The ex-editor of the “Arbeiter Zeitung” refuses the minister’s sympathy.
Not long after the death watch had been set the Rev. Dr. Bolton, pastor of the First Methodist Episcopal church, called upon the prisoners.
The reverend gentleman visited the whole four unfortunates, and his reception was almost the same in every case.
Spies received him quietly and with a smile. “I have called on you, Mr. Spies,” said the clergyman, “to help you to prepare for the awful end which is now but a few short hours away.”
Spies smiled again, but shook his head slowly. “There is no use praying for me,” he said in a meloncholymelancholy tone; “I need them not; you should reserve your prayers for those who need them.”
The two men then discussed matters of religion and social economy, and Spies waxed warm in his defense of the doctrines of socialism as it looked to him. The conversation was a long and somewhat rambling one, and finally Mr. Bolton arose, bade Spies adieu, and left him.
When he had gone the latter turned to the two deputies (Quirk and Josephson) who kept watch over him, and with a short laugh exclaimed: “Now, what can you do with men like that? One doesn’t like to insult them, and yet one finds it hard to endure their unlooked-for attentions.”
Spies then waxed talkative and aired his opinion freely to his death watch, Deputy John B. Hartke. Speaking of the anarchists’ trial, he said that its conduct and the finding were without precedence in the history of this country.