Tragic Fun.
The newspaper once reported, with all its gruesome details, an occurrence which, horrible as it is, I shall relate, briefly, for the sake of the lesson which it so forcibly teaches.
A laborer, John Douidi, was asleep, at 4:30 A. M., in front of a furnace in a Pittsburg steel foundry. A craneman spied him, and at once was seized by the thought of a huge joke. He told several other workmen of his plan, and with many chuckles they obtained a five-gallon can of benzine.
Mounting the traveling crane and moving along till he was directly over the sleeper, the brilliant joker poured the benzine upon him. Part of it splashed into the furnace, and in an instant Douidi was swathed in flames, which burned his body to a crisp and killed him immediately. The joker, as I write, is fleeing from the officers of the law.
I do not tell this story to shock you, though it is one whose horrors do not soon fade from the memory. I tell it that you may see in it the type of a certain very common kind of fun.
It is the fun that is wholly absorbed in itself, and takes no thought for consequences. It points a pistol at a timid person, and “did not know that it was loaded." It pulls chairs from under those who are about to sit down. In college initiations it brands boys and girls for life with fire and acids. It trips folks up with stretched wires. It enters into realms that are even more perilous, and purely for " the fun of it " lets loose sly innuendos and sentences of double meaning that blast one's reputation like the breath a fiery furnace.
“I didn't mean any harm. I didn't think." Thus the fool excuses himself to himself. Not thus, however, do other men excuse him; not thus is he excused by the Judge of all. For thoughtless mischief springs from thoughtless living, that supremely selfish form of life which is reckless of results if only it has its petty way. And such selfishness is a deadly sin.