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those who are poor and oppressed. It was "Shorty Gray's" favorite paper. Poor, oppressed Shorty Gray! What a shame to land them in prison for robbing banks. Being the organ of Gray, it did not surprise me that Chaplain Johnson should also make use of it. Now I have already described to my readers the hyena that digs into the grave and devours the dead bodies of those whom it did not have courage to attack while they were on earth. I may be a low specimen of humanity, I may have many sins, but I am no grave robber, no hyena. Let the dead rest in peace. For that reason I shall not say anything against the publisher of the paper that contained Chaplain Johnson's letter, as he, the publisher, lies hi his grave, dead at his own hands; and furthermore, as a young woman, a mere child, figures in this matter, my lips are sealed. I hope that God in His tender mercy will forgive this man his sins.

I wonder if my readers ever had any pre-

 
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monitions. I once had a premonition, when as a boy I made a raid upon my mother's pantry and did away with a lot of jam. I had a premonition of something coming that I could not shake off, and the premonitition (sic) grew stronger and stronger as I saw my mother approaching with a paddle. And out in the penitentiary, an old fellow who stole a horse in Garden County, told me that he, too, had a premonition that he could not shake off - a premonitition (sic) of something coming. He too was right, for the sheriff was coming. But, I beg to apologize to my reader for getting away from my subject, the statement of Chaplain Johnson in the little Kansas paper. It reads as follows:

"I resigned as chaplain of Nebraska state prison because I could no longer work with Warden Delahunty. His methods of dealing with prisoners and mine, were materially different. Delahunty considered a prisoner not a man but a thing without rights or feelings. He believed a prison a place of punishment, and I, a place of reformation. His methods were brutalizing the men and making them desperate. The guards reflected his spirit after convict Prince killed Deputy Warden


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Davis. I had a premonition of something coming that I could not shake off. I could do nothing because nobody would pay any attention to me. The powers that be treated me with contempt. I felt that the only thing to do was to resign and let those who were stubbornly insisting on having their own way assume the responsibility for what would happen. Noah preached righteousness for a hundred and twenty years, but it took a deluge to move things. The angel tried to save Sodom, but it took fire to clean the city. It has taken startling events to change things at the prison. All my protests against conditions were received as the vaporings of a sentimental old man. My suggestions of prison reform were taken as the weakness of a childish preacher. Seven men are now dead and the whole state is shocked. This has changed things, and we are getting daily messages now on prison reform from unexpected sources. A little of this six months ago would have saved the lives of those now lying cold in death. The state doesn't need new buildings half so bad as it needs a little humanity at work in the ones we now have. I hated to leave my work and the poor prisoners, many of whom I had learned to love, but I had to do it."

To the uninitiated, to the stranger, this sounds good; but let us analyze it and see if he is right, for even preachers make blunders once in a while. If they did not, there would not be so large a colony of them in Sing Sing prison, for it is a fact that there are more preachers there than there are bar-keepers. And what are they there for?

 
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Not many are there for stealing, no they are mostly there for crimes against other persons, against the other sex especially, for crimes against the home. These preachers, at any rate blundered, and failed to practice what they preached. I have known a preacher to stand before the congregation and preach righteousness. He was taken to be a holy man by all-save by one young woman, who later on sent him to the place where stripes are worn. I mention this to impress upon my readers the fact that preachers do make mistakes. The statement of this holy man published in the Kansas paper is full of them. To publish a statement against, a man who lies cold in death is in itself a mistake, and is a cowardly act. It shows lack of broad mindedness and Christian charity. In besmirching the character of our departed warden, he is wrong; and I will ask that my reader will turn back a few pages and read the chapter entitled "Our Martyred Warden." That chapter