866 THE PRINCIPLES OF PERSONAL INTEGRITY
A strange feeling swept over me. Would I have my enemies jailed,
or would I take advantage of this opportunity to extend them mercy,
thereby proving myself to be made of different material?
Then and there was laid, in my heart, the foundation upon which
the sixteenth lesson of this course is built, for I made up my mind to
permit my enemies to go free-as free as they could be made by my
having extended them mercy and forgiveness.
But long before my decision had been reached, the hand of Fate
had begun to deal roughly with these misguided men who had tried,
in vain, to destroy me. Time, the master worker to which we must
all submit sooner or later, had already been at work on my former
associates and it had dealt with them less mercifully than I had done.
One of them was later sentenced to a long term in the penitentiary,
for another crime that he had committed against some other person,
and the other one had meanwhile been reduced to poverty.
We can circumvent the laws in the statute books, but we can never
circumvent the law of compensation.
The judgment that I obtained against these men stands on the
records of the Superior Court of Chicago as silent evidence of vin-
dication of my character. But it serves me in a more important way
than that-it serves as a reminder that I could forgive enemies who
had tried to destroy me, and for this reason, instead of destroying my
character, I suspect that the incident served to strengthen it.
Being arrested seemed, at the time, a terrible disgrace, even though
the charge was false. It was not a pleasant experience, and I would not
wish to go through a similar experience again, but I must admit that it
was worth all the grief it cost me, because it gave me the opportunity
to find out that revenge was not a part of my makeup.
If you carefully analyze the events described in this lesson, you can
see how this entire course has been evolved from these experiences.
Each temporary defeat left its mark on my heart and provided some
part of the material of which this course has been built.