I saw it was up to me to square myself and go to work when I came out.
After some delay the district attorney and the trial judge agreed to amend the judgment, and a day was set for me to go into court. Mr. Older asked me to make a statement, hoping there might be something in my experience that would throw some light on the criminal problem that might help people to help criminals.
When I got into court I decided not to make this statement until after I was sentenced, because I didn’t want any one to feel that what I said was said for selfish reasons, and if I said it before I was sentenced it might appear that I was talking for leniency.
I decided I had got all the leniency that was coming to me, and very much more than I ever expected.
The judge sentenced me to one year. That was better than I had hoped for. The district attorney had suggested it probably would not be more than two years, but here the judge had cut even that in two.
As near as I can recall them, my words were as follows:
“I would like to make a statement before it is too late. I feel that this will be my last appearance in any court as a defendant, and I want to make this statement in the hope that there may be something in my experience that will prove valuable to some one, perhaps some one in authority who has to do with the instruction and correction of offenders, particularly of the younger ones.
“I would not make this statement if I ever expected to appear in court again as a defendant. As criminal as it is, I will consider it as nothing if it prove of value to any one, if my failure would cause some young man to hesitate before it is too late, before he finds himself charged with crime.
“My prison experiences began with a sentence of two years and thirty lashes in a Canadian prison. I could not see that I deserved this flogging, and it seemed when I got it that all the cruelty in the world was visited on me—all the brutality, all the violence. There was a lesson in cruelty I have never forgotten. Fortunately, I had a disposition that hardened with the flogging instead of breaking under it.
“I proved an incorrigible prisoner while there. I broke the rules many, many times in a small way—nothing violent, nothing desperate, but I would talk, laugh, whistle and sing, and that outraged the silence of the system then in vogue.