IN FOR LIFE.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1020, 7 January 1882, Page 4

IN FOR LIFE.

■“ This cell,” said the warden, as we reached ?12, “ belongs to one of the oldest lifers in this prison. I believe he has been here nigh on thirty years, and he bide fair to last for 20 more. He is a very singular man.” “Hiacrime was murder, of course?” “Yes, and a strange'murder. He was then a young man of twenty-two, rather giiiet, if not morose/and no "one had evfer heard him use an oath or seen him display even the smallest vice. Had he stolen an axe his friends would have been amazed, what could their feelings have been, then, when he was charged with murder? One night, with no earthly excuse for offence, he got out of his bed, walked three miles to the house of a friend, and called him out and stabbed him to the heart. He then retraced his steps to his home and returned to bed and slept soundly until morning, the bloody knife lying on a chair by his bedside. He made no effort to conceal his crime, and when arrested bad no excuse for it. From the day the constable put hands on him up to this hour he has not spoken except when farced to. I have several times had to threaten him with the strap to make him answer my questions.” “ Does he mate with anyone?” “No; he comes and goes as if alone in this great prison. I cannot imagine what inducement can be held out to make him address a question to a prisoner. He shuns all of us as if we were poison. During all the years he has been here he has never asked a favor of any sort.” Is he ever sick ?”

“ Once in a great while, but he never complains. He would die in his tracks before he would ask to see the doctor. He has fainted away at his work-bench and cried out in the delirium of fever, but he has never complained.” “ What do the prisoners say about him ?”

“ They fear him. I have been told twenty different times that he would some Say rebel and that he would have tb be shot before he could be disarmed. I can’t say that he is plotting, but we keep a sharp eye on him. He has the eye of a perfect devil, and he will look at you in a way to make your flesh ■crawl” “ Can he be insane ?”

“ No ; a doten different doctors are agreed that he is as sound as any man. He is simply a born devil. He was never known te laugh or cry. His old mother used to come here in years ' gone by—before she died —and she said she had never seen a smile on his lips or a tear on his cheeks, not even during his babyhood. He is a hater. He nates himS2f. Be hates everything living or dead. There is a cauldron of ugliness boiling within him and some day it will bubble over. When that event odours we shall most likely be forced to kill him in selfdefence.”

“ Has he any relatives ?” “ Not that we know of. His father was dead before the murder. He had a mother and a brother, but when he had been here about five years the poor •old woman went to her grave. If a man has any heart in him a mother’s love and tears can touch it. She used to come here and wring her hands and weep and sob and pray, and this fiend sat as unmoved as a rock, even refusing to answer one of her questions. She was old and wrinkled and heartbroken the last time she came. She told him that it was her last visit, and that she had only a few weeks to live, and the murderer turned his back on her. The brother came here three or four times, receiving the same treatment, and the last visit he made came near semg his last day on earth. Taking advantage of the momentary absence of the doorman, this fiend grasped the brother’s throat aud was fast choking him to death when help arrived. The brother died several years ago in Illinois, and now the man is alone on earth. No one asks after him—nobody thinks of him. He is buried alive ”

“ He never writes to any one ?” “Never. He has not had a pen in his hand since entering the prison. Most of the prisoners manage to keep posted on outside affairs, but this man neither knows nor cares to know. I don’t believe he knew of the war, long as it lasted. He won’t talk ; he can’t 6r won’t read ; he won’t permit a prisoner to talk to him, and as a consequence he hears no more of the world’s doings than if he were in his grave. It must be a horrible feeling for a man to live this way, and yet he seems to enjoy it. One day is the same as another to him. One night is no blacker than another. Weeks pass and bring no change. Years come and go and his routine is the same. The past is full of blood—the future is a long, unbroken midnignt. I have wondered that he did not commit suicide.” “ He has never tried to escape ?" “ Never, and that is why we fear him. Three different times since he came here he has had good opportunities to take French leave, but he has refused to go. It wasn’t because he feared recapture and punishment, for any of them will take the one chance in a hundred on that. It was because he hated the world worse than his prison. Give him another chance today, and Sb would also refuse it. As I told you, he is a strange case. .He is half man, half devil Each year he is growing more like a fiend, and every time I look into his eye I think it has a more Satanic gleam. I don’t know

what the end will be, but I half expect it will be full of rebellion, desperation, and blood. Some day his hate will overpower all other feeling, and he will pick up a bar of iron, an axe, or a sledge, and he will fight us to the death.”— Detroit Free Press.