But I
am getting away from my subject - the chaplain of the prison. Never once did
I know of him to approach Mr. Delahunty and in a friendly way talk matters
over with him. While I knew that the warden was not exactly going to turn his
office over to him, yet if there was anything within right or justice that
he could have done for this man, I know that he would have done it. One dreary
January evening the warden was telling me how the chaplain was working
against him in an underhanded way. I asked: "Well, Warden, why
does he not come to you and have a talk with you and state his grievances?" And
the warden answered, "Never once has he spoken to me or made
a complaint of any kind. Even in the dining room he does not say
a word; but never a week passes but what some of my friends tell
me of his underhanded "work and warn me against him."
There lives in Persia an animal having small, naked ears, four toes
on each foot,
|
a straight jointed tail and erect hair on the neck.
It is a fierce, cruel and untamable animal. You have seen it in
the menagerie, always nervous, always restless, always shifting
about. It is the hyena. As long as you live he will never attack
you; he will run away from you; but as soon as you are dead and
in your grave, he will sneak towards it under the cover of the
night and devour your dead body. I have known of a man doing the
hyena act, by attacking a dead man's honor after he is laid in
his grave. I have known of a man doing this act in one of our depots;
and I know another, now in public office, who stepped toward him
and said: "How would you like, when you are dead and gone,
to have me stand in a public place like this, and tell a bunch
of men what I know of you?"
I must again apologize to my reader for getting away from my original
story. Chaplain Johnson once disappeared and was gone
|