The Exit of John Keeler from Frenzied Finance 55 



mediate and almost inevitable result was a period of debauch so 

 serious and prolonged that it could no longer be hidden from his 

 brother and father. The shock to Joseph Keeler, when Tom 

 stated what he had gradually learned as street gossip about the 

 directors' meeting, as we recall his pride in the business prob- 

 ity of the Keeler name, which in Toronto had become a tradi- 

 tion, may well be imagined. 



His son and heir had not only fallen into irregular personal 

 habits, but he had also marred the family escutcheon. Imme- 

 diate and prompt action was demanded; but it is unnecessary to 

 relate the painful scene between the father, who felt his personal 

 honor cruelly injured, and his son, who with nerves unstrung 

 was now forced by personal fear of prosecution for financial 

 irregularities to tell to the father the shameful nature of his 

 gambling debts, his misuse of funds and the amounts of the pay- 

 ments demanded by the company. Even at this moment the 

 superior John Keeler, the mother's favourite, only saw one mean- 

 ing in St. Paul's words, "The strength of sin is the law." Not 

 yet had come to him that other truth, "that it is the renunciation 

 of self and the giving himself for others," which was the only 

 measure of his personal reconciliation with the law of the 

 highest Master of Morals. 



Joseph Keeler did not hesitate for a moment to demand a 

 statement from the company of his son's liabilities and, when 

 received, to pay them all to the full, and to sever his son's rela- 

 tions completely with the company, feeling assured that the 

 whole question of his son's future must be considered from a 

 wholly new standpoint. Meanwhile the young fellow was quite 

 unstrung and the panacea of a change of scene must be at once 

 tried. As it was necessary in the interests of business, Tom took 

 his brother on a trip to the West Indies, and for the moment we 

 may leave the young fellows not displeased at their absence from 

 a very unpleasant situation. Joseph Keeler, Esq., during these 

 past few months, has distinctly aged; the mother, who of ne- 

 cessity learned of her son's misbehaviour, has if quieter in man- 

 ner not ceased to carry herself with an air of even greater 

 personal superiority, as if assured that the expansiveness of her 

 socially protecting wings would adequately suffice to more than 





