The mine
owner was a heavy plunger and speculator and when the panic came along it wiped
him off the financial map. Within a month he became penniless, gave a check
where there were not sufficient funds to meet it - results: a year and some
months in Lancaster. He was assigned to work in the inmates' dining room
to scrub the floors, and had to walk in water when he scrubbed.
As he sat in the corner by his lonesome eating his dinner, he saw
no roses, no cut glass, no waiters in full dress suits, no fashionable
ladies and no soft music. No, he sat on a wooden bench, and ate
his pork and beans out of a rusty tin plate. A large roach and
several small ones devoured what crumbs of the coarse corn bread
fell upon the floor. How the mighty have fallen! How things have
changed! To this man, his trip became a lesson and changed him
entirely. Never again for him!
If you had told this man a year previous to his coming here that
he was to land in the
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penitentiary, he would
have told you that you were to land in an insane asylum; but it is easy to
get into Lancaster, and hard to get out; so if you, dear reader, should
happen to overdraw your bank account, or if you should carry a
gun, concealed in your pocket, or if you should happen to love
a young girl slightly under eighteen, or something else, you too,
might become a guest at Lancaster, providing that you got caught.
Here is what would happen to you:
His honor, the judge, would say to
you: "It is now adjudged
by the court, that you, Willie Jones, be imprisoned in the penitentiary,
located in or near the city of Lincoln, Nebraska, for a period
of not less than one, nor more than twenty years, at hard labor,
Sundays and holidays excepted, none of this time to be spent in
solitary confinement. The sheriff will, with all possible speed
and within thirty days, take you hence and deliver you to the warden
of the penitentiary." This is what is called the indeterminate
sen-
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