IN MY CELL.
On either side of me are three murderers, and my cell has a murderer’s lock. My bed is straw, with a blanket. I slept well last night, and had a good breakfast this morning, which my keeper kindly procured for me, and who has extended the kindness of a brother towards me, in obtaining every thing I desired for my comfort, and in permitting my friends to visit me. I have read all the daily papers; and to Horace Greeley, Doctor Frank Tuthill of the Times, and to James and Erastus Brooks, for their genial sympathy, I express my cordial gratitude. The Courier & Enquirer is silent, and that is preferable to denunciation, in my shackles and dungeon gloom. Bennett lashes me with the stings of a scorpion, who has fattened on libel and obscenity, and blasphemy, and black mail, from the dawn of his infamous editorial career. In his aged visions he often beholds the poor creatures whom his defamation hurled into premature graves. Halleck, of the Journal of Commerce, is brief but bitter in his comments on my alleged lunacy. The Daily News I have not seen, but I learn that its anathema of me is terrible, and has a bulletin against me written in letters of blood. Its former editor, Mr. Auld, is the Mayor’s Clerk, which accounts for the severe comments of the News. But the article in the Sun grieved me more than all the phillippics of my editorial adversaries. The Sun has clung to me for a dozen years, and to have it desert me now, is like the fatal stab of Brutus at Caesar. But I will forgive Moses S. Beach and John Vance of the Sun for their deep and unexpected gashes in my heart. Let all my friends be cheerful, when I inform them that neither sighs nor tears have passed from my lips or eyes, and that I only grieve at the official stabs at the liberty of speech and of the press, which the people will be sure to avenge, and soon consign the Grand Jury Inquisitions to the Spanish despots, and all their advocates to an ignominious destiny.
STEPHEN H. BRANCH.