Let me ask you to seek seclusion in your own unhappy reflection. Sit down quietly and let conscience penetrate the deepest recesses of your heart, and you will right this terrible wrong. You act as though God was asleep, and his all-merciful care was dormant.
You say you do not wish any further correspondence with me. Are you so cruel after exchanging so many testimonials of affection with me during the past six years? There is a letter in the office, addressed “Dear Wife” to you. There is a little boy above us, looking down on us both.
You have clung to me in many trials of adversity, and have proved to be a brave, sweet little woman. I have neglected God for you, and it may be better that this has happened now, for the day might come when I would be dependent on you, and you cast me into the poor house.
When I go out of this prison I shall begin a new life; as the woodsman in the forest hews out a new home. Where, I do not know, but will trust to the kind hand of Providence to direct me. You conclude your letter by saying you wish me “good luck and a speedy release.” I thank you for that. You know I am overpowered, I surrender. I am not a William Tell, and feel that any attempt to keep your affections would be ineffectual.
I have had many trials. I have dwelt in the mansion of sorrow and pain. I have associated with the neglected and forsaken here, and have listened to the sad stories of those whom their wives have forsaken, with tears in my eyes. But the husbands of these wives were guilty.
But that my own dear wife, whom I love so devotedly, should forsake me in the hour of trouble, when she knows I am innocent, is a heaviness of sorrow of which there can be no avoidance,—the severity of a mental torture from which there can be no escape. It forms a complication of horrors that will impel me to a convict’s grave.
Since you have turned from this scene of distress, it has shown me that interest alone moves you, since by your actions you punish misfortune as crime, and raise crime to a level with misfortune. Have you forgotten the last night in the jail at Brownstown, where you said you would never forsake me, knowing that I was not guilty? Did you not tell Mrs. Withy you would never forsake me? No, never; that I had been so good to you? And so many letters I have received to the same effect. Your letter before the last one addresses me as “Dear husband.” * * * Quite a change in so short a time.
Let us hope that mamma, Georgie and papa may some time occupy one of those beautiful mansions prepared by the Friend of sinners, which will prove as happy as the one at 1405 Olive Street, four years ago the 29th of last April, when our child was born. O, wife; if you could only stand at the foot of my old straw bed and hear my cries, you would weep for me.
Did we then think that this would ever happen? No, no, no. If I had thought so, you would have heard the cries and groans, and witnessed the streaming tears, and more than mortal anguish of a broken-hearted husband, who is now in the penitentiary, innocent, yet forsaken by the mother of his child, my wife.
The fatal blow falls hard upon me. In this hour of my deepest woe, weakness seems to have seized upon me for my total destruction. Every poisoned shaft, which malice could invent, has been hurled against me.