"What is the burden of your document?"
Dickon Harvey removed a paper from his "budge."
"A seriatim schedule of the reforms which we respectfully ask to be enacted."
"Take the paper to your office," whispered Longlegs to the warden, but the obstinate official only flushed angrily at his presumption.
"I will hear what you have to say," he said, weakly clutching at this last hope of favor among the convicts. Dickon Harvey proceeded to read his production.
"To the Warden of Georgetown State Prison: We, the undersigned, being inmates of your institution and the chief sufferers by its irregularities of government, hereby offer and present the following schedule of reforms which we regard as necessary——"
"Necessary," emphasized the Right Spur, and nearly 500 heads wagged approval.
"Necessary to the quiet and welfare of the community.
"1. That the grotesque, degrading, uncomfortable and unhealthful striped garb which we are at present condemned to wear be exchanged for a uniform of gray woolen goods.
"2. That the practice of shaving, designed to destroy our self-respect and efface all evidences of our former and better identity, be abolished, and each man allowed free choice in the matter of his personal appearance, which concerns himself so deeply and nobody else at all.
"3. That intervals of conversation be allowed among the whist parties. (This was the local name of the shop-gang, who, under the existing system, were compelled to work amid a silence as absolute as that of a Trappist monastery.)
"4. That the dunce-cap rule be suspended and workers who happen to be unemployed for a few moments be allowed to sit at their benches instead of standing face to the wall.
"5. That the cat-o'-nine-tails and thumb-screw be abolished and punishment limited to the block or extension of sentence, and that the rules for shortening of sentence on account of good behavior be made more liberal.
"6. That the tobacco rations and weekly prune stew be restored.
"7. That the cells be lighted until 9 o'clock with a gas-jet in each, and reading or writing allowed.
"8. That Ezra C. Hawkins, Kenneth Douglas, Murtagh McMorrow and Johann Koerber be discharged for inordinate and unnecessary severity and cruelty."
This article was greeted with a swell of cheers and taunts which Tapp seemed impotent to quell.
"9. That favoritism and privilege shall be a thing unknown."