try and preach an effective sermon, and hint that it is bad policy for the kettle to call the pot black, and indulge in similar side-remarks; but just the same I am of opinion that it would have been far more honorable for Hall to have openly confessed his own wrong-doing and that of his influential political associates rather than seek to divert the bloodhounds of law from the trail of larger game by raising the cry of "Wolf!"
He got caught in the end himself, and now "there are none so poor as to do him reverence," whereas, had he come out in manly fashion as soon as he realized that he had been hoist by his own petard, almost everybody would have had some respect for him, and there would have been many who would have applauded his attitude as a genuine act of atonement.
The course of the United States Attorney in this respect is remindful of a doggerel verse I once learned in my early youth:
{{block center|"He digged a pit, he digged it deep.
He digged it for his brother;
And for his sin he did fall in
The pit he digged for 'tother."
It is barely possible that Hall, because of the failure upon his part to secure from McKinley and myself the sum of $5,000 to quash the indictments against us, thought to take revenge on that account, and this, of itself, may have influenced his action toward us. McKinley, however, was firmly of the opinion that our failure to come through with the cash, when the demand was made upon us through George Sorenson, on behalf of Prosecutor Hall, was wholly responsible for his attitude toward us. However that may be, it is certain that Mr. Hall was willing we should be sacrificed, and I believed then, as I still believe, that it was for no other purpose than to get us out of the way with as much dispatch as possible, use his influence with the Court to the end that we get the limit on McNeil's Island, and thereby eliminate the possibility of our appearing to give testimony against those of his friends against whom he believed indictments might be returned at a later date, and who, both socially and politically, were closer to his friendship than were we.
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