Yet she fought.
It had been all too easy for the infuriated Kedzie Dyckman to
entangle Charity in the machinery. Kedzie was a little terrified
at the consequences of her own act, though she would have said that
she did it in self-defense and to punish an outrage upon her rights.
But when persons set out to punish other persons, it is not often
that their own hands are altogether innocent.
If the Christly edict, "Let him that is without sin cast the first
stone," had been followed out there would never have been another
stone cast. And one might ask if the world would have been, or could
have been, the worse for that abstention. For, whatever else may be
true, the venerable practices of justice have been false and futile.
And now, nearly two thousand years later, after two thousand years
more of heartbreaking history, an increasing few are asking bitterly
if punishment has ever paid.
Vaguely imagining on one side the infinite misery and ugliness
of the dungeons and tortures, the disgraces and executions of
the ages with their counter-punishment on the inquisitors and the
executioners, and setting against them that uninterrupted stream of
deeds we call crimes, what is the picture but a ghastly vanity--an
eternal process of trying to dam the floods of old Nile by flinging
in forever poor wretch after poor wretch to drown unredeemed and
unavailing?
Charity was the latest sacrifice. If she had been guilty of loving
too wildly well, or of drifting unconsciously into a situation where
opportunity made temptation irresistible, there would be a certain
reaction to pity after she had been definitely condemned.
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