Military training is compulsory on all male citizens between the ages of twelve and twenty-five in New Zealand.
Jailbirds Sing as They Saw Through Bars.
John Wolfe, undersheriff of Wyandotte County, Kan., was seated in front of the Wyandotte County Jail the other night when he heard the oft repeated strains of “Throw Out the Life Line.” The prisoners were singing. Wolfe crept to a side window and listened.
“Throw out the life line across the dark wave,” floated out to him, and between the words came a sharp sound, as of steel scraping against steel.
Then there was a pause in the singing. The singers had come to the end of the song.
“How are you getting on, Brody?” was the next sound.
“All right, sing up, sing ‘Rock of Ages.’”
“Rock of ages, cleft for me,” the chorus began.
But before that hymn was finished, two deputies and Wolfe stepped into the cell occupied by Jess Brody. He is under fifteen years’ sentence for the murder of Nathan[Pg 62] Gill. With him were Frank Dusenberry, awaiting his second trial, charged with the murder of Jennie James, and Herbert Davidson, held on a statutory charge. In the cell were found ten steel saws and two knives. A bar had been sawed through. Once out of the cell, only a window and its soft iron bars remained between the men and the jail yard.
In the next cell was Fred Wing, charged with the murder of Mr. and Mrs. John M. Crist, his father and mother-in-law, and attempted murder of his wife. A knife was found in his cell.