COULD PATIENCE HAVE CHANGED IT?

A rough boy attended a Sunday School and made it tough for every teacher he had. Finally, after consultation with the teachers, the Superintendent led him to the door one Sunday with this curt dismissal: “There’s the street. Go, and never come back to this Sunday School!”

He never came back, but they heard from him again! He began a career of crime and bloodshed that perhaps has never been equaled in modern times. Finally, before a theater entrance one evening, his body was riddled with bullets.

In one of the Chicago papers a most unusual picture appeared – only the feet of the dead desperado showed. The caption under the picture was brief: “These are the feet of John Dillinger!” The editorial comment was heartsearching: “Who knows where these feet might have gone if someone had guided them aright?”

[Reproduced with permission from Encylopedia of 7700 Illustrations, by Paul Lee Tan, Assurance Publishers, Rockville, MD, 1984. #6254]

[Editor’s note: John Dillinger (1902-34) was a notorious American bank robber who organized a gang and terrorized the Midwest in 1933. He escaped jail twice, and was held responsible for 16 killings. He was declared “public enemy number one” before he was shot and killed in July 1934 on a Chicago street by FBI agents.]

This material is published by the Faith Committee of the Character Council of Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. Reproduction and Adaptation is encouraged.