* * * * *
At the extreme end of the big cage, the end furthest from the entrance
door, stood two cells not occupied. The last of these I had chosen for
my study, a la Monte Cristo. The sheriff's son had lent me a dozen of
Opie Reid's novels, a history of the Civil War from the Southern
viewpoint, an arithmetic, and an algebra. Here all day long I studied
and wrote assiduously. And it was here I went to sit on my stool and
write the letter to the owner of the warehouse ... a certain Mr.
Womber....
In it I pointed out the enormity of sending to the penitentiary two
young men, on a merely technical charge of burglary. For if we had gone
into the place to rob, why had we so foolishly, then, gone to sleep? And
what, at the final analysis, could we have stolen but bales of hay,
sacks of guano, and plowshares? All of them too unwieldy to carry away
unless we had other conveyance than our backs. It was absurd, on the
face of it.
Furthermore, I appealed to him, as a Christian, to let us go free ... in
the name of God, not to wreck our lives by throwing us, for a term of
years, into contact with criminals of the hardened type--to give us one
more chance to become useful citizens of our great and glorious country.
Bud laughed sneeringly when I read the letter aloud to him ... said it
was a fine effort as a composition in rhetoric, but I might expect
nothing of it--if the perpetually drunk jailer really brought it to its
destination--except that it would be tossed unread into the
wastebasket.
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