were evil, but because they were unwise, and as unfit for their work as
he was. "Pay what thou owest." That is right, even when thou owest it
by the error of others, and even when thou owest it to a bank, which had
not lent it from love of thee, but in the hard line of business and thy
need.

Clemens's behavior in this matter redounded to his glory among the
nations of the whole earth, and especially in this nation, so wrapped in
commerce and so little used to honor among its many thieves. He had
behaved like Walter Scott, as millions rejoiced to know, who had not
known how Walter Scott had behaved till they knew it was like Clemens. No
doubt it will be put to his credit in the books of the Recording Angel,
but what the Judge of all the Earth will say of it at the Last Day there
is no telling. I should not be surprised if He accounted it of less
merit than some other things that Clemens did and was: less than his
abhorrence of the Spanish War, and the destruction of the South-African
republics, and our deceit of the Filipinos, and his hate of slavery, and
his payment of his portion of our race's debt to the race of the colored
student whom he saw through college, and his support of a poor artist for
three years in Paris, and his loan of opportunity to the youth who became
the most brilliant of our actor-dramatists, and his eager pardon of the
thoughtless girl who was near paying the penalty of her impertinence with
the loss of her place, and his remembering that the insolent brakeman got
so few dollars a month, and his sympathy for working-men standing up to
money in their Unions, and even his pity for the wounded bird throbbing
out its little life on the grass for the pleasure of the cruel fool who
shot it. These and the thousand other charities and beneficences in
which he abounded, openly or secretly, may avail him more than the
discharge of his firm's liabilities with the Judge of all the Earth, who
surely will do right, but whose measures and criterions no man knows, and