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A MAGNIFICENT REVENGE

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 6, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 32.

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A MAGNIFICENT REVENGE.

By Brotherhood Star

A FEW years ago, while Robert Stewart was governor of Missouri, a steamboat man was brought in from the penitentiary as an applicant for pardon. He was a large, powerful fellow, and when the governor looked at him he seemed strangely affected. He scrutinized him long and closely. Finally he signed the document that restored the prisoner to liberty.
Before he handed it to him he said, "You will commit some other crime, and be in the penitentiary again, I fear."
The man solemnly promised that he would not. The governor looked doubtful, mused a few minutes, and said:—
"You will go back on the river and be a mate again, I suppose?"
The man replied that he would.
"Well, I want you to promise me one thing," resumed the governor. "I want you to pledge your word that when you are mate again you will never take a billet of wood in your hand and drive a sick boy out of a bunk to help you load your boat on a stormy night." The steamboat man said he would not, and inquired what the governor meant by exacting of him such a promise.
The governor replied: "Because, some day, that boy may become a governor, and you may want him to pardon you for a crime. One dark stormy night many years ago, you stopped your boat on the Mississippi River to take on a load of wood. There was a boy on board who was working his passage from New Orleans to St. Louis, but he was very sick of fever and was lying in a bunk. You had plenty of men to do the work, but you went to that boy with a stick of wood in your hand and drove him with blows and curses out into the wretched night, and kept him toiling like a slave until the load was completed. I was that boy. Here is your pardon. Never again be guilty of such brutality."
The man, cowering and hiding his face, went out without a word.
What a noble revenge that was, and what a lesson to a bully!—Brotherhood Star.