20
A soldier proved unworthy was drummed out,
An officer cashiered, a civil servant
(No matter though his piety were fervent)
Disgracefully dismissed, and through the land
Each bore for life a stigma from the brand
Whose far-heard hiss made others more averse
To take the facile step from bad to worse. 
The Ten Commandments had a meaning then,
Felt in their bones by least considerate men,
Because behind them Public Conscience stood, 30
And without wincing made their mandates good. 
But now that ‘Statesmanship’ is just a way
To dodge the primal curse and make it pay,
Since office means a kind of patent drill
To force an entrance to the Nation’s till,
And peculation something rather less
Risky than if you spelt it with an s;
Now that to steal by law is grown an art,
Whom rogues the sires, their milder sons call smart,
And ‘slightly irregular’ dilutes the shame 40
Of what had once a somewhat blunter name. 
With generous curve we draw the moral line: 
Our swindlers are permitted to resign;
Their guilt is wrapped in deferential names,
And twenty sympathize for one that blames. 
Add national disgrace to private crime,
Confront mankind with brazen front sublime,
Steal but enough, the world is un-severe,—­
Tweed is a statesman, Fisk a financier;
Invent a mine, and he—­the Lord knows what; 50
Secure, at any rate, with what you’ve got. 
The public servant who has stolen or lied,
If called on, may resign with honest pride: 
As unjust favor put him in, why doubt
Disfavor as unjust has turned him out? 
Even it indicted, what is that but fudge
To him who counted-in the elective judge? 
Whitewashed, he quits the politician’s strife
At ease in mind, with pockets filled for life;
His ‘lady’ glares with gems whose vulgar blaze 60
The poor man through his heightened taxes pays,
Himself content if one huge Kohinoor
Bulge from a shirt-front ampler than before,
But not too candid, lest it haply tend
To rouse suspicion of the People’s Friend. 
A public meeting, treated at his cost,
Resolves him back more virtue than he lost;
With character regilt he counts his gains;
What’s gone was air, the solid good remains;
For what is good, except what friend and foe 70
Seem quite unanimous in thinking so,
The stocks and bonds which, in our age of loans,
Replace the stupid pagan’s stocks and stones? 
With choker white, wherein no cynic eye
Dares see idealized a hempen tie,
At parish-meetings he conducts in prayer,
And pays for missions to be sent elsewhere;
On ’Change respected, to his friends endeared,
Add but a Sunday-school class, he’s revered,
And his too early tomb will not be dumb 80
To point a moral for our youth to come.

IN THE HALF-WAY HOUSE