An Outcast

An Outcast, by F. Colburn
Adams

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Title: An Outcast or, Virtue and Faith
Author: F. Colburn Adams
Release Date: March 5, 2007 [EBook #20745]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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AN OUTCAST;

OR,
VIRTUE AND FAITH.
BY
F. COLBURN ADAMS.
"Be merciful to the erring."
NEW YORK: PUBLISHED BY M. DOOLADY, 49 WALKER
STREET. 1861.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1861,
BY M. DOOLADY,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the
Southern District of New York.

PREFACE.
When reason and conscience are a man's true guides to what he
undertakes, and he acts strictly in obedience to them, he has little to
fear from what the unthinking may say. You cannot, I hold, mistake a
man intent only on doing good. You may differ with him on the means
he calls to his aid; but having formed a distinct plan, and carried it out
in obedience to truth and right, it will be difficult to impugn the
sincerity of his motives. For myself, I care not what weapon a man
choose, so long as he wield it effectively, and in the cause of humanity
and justice. We are a sensitive nation, prone to pass great moral evils
over in silence rather than expose them boldly, or trace them to their
true sources. I am not indifferent to the duty every writer owes to
public opinion, nor the penalties he incurs in running counter to it. But
fear of public opinion, it seems to me, has been productive of much evil,
inasmuch as it prefers to let crime exist rather than engage in reforms.
Taking this view of the matter, I hold fear of public opinion to be an

evil much to be deplored. It aids in keeping out of sight that which
should be exposed to public view, and is satisfied to pass unheeded the
greatest of moral evils. Most writers touch these great moral evils with
a timidity that amounts to fear, and in describing crimes of the greatest
magnitude, do it so daintily as to divest their arguments of all force.
The public cannot reasonably be expected to apply a remedy for an evil,
unless the cause as well as the effect be exposed truthfully to its view.
It is the knowledge of their existence and the magnitude of their
influence upon society, which no false delicacy should keep out of
sight, that nerves the good and generous to action. I am aware that in
exciting this action, great care should be taken lest the young and
weak-minded become fascinated with the gilding of the machinery
called to the writer's aid. It is urged by many good people, who take
somewhat narrow views of this subject, that in dealing with the
mysteries of crime vice should only be described as an ugly dame with
most repulsive features. I differ with those persons. It would be a
violation of the truth to paint her thus, and few would read of her in
such an unsightly dress. These persons do not, I think, take a
sufficiently clear view of the grades into which the vicious of our
community are divided, and their different modes of living. They found
their opinions solely on the moral and physical condition of the most
wretched and abject class, whose sufferings they would have us hold up
to public view, a warning to those who stand hesitating on the brink
between virtue and vice. I hold it better to expose the allurements first,
and then paint vice in her natural colors--a dame so gay and fascinating
that it is difficult not to become enamored of her. The ugly and
repulsive dame would have few followers, and no need of writers to
caution the unwary against her snares. And I cannot forget, that truth
always carries the more forcible lesson. But we must paint the road to
vice as well as the castle, if we would give effect to our warning. That
road is too frequently strewn with the brightest of flowers, the thorns
only discovering themselves when the sweetness of the flowers has
departed. I have chosen, then, to describe things as they are. You,
reader, must be the judge