AS CONSCIENCE PAINTS HIM.

THERE are days in everybody's life when he sits alone with Conscience. The world and its undeserved blame or praise is shut out of that silent chamber. With his truthful guest the man of rags and the man of millions, the woman of toil and the woman of ease, must hold weekly if not daily and hourly communion. At these times the picture of the real self is thrown upon the vivid background of years. Now the false-hearted or boastful or proud will see and hear admonitions that would not be brooked from preacher or friend. True character divested of conventional habiliments of conduct through which the eyes of men cannot peer, will stand bleak, ragged and forlorn. "Paint me as I am," cried Cromwell, in righteous rage when the artist began to paint out of his portrait a slight disfigurement of his face. This he did though he knew that his portrait would go down through generations and thus perpetuate his ungainly visage. Who of us can say to conscience, "Paint me as I am though the world sees and the future sees me, let not my real self be hidden!"

Their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another.

Romans 2:15.

Scanned from Fifty Great Cartoons (Chicago: The Ram's Horn Press, 1899) unpaginated. This cartoon is part of the collections of the The Cartoon Research Library of Ohio State University.