I keep sifting this question over and over—why is it that men are hanged by the neck till dead?
I asked the priest and he quoted the verse about an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, yet it seems to me people sin more in the observance of this law than they would in its abrogation. It used to be said by the Jews there was a time to act for Jehovah by breaking His commandments.
There should come to me some severe punishment for the life I have taken, but it should be remedial in character rather than revengeful. Innately, I am not a criminal, and for thirty or forty years could be made to serve my race with the labour of my body and the sweat of my brain. It does not seem a good policy, nor economic, to kill a man in order to kill the evil that is in him.
Two days.
This morning, a silent, fat-faced man with inimical eyes came in and looked at me, as if appraising my weight. He dared not put his hands on me for I have yet two days.
I saw him once before, over two thousand miles from here, in a drug store in Toronto. The chemist told me this was Radcliffe and that he liked to play with children. He also said Radcliffe claimed to have adopted the profession out of purely charitable motives, there having been so many bunglings by amateur hangmen.
It is quite true what some one wrote that in waiting for the executioner to let him drop, society is revenged on the murderer.
As I sit here writing, there comes sharply to me on the frosty air the sound of hard hammering. There are two men working on my scaffold. I can tell from the recurring beats of the metal on metal.
It is appalling that the monstrous lesson these hammers are thudding out in the barracks yard has found me too late. It must always be late, for no man ever dreams that he will mount the scaffold.
No! I will not whine. I will not be a coward and gag at the gall, but, oh! I want to live so much. I want to live!