Carnival of Crime

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 17, 1865

Carnival of Crime.

It is indeed sickening to read the accounts of crime recorded in every newspaper we pick up. Can any one mistake the days in which we live? Is not wickedness abounding more than ever before? Yes, truly; we are nearing the time equalled only by Sodom and Gomorrah, and the world before the flood. Yesterday's Detroit paper contains the following, which speaks volumes:

"Last night chronicled at least half a dozen attempts at robbery and burglary, some of which were successful; and in more than one locality during the evening, dark-browed, guilty-looking wretches, who started at the approach of a footstep, and hid themselves in the shade of neighboring buildings, or glided into dark and noisome alleys, could be seen by any observing eye, as they prowled here and there in search of a place or opportunity to do their foul work. On Michigan avenue, the doors of the Bresler block were tried by two suspicious characters, who were lurking about the premises before nine o'clock in the evening, and who, observing that they were watched, made off as fast as possible. The city and country are full of these outlaws; the by-ways are haunted with them, and it behooves every householder to double-bar and bolt his doors, fasten his windows with lock and shutter, sleep like Argus, with one eye open, and arm himself, like old Commodore Barney, of the first Potomac flotilla, with a pistol in each hand and a cutlass between his knees, to defend his house and goods from their prowling encroachments. Society is becoming overstocked with this class of persons, who have got it into their heads that the world owes them a living, when in fact it owes them nothing but a fathom of rope and as many feet of the earth which ought to spurn them, to cover them up with."