But when we searched the
local papers after his release, what we found was a hearty and explicit
laudation of the prison and its officials. Had it been written by the
warden himself, it could not have been more sunny and satisfied.
Again, there was a man with us who had been sentenced for life on a
murder charge of a singularly revolting kind; he had been in confinement
seventeen years when I first knew him, but had always consistently
protested his innocence. He applied for parole, and his application was
granted. At this time he occupied a large cell containing eleven other
prisoners, of whom I was one; and he attached himself very closely to
me, and upon coming in from his work each evening, would sit beside my
cot and hold my hand and pour out his heart to me in lamentations,
asseverations of his innocence, picturings of the horrors of his long
confinement, forecastings of what he meant to do when he was freed--to
address audiences from the pulpit and rostrum, and convince the world of
the horrors of penal imprisonment. He was deeply religious, and had the
moral courage to kneel down, before all the men in the cell, and spend
five minutes or more in prayer every evening before going to bed. Every
one believed that he had been wrongly convicted, if for no better
reason, because he had never once wavered from his claim of innocence
during those seventeen years, and because his conduct and bearing in the
prison had always been exemplary.
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