesty of your clerks. You can erect no barrier, no guard, no defence,
that will protect you from the results of decayed principle in them.
They are deeply involved in dangerous elements. Ease, luxury, life-long
immunity from toil, wait upon their resolution to do ill. This
resolution may be the determination of an instant, or the result of
long-continued sophistical reasoning. You cannot detect the approach to
such a resolve in your servant, and he, perhaps, can hardly detect it in
himself. But one day it is complete: he acts upon it. You are bereft of
your property; he flees, and there is the nine days' stir, and all is
over. Your greatest surety lies in your appreciation of your danger. I
have proved to you what that danger consists of; you did not know
before. Your best means of defence is to respect, to the fullest extent,
the people upon whom you depend. They are worthy of it. An instant's
reflection will show you that neither of you would be proof against a
strong temptation. For the sake of recovering a sum of money you have
compounded with felony. All of you are at this moment in breach of the
law. You have submitted without a struggle to the dominant impulse. The
principle of exact honor which you demand in me does not exist in
yourselves. But let us end this disagreeable scene. Perhaps I have
demonstrated something that you never realized. I hope you understand. I
now surrender to you the one hundred thousand dollars, which you
thought I had stolen. I had no intention of keeping it; I only pretended
to take it in order to impress you with my ideas."

Every director arose to his feet in haste. Fields placed another packet
upon the table, and, in face of the astonished board, left the
apartment.

An hour afterward he was again summoned to the parlor. He advanced to
his old position at the end of the table. It was clear that the temper
of the assembly was favorable to him.

"Mr. Fields," said the president, "your attack upon us was singular and
rapid, and I think it has made the mark that you intended it should.
Your mode of convincing us was, one might say, dramatic; and, though I
believe you might have attained your object in another way, we
acknowledge that your letter had but little effect. We now wish to
provide for you as you claim, and as you deserve. But we cannot look
upon you with quietude. It is almost impossible to see you without
shuddering. We must place you elsewhere. If you remained her