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Living Too Fast; Or, The Confessions of a Bank Officer

Chapter 2: PREFACE.
By Oliver Optic
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About This Book

A young bank officer narrates his descent from ambition to financial wrongdoing, tracing how fast living, social pressures, and repeated compromises lead to theft, cover-ups, and mounting remorse. The account follows his early employment, courtship and household establishment, growing domestic strain, risky speculations, exposure and exile, and finally a candid confession and the settling of family affairs. A steadier, more honest colleague runs through the narrative as a moral counterpoint. The tone remains corrective and penitential, emphasizing the consequences of imprudence and the difficult path toward accountability.

PREFACE.

The story contained in this volume records the experience of a bank officer, “living too fast,” in the downward career of crime. The writer is entirely willing now to believe that this career ought to have ended in the state prison; but his work is a story, and he has chosen—perhaps unhappily—to punish the defaulter in another way. Yet running through the narrative for the sake of the contrast, is the experience of a less showy, but more honest young man than the principal character, who represents the true life the young business man ought to lead. The author is not afraid that any of his young friends who may read this book will be tempted into an “irregularity” by the example of the delinquent bank officer, for it will be found that his career of crime is full of remorse and positive suffering.

Dorchester, July 1, 1876.