during my career as a yegg i was arrested four times and stood trial in two of the cases and “beat” (was acquitted in) both. one case never came to trial, the other one brought me a state prison sentence of fifteen years. the crime was blowing open a safe from which we failed to secure a single penny. such is the life of a yegg. i heard that sentence of fifteen years pronounced upon me with a feeling mixed with contempt and hatred. i hated society, i was antagonistic to religion, and the sentence of fifteen years but aggravated both. i pictured the bank thief, the respectable crook getting away with the savings of widows and children, with his paltry three years’ punishment. i saw the seducer of[pg 84] chaste women come off the stand with a mere sentence of months. the pictures intensified my hatred and i entered prison to begin my sentence, a criminal in mind and nature.

dante once wrote that he found this inscription over the doors of hell: “abandon hope all ye who enter here.” this describes to a nicety the prison in which i was confined for nearly eight years. over the thousand and one prisoners, a warden of the old school of penology presided. he was one who believed in and practiced the adage, “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” yes, he even went further than that. he was a man of undoubted executive ability. he would have made an ideal head of some corporation where the question of men’s souls and bodies never entered into consideration. you could have searched the world to find one less worthy to be at the head of an institution of this kind.

a saloon keeper, he had found the friendship of one politically high and secured the position. with the odor of his calling still upon him he came from behind his bar to sit[pg 85] in the office of the warden. he had the life and liberty, the responsibility of a thousand men under his care. for over twenty years he guarded the destiny of this institution. he was the enemy of every reform ever initiated. he refused to let outside men or women interest themselves in the cause of the prisoner. he made rules of unusual severity and punished cruelly any infraction. in this prison the contract system of employing prisoners was in use, and the warden was ever the friend of the contractor. he was eventually found guilty of grafting by a committee of investigation, and shortly before the verdict of these men resigned his office.