At this profound question, the policeman hesitates, looks abashed, then says impressively, “The sun in the District of Columbia set at 5 o’clock January 5th, and rose at 7:28 o’clock January 6th.”
The prosecutor is triumphant. He looks expectantly at the judge.
“How do you know what time the sun rose and set on those days?” asks the judge.
“From the weather bureau,” answers the policeman.
The judge is perplexed.
“I think we should have something more official,” he says.
The prosecutor suggests that perhaps an almanac would settle the question. The judge believes it would. The government attorney disappears to find an almanac.
Breathless, the prisoners and spectators wait to hear the important verdict of the almanac. The delay is interminable. The court room is in a state of confusion. The prisoners, especially, are amused at the proceedings. It is clear their fate may hang upon a minute or two of time. An hour goes by, and still the district attorney has not returned. Another half hour! Presently he returns to read in heavy tones from the almanac. The policeman looks embarrassed. His information from the weather bureau differs from that of the almanac. His sun rose two minutes too early and continued to shine twelve minutes too long! However, it doesn’t matter. The sun shone long enough to make the defendants guilty.
The judge looks at the prisoners and announces that they are “guilty” and “shall pay a fine of $5.00 or serve five days in jail.” The Administration has learned its lesson about hunger strikes and evidently fears having to yield to another strike. And so it seeks safety in lighter sentences. The judge pleads almost piteously with them not to go to jail at all, and says that he will put them on probation if they will promise to be good and not light any more fires in the District of Columbia. The prisoners make no promise. They have been found guilty according to the almanac and they file through the little gate into the prisoners’ pen.
Somehow they did not believe that whether the sun rose at 7:26 or 7:28 was the issue which had decided whether they should be convicted or not, and it was not in protest against the almanac that they straightway entered upon a hunger strike.