XLVI
The party came to the city jail, and knocked for admission. But no
doubt the authorities had taken consultation in the meantime, and
there was no admission for prophets. The party stood on the steps,
baffled and bewildered, a pitiful and pathetic little group.
For my part, I thought it just as well that Carpenter had not got
inside, for I knew what he would find there. It happens that my Aunt
Jennie belongs to a couple of women's clubs, and they have been
making a fuss about our city jail; they have kept on making it for
many years, but apparently without accomplishing anything. The place
was built a generation ago, for a city of perhaps one-tenth our
present size; it is old and musty, and the walls are so badly
cracked that it has been condemned by the building department. It is
so crowded that half a dozen men sometimes sleep on the floor of a
single cell. They are devoured by vermin, and lie in semi-darkness,
some of them shivering with cold and others half suffocated. They
stay there, sometimes for many months unheeded, because the courts
are crowded, and if Comrade Abell's word may be taken in the matter,
every poor man is assumed to be guilty until he is proven innocent.
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