Then the light in the eyes softened and the hard look on the face relaxed as Tony added, slowly and impressively, “But now I see, Mr. Chairman, that I can not have my revenge without doing a great wrong to fourteen hundred other men.
“So I give it up. He can go.”
There spoke the prison spirit of the future.
THE END
Footnotes:
[1] One of the men in Auburn Prison, explaining the feelings of their inmates in chapel this Sunday morning, writes the following comment: “The men could not realize what was actually meant by this at first; and as they grasped the idea it sort of staggered them and some thought, myself among others, ‘What’s the matter? What manner of man is this?’”
[2] Mine was one of the larger cells. Many of them are only three and a half feet wide.
[3] It is perhaps needless to point out how much inaccuracy there must be in any statistics made up from records taken in such a manner. The prisoner gives such answers as he pleases. If he is found out in a lie he is punished—but how often is he found out?
[4] The writer is mistaken, for as a matter of fact the state was not so generous; the handkerchief was my own—as was also my toothbrush.—T. M. O.