Ex-convicts are often still human
enough to be averse from starvation, and even from easier forms of
self-destruction; and they yield to the temptation to steal. Like the
idiots they are, they may hope to make a big strike and get away with
it, and in some remote or foreign place, under another name, live out an
unobserved and blameless existence.
Thereupon there is rejoicing in the ranks of the secret service; armed
with their bertillons, they swoop upon their quarry and bear him away.
"May it please the Court, this man is an incorrigible; not deterred by
previous punishment, immediately upon release he plunges again into
crime; he should receive the limit!" The Court thinks so too; the limit
is imposed, and the malefactor is led out to the living death which will
end with death in reality. And now will some righteous and competent
person arise and proclaim that this man's yielding to his first
temptation to crime did NOT involve greater moral turpitude than did his
yielding to the second temptation or to the third--greater or at least
as great--and that therefore the severer sentence is justified? His
first misdeed was prompted by hunger, ignorance, drunkenness, or
cupidity; the others were the fruit of desperation itself--and how many
of you have known what desperation means?
You perceive that this story proceeds by digressions; such value as it
may have it will owe mainly to such digressions, so I will not apologize
for them.
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