THE JUSTICE OF MEN


The arrest of Berry Hamilton on the charge preferred by his employer was
the cause of unusual commotion in the town. Both the accuser and the
accused were well known to the citizens, white and black,--Maurice
Oakley as a solid man of business, and Berry as an honest, sensible
negro, and the pink of good servants. The evening papers had a full
story of the crime, which closed by saying that the prisoner had amassed
a considerable sum of money, it was very likely from a long series of
smaller peculations.

It seems a strange irony upon the force of right living, that this man,
who had never been arrested before, who had never even been suspected of
wrong-doing, should find so few who even at the first telling doubted
the story of his guilt. Many people began to remember things that had
looked particularly suspicious in his dealings. Some others said, "I did
n't think it of him." There were only a few who dared to say, "I don't
believe it of him."

The first act of his lodge, "The Tribe of Benjamin," whose treasurer he
was, was to have his accounts audited, when they should have been
visiting him with comfort, and they seemed personally grieved when his
books were found to be straight. The A. M. E. church, of which he had
been an honest and active member, hastened to disavow sympathy with him,
and to purge itself of contamination by turning him out. His friends
were afraid to visit him and were silent when his enemies gloated. On
every side one might have asked, Where is charity? and gone away empty.