National Police Gazette - From the Morgue

     As the Religious Editor sat in his chair smoking his extra dry Henry Clay, and regarding with languid interest the plans of the asylum which Richard K. Fox is thinking of building for clergymen with Shattered Reputations, his eye fell upon a paragraph in a Philadelphia newspaper, which lay at his elbow. It was headed, "Another Ministerial Kleptomaniac," and related the adventures of the Rev. E.F. Hardress, D.D., who was accused of stealing valuable books from every library to which he could gain admission, for the purpose of selling them again.
     The heart of the Religious Editor thrilled with a sense of compassion as he read the item, and mentally made a note of the name of the Reverend Hardress, D.D., as a possible candidate for the reformatory institution which Mr. Fox's generosity is about to bestow upon the clerical profession.
     He had hardly resumed his inspection of the plans and his all but exhausted cigar, when the page, with diamond buttons, whose sole function it is to wait upon the Religious Department of the POLICE GAZETTE, entered with a card on the official gold salver of the institution.
     It read, incredible as it may appear, as follows:

             REV. E.F. HARDRESS, D.D.

     This was a dramatic surprise, with a vengeance, and the Religious Editor, used to a good many of them as he is, was considerably taken aback.
     Hastily locking up the magnificent rosewood library in which the unequalled collection of canonical and ecclesiastical authorities used by him is contained, and concealing under his desk the superb copy of St. Augustine, which is the handbook of the entire staff the Religious Editor gave orders for the admission of the reverend kleptomaniac.
     In response there entered the sumptuous apartment a genial, portly gentleman in a black broadcloth suit evidently fresh from the tailor's, a shirt collar of the most dazzling purity, a hat with a wide, almost Episcopal brim, and a smile of such engaging sweetness that there was no resisting it.
     "Have I the long postponed pleasure," said this agreeable person, "of meeting for the first time the gifted and exemplary gentleman who conducts the Religious Department of Mr. Richard K. Fox's altogether unparalleled and faultless POLICE GAZETTE?"
     "You have, sir," replied the Religious Editor, with a conscious blush.
     "I can hardly believe that a gentleman so young and so handsome should have sufficiently retired from the pomps and vanities of this wicked world to have taken up, in so masterly and convincing a manner, the championship of virtue and religion and the Church," was the next remark of the Reverend Hardress, D.D.
     "To what," inquired the Religious Editor, after recovering from the prostrating consequences of the compliment, "am I indebted for the pleasure of this visit?"
     The Reverend Hardress, D.D., smiled, shook out his cuffs, rolled up his eyes, went through the motion of swallowing, uttered a little cough, and spoke.
     "It may be a fact not at present known to you that through the extraordinary malice and misrepresentation of certain newspapers published in Philadelphia, my name has been associated--I may say--actually connected with a charge of theft."
     The Religious Editor said "Indeed!" with an affectation of indifference that would have done credit to an actor.
     "Yes," pursued the Rev. Hardress, D.D., "the ribald press of Philadelphia accused me of stealing certain books from libraries, and it is my desire that the statement should be corrected in the POLICE GAZETTE, which is read by every clergyman in the country."
     "Then you deny taking the books?"
     "No, I don't deny taking them. I deny stealing them."
     "Did you sell them again?"
     "I did, as a matter of course, and devoted the proceeds to the Fund for the Support of the South Western Society for the Propagation of Christianity among the Senequambrains."
     This response was made with actual pride.
     "But how can you reconcile it with Christianity and your clerical character to take books that didn't belong to you and were the property of a library?"
     "That's just it. Those books had no business in the library. They were novels and smutty story books, and others of the same sort which had no right to be there. The Society of Clerical Kleptomaniacs, to which I belong, insists that we are morally justified in purging all public and private libraries of such works. In carrying out our high and noble principles we occasionally get misunderstood and disgraced. But I am not going to rest under a cloud, on which account I prefer to leave my vindication to the POLICE GAZETTE, merely adding that if anybody wants to present me with a service of plate or a gold watch for my services to Religion, he can forward it to me, care of this office."
     If anybody really should feel like testifying thus generously to his regard for Mr. Hardress and his mission, let him send it along.