IN the year 1840 an immigrant from Europe was landed in New York City. He obtained clerical employment with a trader there, of whom it may be said, as the poet piously says of Abou Ben Adhem, "May his tribe increase!" for he was a scrupulously honest man and merchant. At that period the United States was flooded with counterfeit money, and the Government had not yet evolved its present effective methods of protection from this form of knavery; consequently the lamentable practice prevailed among the unthinking, when victimized by the acceptance of counterfeit money, of passing it off as sound money upon others equally unalert as themselves. The dishonesty of this course was either ignored, or excused by the plea that everybody else did the same thing. This employer, however, did not permit himself to be hoodwinked by specious pleading of any sort. He kept a large blank book, into which he pasted securely every counterfeit bill with which he was victimized.
The immigrant clerk was amazed when he first saw this book and learned of the unusual practice of his employer. The counterfeit bills in the book apparently aggregated a large sum of money. "How can you afford to lose all that money?" exclaimed the wondering clerk. "It is not money, John," replied his employer; "but even if it were, I could better afford to lose it all than to be dishonest." All his life long the clerk would recount this incident to his family and friends, so impressed was he at thus meeting honesty at the threshold of the new country where he had expected to find only laxity and chicanery. Who can measure the good wrought silently and unobtrusively by such modest good men?
Since that day the clearing of the communal conscience, aided by such instances of honesty and fidelity and by the fine efficiency of the secret service, has done much to abolish counterfeit money in the United States and other civilized countries, and honesty and uprightness are no longer subjected to the same tests as in 1840. But error is continually assuming new disguises, and counterfeits still appear and endeavor to impose themselves as genuine upon the unwary. They have taken many other forms than money, and are by no means always so obvious and so readily detected. Spiritual ideas are counterfeited by mortal belief, and sometimes the counterfeit is so subtle and plausible in its assumption of meretricious virtue as "to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect."
