self-assertive, unabashed "No!" which means business and will brook no retreat. The lights are flickering out in a hundred country churches tonight while I speak, and home through the shadows of Sunday night, mother and father are walking. They have been thinking of their boy, all through the service. As they trudge home arm in arm, their voices speak softly. "Wonder where he is tonight?" "O, he's all right, mother. In church perhaps." 66 Yes, but I cannot help wondering and praying. O God, when temptations greet our boy, give him courage to say No!" You're starting, my boy, on life's journey, You'll meet with a thousand temptations, This world is a stage of excitement, In courage alone lies your safety As streams from a rivulet flow, But if you'd be true to your manhood, It is the hardest word in the language. But the one most worth learning to say. It takes more than a feeble effort of tractable lips. It demands the aroused might of a determined will matched with the purpose of an inspiring God. And its consequences are more than the utterance of a syllable. They are echoing in the eternal galleries of righteousness. "No!" IX THE MEANEST FRAUD IN THE WORLD BRAVE hearts only for this venture. We shall make our way through the gallery of the world's great frauds. We are in search of the greatest fraud of all. Through tragic scenes of dull credulity and malicious ingenuity we shall go. Only stout hearts can qualify for this expedition. For only a vital faith can survive the shock of this discovery. How cruelly some men can lie! And how easily other men will believe their lies! There are classic frauds which lift themselves by their sheer audacity above the mists of the centuries. The eighteenth century presents perhaps the most audacious pair of deceptions. Take one glance at Cagliostro, the most daring crook of history, who gained his learning in a monastery before he was expelled, who manufactured noble titles for himself and his clever young wife, and traveled Europe in regal state for years, made enormously wealthy by dupes who purchased at colossal prices his "elixir for immortal youth," or his "device for abolishing the stain of original sin," or his "secrets of Freemasonry " which he claimed to have derived from Egyptian documents, and which included among other things an explanation of an absolutely certain method for raising the dead. Turn from this bandit of braggadocio, to that far more subtle and clever crook, John Law, whose vision of fraudulent possibilities encompassed all the world, and whose downfall rocked Europe upon her none too stable foundations, almost accomplishing the utter wreck of modern civilization. Law began by assuming financial responsibility for the entire development of the newly discovered Mississippi Valley. His scheme victimized practically every home, rich and poor, on the continent of Europe. His sums became so great and his schemes so stupendous that soon he assumed control of the colonial trade of France in its entirety; he was invited to direct the financial program of the empire; and himself took charge of the issuance of French currency. Then a circumstance pricked the Mississippi Bubble, and Law's whole grandiose empire of pretension collapsed, while he blithely fled with all of the remnants, leaving thousands of households penniless and the whole financial structure of his day tottering at the magnitude of his ruin. "What fools those mortals were!" we say. But we forget that in our own day we can witness as terrible examples of fiendish greed and foolish credulity. A few years ago, a Dr. Frederick Cook announced that he had discovered the north pole. For a few hours he rode upon the wave of popular acclaim, and wore the garlands of admiring nations. Then his credentials were examined, his pseudo-scientific pretensions were submitted to calculation, and it was announced that he was a consummate liar who had deceived the world with one of the cleverest hoaxes in the history of duplicity. Did this experience discourage him? Not for many months. Last year he appeared as one of the outstanding promoters of wildcat oil-stock gambling in the West. Under his own name, flaunting the record of his north pole experience with impudent rascality, he invited thousands of innocent, hard working people to entrust their money to him for unprotected speculation. And he got their money! By the hundreds of thousands of dollars! Another oil company found a worthless shuffling old man by the name of Robert Lee drifting about in a middle western town, bought from him the right to use his name, granted him the fictitious title of General, and started out in business to manage the oil promotion affairs of General Robert Lee." Despite the fact that the real General Robert Lee had died in 1870, largely on the attractive fiction of that honored name, thousands of dollars poured into the central office of the company and were wasted by the malevolent schemers. 66 Fifteen thousand twelve-cent stamps were purchased by one company in one post-office in Texas to carry that many special delivery letters, made up in the form of fake telegrams to that many innocent men and women in every part of the United States, urging them to immediate response in cash for an oil-gamble scheme. The Post-office Department, which took over the mail received in response, handled money for months addressed to these fiendish manipulators. The more you study these schemes, the more surely you are convinced that frauds are the results of amazing, cruel duplicity on the part of the exploiters, and of gullible softness on the part of the investors. Neither one of these discoveries adds to our confidence in what we call human nature. But we have not yet come to the greatest fraud of all. Stock speculations may have touched many of you, bogus bonds may be reposing in many a strong box; but there is one fraud which has impoverished every person before |