In the year 1877 two young men stood up with the rest of their
class at Bowdoin University to receive diplomas. One was called
Bob, the other was called Charlie. They were Maine boys, both of
them, and of about the same age. Within the last few weeks those
two boys, now grown into grizzled men in the early fifties, have
been conspicuous in the news of the day.
One of them, Bob, went in for fame, and after devoting the best
years of his life to wrestling with arctic storms, throwing dice
with death, enduring the very limits of privation and hardship,
more than once glad to chew tanned leather or bite into rancid
blubber, he emerged the other day with a story of discovery
which thrilled the whole world, and will send his name, Robert
E. Peary, sounding down the ages to the end of time.
The other boy, Charlie, went in for fortune. He had already
developed the knack of the money-maker, and he did not tie up
his talent in a napkin. He sold candy. He sold ice. He sold
lumber. He acquired banks and trust companies and juggled stocks
and bonds until he amassed a fortune of twenty millions. Then
something happened. On the day after New-year’s day of this
year (1910), his money gone, his reputation destroyed, his
liberty lost, he took the 10:43 train on the Southern Limited,
escorted by a United States marshal and two deputies, on the
way to the Federal prison at Atlanta, Ga., to which he had been
sentenced for a term of fifteen years. Every legal device to
save him had been tried, and had failed, and Charles Wyman Morse
has now become convict Number 2814--that is all.--_Current
Literature._
(320)