Roundabout Papers - Penn State University

Roundabout PapersI know woe and punishment would fall upon me were Ito lay my hand on the smallest pippin. So be it. A manwho has this precious self-knowledge will surely keephis hands from picking and stealing, and his feet uponthe paths of virtue.I will assume, my benevolent friend and present reader,that you yourself are virtuous, not from a fear of punishment,but from a sheer love of good: but us you andI walk through life, consider what hundreds of thousandsof rascals we must have met, who have not beenfound out at all. In high places and low, in Clubs and on‘Change, at church or the balls and routs of the nobilityand gentry, how dreadful it is for benevolent beingslike you and me to have to think these undiscoveredthough not unsuspected scoundrels are swarming! Whatis the difference between you and a galley-slave? Isyonder poor wretch at the hulks not a man and a brothertoo? Have you ever forged, my dear sir? Have you evercheated your neighbor? Have you ever ridden toHounslow Heath and robbed the mail? Have you everentered a first-class railway carriage, where an old gentlemansat alone in a sweet sleep, daintily murdered him,taken his pocket-book, and got out at the next station?You know that this circumstance occurred in France afew months since. If we have travelled in France thisautumn we may have met the ingenious gentleman whoperpetrated this daring and successful coup. We mayhave found him a well-informed and agreeable man. Ihave been acquainted with two or three gentlemen whohave been discovered after—after the performance ofillegal actions. What? That agreeable rattling fellow wemet was the celebrated Mr. John Sheppard? Was thatamiable quiet gentleman in spectacles the well-knownMr. Fauntleroy? In Hazlitt’s admirable paper, “Going toa Fight,” he describes a dashing sporting fellow whowas in the coach, and who was no less a man than theeminent destroyer of Mr. William Weare. Don’t tell methat you would not like to have met (out of business)Captain Sheppard, the Reverend Doctor Dodd, or othersrendered famous by their actions and misfortunes, bytheir lives and their deaths. They are the subjects ofballads, the heroes of romance. A friend of mine had256