Читать книгу Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the World - Clifton R. Wooldridge - Страница 48

This man has operated in at least four sections of this country, has served a term in state's prison for alienating a wife's affections along with the husband's money, has been driven out of two towns by angry husbands; but now he is again in possession of a following which believes implicitly that through him, and through him only, is it possible to obtain eternal salvation.

In appearance this man is a human shark, long-faced, thin of jaw and nose, and with a mouth that is nothing but a straight line cut in the face. In repose he might be taken for a shyster lawyer, but when he begins to speak and the artificial frenzy is burning in him it is easy enough to see why impressionable women may be drawn to him. Even a strong-willed man, observing his actions and the degree of enthusiasm in him, is apt to feel that he can be nothing other than sincere in his beliefs. But, if he is sincere, his sincerity runs only towards making of his beliefs a good business proposition, and avarice is one of his strongest points.

The persistency with which women will take up and practice the cruelest of religious customs is evidenced by the manner in which a Chicago girl tortured and starved herself to death in an effort to obtain salvation through the mortification of the flesh. She was not of an ignorant type, either, as might be imagined, but fairly well educated and extremely intelligent, with running to intellectuality. But the thrall of a new religion got her in its power, and, believing she was sinful, she strove to cast out her sins and died in the attempt.

It is seldom that pernicious practices of religion fakers carry persons to this extreme, but deranged mentalities, wrecked homes and depleted pocketbooks are of such frequent occurrence as to merit a wholesale crusade against this type of fraud, even without raising the question of religious scruples.