J54
THE GREEN BAG
The accessory before the fact received the sentence to keep out of flying-machines, to lie low, and without use of either his hands or legs to diet on mud. People have no license to commit even the crime of trespass by vaulting a partition picket fence to steal fruit; that was infraction of criminal laws. Here came the man's eternal doom, but not for murder. The arch convict remained in prison during his natural life, 930 years, only 39 years less than the lifetime of the oldest man that ever lived, Methuselah, thus shattering all our theories of longevity that it proceeds from a pure and blameless life. Imprisonment
seems to have lengthened the individual's life in this case instead of abridging it; most of us out of the penitentiary meet perplexing situations in attempting to keep life within our bodies for the 70 years. But the condemned prisoners never mur mured at their forlorn state; didn't rail at the court nor the proceedings (writing was an undiscovered art); nor that the jury were prejudiced against them, or returned an unfair verdict, but cheerfully did they accept their outcast state. The greatest punish ment is imprisonment with one's own conscience. CHICAGO, ILL., February, 1906.
