, 1891-02-08
KANSAS CHARLIE.
How the Young Murderer Passes
His Time in Iail.
Printing Notices and Cutting Out
Attractive Pictures.
He Gives No Trouble to the Sheriff
or His Men.

1888
a shade stouter IN his quarters in the
county jail. At all events he is looking
better fed and better kept than when he
came back here with Sheriff Martin from
Kansas. He occupies a cell with a room
mate much older than himself and more
restrictions are placed upon his liberty
than that of any other prisoner. He is
permitted to leave bis cell and move about
within the iron cage which confines the
other prisoners at all times during the day
until Deputy Sheriff Thomasson comes
around in the evening with his big punches
of locks and keys and confines all prisoners
to the narrow limits of their " cells.
Miller is not a source of much trouble
to the Jail authorities. He needs very
little more attention than the other pris-
oners and moves among those confined in
the Jail with the self possessed air of the
habitue. Miller's recreations are con-
fined within narrow limits. He likes to
read blood and thunder stories but is not
& very close student of even hat poor ex.
cuse for literature. He and his cellmate
frequently play checkers on a board which
they themselves have i~mprovlsed
and in this way hours are
sometimes passed absorbed in
play. Lately he has taken it into his
head to decorate his cell. He enjoys him
self as keenly as a child in cutting out
pictures that attact his attention, and ar
ranging and ~rearTangIng them as his rest
less fancy may dictate. He also
spends much time 10 printing
signs with a pen. These he
fancifully. laboriously drawing the various
letters and surrounding them with orna-
mentations, which are oitener crude than
otherwise. Among these notices which
he has hung about his cell are such as
God Bless Our Home, What is Home
Without a MotheI?" all Of which might
be indicative of awakening sensibilities,
but they can scarcely be considered so.
to the future. With his creature com-
forts supplied. in the midst of snug and
clearly surroundings, with nothing to do,
he is perfectly content to let the future
take care OF itself. He doesn't appear to
have any hope of a reprieye. or perhaps
it would be better to say that he isn't
troubled one way or the other.
He wore yesterday a checked shirt,
trousers without suspenders and one slip
per and was the picture of contentment.
he exhibited his notices with a little
air OF vanity and entered readily into con-
versatiou.
How are they treating you?' was
asked him yesterday.
"Oh. we still get the same old SOUP"
he said with a laugh.
But how about the douRhnuts2"
"Oh, they are all right; | get them.
too"
Miller's ideas Of luxurious living are
rather circumscribed. II asked from
what he received his greatest pleasure in
the eating line he would undoubtedly re-
ply 'doughnuts." Sheriff Kelley aud
Deputy Thomasson see that he is fire.
auently supplied with them, and while
the supply lasts be is perfectly contented
and happy. The date of his execution is
fixed for Friday, March 20, at which time
he will undoubtedly hang, unless Cover
nor Barber should interpose executive
clemencY.
In this connection the following from
the Glcnwood. Iowa, Opinion, will prove
of some interest, as it is a feature IN Mil
ler's career not brought out during the
trial.
Those of our readers who keep posted
on the current news of the dav, doubtless
remember having read an account of two
young men being murdered in a box car
on a train on the road from St. Joseph to
Grand Island, Neb., by a boy in Deem
Der last. The little fiend proves to be
Charlie Miller, who worked in the
Opinion Office some two months in the
spring Of 1889. In April OF that year Mr..
Gushing, a commercial traveller of Des-
MONIES, Iowa, noticed in the depot at Pa
ci6c Junction, a distressed looking German
boy. He took pity on the boy and asked
him questions by which he learned he had
no friends and no money, and that he had
worked in a printing office in Randolph,
Kas. Mr.. c. brought him up to Glen
wood, and in company with Mr.. Al
H~einsheimer brought the boy to his of
fee. who presented him to us. We put
him to work. Found him bright and
a smart compositor. Our wife thought
she saw a chance for missionary work,
bought him a suit of new clothes, made
him promise to 90 to church and Sunday
school, had him battle and clean up, and
be looked quite respectable He VEN to
Sunday school two Sundays, and that
ended it. He said Sunday school was
too ''pokey'' and there was no fun there.
He was fond of reading dime novels and
had no taste for anything pure and good.
He left us June of that year, and we
heard no more of him until he turned up
a murderer. He, has been tried and
found guilty at Cheyenne of this murder,
and is sentenced to be hung the Goth of
next month. He was originally sent West
to Dakota by the orphan society of New
York, both parents being dead. He
first lived with a farmer, and by permits
sion from the society went to Kansas, a
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