Ashtabula weekly telegraph. [volume] (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1853-1873, 1858-10-02

e the Howadji now; had not been living
Dc with friends who, shoulder to shoulder
=. worked with me hopefully in the day time,
or welcomed me at night TO glowing
house, old hearth in room where my chill
0ren sat upon my knee, where the rosy fire.
/. hight danced with the shadows on the wall
where woman beloved hushed down the
. business echoes in my heart with rich old
L ballad in soft young voice
do not often call up these fifteen years,
( for they are melancholy, maddeuing ghosts.
: But when do, the music with which they
! stalk into my thoughts is such as this: u
monotonous sound fhamners-clink, clink,
clink--always in the same measure, aud
: broken only by the fall of stone fragments!
heavy elank of iron doors mercilessly
shut in reverberating corridors, with moth
ing but my own pulse, coming afterward
Ior spent my fifteen years in prison
DO you ask how / came there The
story is not long one. / was junior
partner IN the banking house of my elder
brother near Hartford One evening, about
o'clock, as was leaving the steps OF my
lodging, heavy hand fell upon my shoul-
DER, and 1 turned to see Sheriff7s officer.
with his assistant, standing close by me-
On Il opposite side of the street the lights
Shone merrily from the window of the WON
an loved | was on my way to answer
an invitation, and felt, us every true man
feels on snch an errand, gentle toward all
humanity. So did not roughly pnsh aside
the interloper'S hand, as ordinarily | would
have done, but quietly moved out from un-
der il, aud said, "My man, there is some
| mistake here. You have taken the wronr
person. "'ora sJ
Any one who knows what it is to loose
so completely, in a fearful dream, the self
possession on which he would steady him. |
sell, that he can no longer say, "This is
only dream" but begins to know that it
is actual, will realize how the awful truth
broke on me in an instant as the officer
answered H8 -1
THAT wont do you are John Markham
of Hartford. In the name of the Com
monwealth | arrest you for forgery"
Just thsn on the opposite side of the
street the curtain went down at the lighted
window, and knowing in my soul that it
dropped forever between me and the one
being, who in her held all things for which
l lived, felt quick cold shudder of agony
run through me, and my knees smote to-
gether like coward's. / said no more,
bnt went with my captor
The first night in Jail Alb, that was
terrible The clammy, echoing stones of
the floor over which / paced in the dark
ness did not burt me in their hardness. -
The foul coarse pallet on which at inter-
walls threw myself in my bewildered wear-
ness, did not chafe me by its cofin narrow
hess. | was beyond hurt from such things
for in the five minutes between my lodgings (
and my cell had become aware that |
was brought to position whose sublime {
"wfulneSs could not he equaled by anything {
I'e on earth. Quicker 10y far than can
write, yet in this channel had my thoughts
run.
My brother, three days ago, gave me in
private heavy draft to be collected at {
another banking house, drawn in his favor {
by one of his correspondents and indorsed
by another remember that he looked :
restless when he gave it to me; that he
hurried from the room Immediately after.
ward. l presented the draft: | received
the money; the books which l keep, bear |
no account of it. He forged the paper a
am the suspected one. | have no means e
of proving my innocence, unless, perhaps, ]
by proving his guilt S
That most like, is impossible At any C
rate, what a terrible step for man to b
take against his dead mothers only other v
child And be has lovely wife whom it t
would sIay. Yet | myself have--O God t
shut out her image from me IL must not v
see it; shall go mad e
In this grove my thoughts rolled back a
and forward through the night. Facing @
this alternative | stood till the day of my
one month. My brother came r.
often to see me; he lavished fears and em- p
braces upon me; he retained for me the o
best OF councii-yet he always seemed like
one in delrium of a fever, and ever Just ST
rs the turnkey swung back the heavy door 81
to let him ont, he would stop for mo- h
nent, trembling, and with his lips half @
opened as if about to say something more S
to me-then, without meeting my eye, he |,
would rush from the cell. Suffering as | h
was, suffering still more, as was about to e
be, from the consequences of his sim K
conld pity him deeply. | could forbear e
with the cowardice which he could not con
fess, for knew how priceless liberty must c
be to man who, losing it, leaves his other o
soul in that most heart broken of all h
widowhood of a convict's t
wife, a
She whom / loved visited me many v
times-always bringing me sweet messages
in her presence from the birds, and the
howers and the free sky outside-always Ii
talking with a voice intensely sustained in p
to cheerfulness of my acquittaI, and restor- o
ton to our old hopes. l told her | was o
innocent, and she believed me. l could O
not tell her who was guilty. Q
My trial came on. | need not pain my L
self with a long recital of the lhronged a
court the weary questioning and cross ques- /
tionings, the audible silence of the crowd h
when the pleas were made, the moment h
whose shadow fell upon me when the fore
man SOlemnly said "guilty"-that other d
moment when was condemned to the aw- e
ful alenage Of prison for the fifteen years |,
10 come. b
Then / parted from home and friends h
My brother did not bid me goodbye; he h
lay sick Of a raging fever, on whose chan b
res hung life. But she, the holy, the heroic
-xVhO had all L..