Next morning I bought a revolver, for, as I had to employ the larger part of the day in making sales and working my wits in a multitude of ways to keep my ship from stranding and the crew from starving, I was often compelled to travel long into the night and required some more handy weapon than a rifle for defence against pirates.
The newspapers generally heralded my coming, often greatly magnifying my successes, and I felt that the hard times, which the country at large was suffering, made such a thing as a hold-up not only possible but imminent any night.
Having received an invitation to visit the State Prison, I set out in the forenoon to find it, and a policeman (a very proper person, by the way), guided me to that famous hostelry. Macaroni also was invited, but the affrighted animal declined to enter the prison gates. Whether he thought he saw a drove of zebras, or was repelled by a guilty conscience, I know not, but, falling back in a sitting posture, he threw his ears forward and brayed loudly.
On entering the office, the secretary rose from his chair and seized me. "Professor," he said, "you are my prisoner for an hour; come this way and I will present you to the warden."
We left the room and walked over to that official's desk.
"Mr. Warden," said the secretary, "Allow me to introduce Professor Pythagoras Pod, the illustrious donkey-traveler, who is eating his way across the continent."
"Show the gentleman to the dining-room, and give him a plate of soup," said the warden hospitably; then, squeezing my fingers, he waived me to the chief keeper of the prison. The warden noted my hesitancy in leaving, and asked if there was anything in particular he could do for me.
"Will you allow me to sit in the electric chair?" I asked.
"Ye-e-es," he replied politely, but apparently startled, "although I consider you are already having capital punishment for your asinine undertaking;" and turning to the keeper, he said, "Give him fifty thousand volts; nothing less will phase a man of his nerve." I thanked him.
With faltering step I entered the solemncholy chamber. A colored prisoner was to follow me a day later. Little he knew that he would sit in the same chair Pod sat in the previous day. The keeper said everything was in readiness for turning on the current that has the power to drift a soul from this world to another in the twinkling of an eye. The battery had been thoroughly tested,—and detested, too. In less than thirty seconds from the time an ordinary prisoner enters a door of this world he enters the door of another; but, Pod, being a man of extraordinary nerve, walked out the door he entered. When I climbed into that terrible chair, I held my breath. The keeper said it required only a certain number of volts to kill a man; that fifty thousand, such as the warden had suggested for my pleasure, would not so much as singe a hair of my head. If I survived the first shock, I would have something to boast; as it would be abusing a confidence to describe the sensations of electrocution, I must not do so.