Penton gave out interview after interview. And, to his credit let it be said, though he revelled in the notice accorded him, he also effected two serious results from what had begun as almost a practical joke ... he started a fight on the absurd Blue Laws by focusing publicity on them ... and he exposed the bad prison conditions his unknown fellow prisoners lived under, who had not gone to the workhouse in a jocular mood because of resurrected Blue Laws.
Jones was willing to let the matter rest, as well as were his other opponents ... but Baxter kept the fight going as long as he could. He was accused of loving notoriety. His attitude toward it was mixed. He did love notoriety ... he enjoyed every clipping about himself with infinite gusto. But he also used publicity as a lever to get things done with, that would otherwise never have been noticed. The others were willing to consider what had happened to them, as a private affair. Penton gracelessly used that, and every private adventure for propaganda—turned it sincerely in the way he thought it might benefit people....
He gave the papers a very bad poem—The Prison Night. I remember but one line of it—
"The convict rasped his vermin-haunted hide."
"Come, get into the group; I want the papers to tell the public about you, too," he urged me, prophetically, as I stood on the outskirts, while three camera men were focusing on him, as he stood, expectant, blandly smiling, and vain-glorious.
"Boys, I want my friend, the poet, Mr. John Gregory, in the picture, too."
"Oh, all right!" they assented indifferently, which injured my egotism. But I was too adroit to show it. I still demurred with mock modesty. Penton would have been franker.
Finally, at his urgency, they snapped us, our arms about each other's shoulders.
In the light of subsequent events, they were glad of that picture.