The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1901-09-26

sents? lie goes to the White House. in the eyes OF
yellow journalism, as untutored and thoughtless
politician.
"God grant that in the staying of our beloved
President the people Of this free country have been
melted to stamp out forever yellow journalism
HE law of compensation is as unceasing the
law of gravity. Nature, the watchful mother,
has so arranged her affairs that matter how un-
pleasantly man may be situated, he will, providing
he looks for it, always find something to 60 towards
compromising him for that which he has lost or
which he has never been able to attain Beethoven
lived for years amid heavenly choir listening to and
recording divine music after he had become stone
deaf and Milton dreamed and wrote poetry that will
last long the English tongue lives after the
world of sunlight had departed from him forever.
And so it has been with thousands of other in
the past and so it is with thousands of today
for those who will invoke it, the law of compensation
never rests But it is not like the law of gravity
blind, resistless force it is rather blessing that
men must seek and go halfway to meet. If no effort
is made to get all there is out of lfe is certain
to find himself unhappy in whatever lot he may be
cast All good things require effort to possess
Even prison life has compensatons, if one will
but look for them. 70 many men the very act of
doing peDance for past misdeeds is in itself reward
A man may perhaps, feel that his punishment is
unjust in it's relation to the offence he has COM
mitted, but the number of men in penal servitude
today whose lives have not been loose and somewhat
riotous, whose moral sensibities are not more or
less blunted and who have not inflicted much need
less unhappiness others, is small And the fact
that such a man is paying for past misdeeds
whether they be offences against the statutes not
is immaterial-and u.s. SO to speak, squarng himself
oplco of
him a sort of grim satisfaction The idea that he
will be compelled to face the contumey of the world
for many years after his release from prison does
not worry him much. He knows he has paid his
penalty and done his best to square his account
with the world and that is what counts for he who
has made peace with himself, who has some
where to honestly pacifying his conscience, and
who has laid out line of action for his future life
that will continue to keep him on speaking terms
with himself-such will little for the
adverse opinion Of his critics. That he has such
thoughts forced upon him and that he resolve
upon such of action for the future,
is of the compensations of prison life; for the
chance are he never would have done so without
experiencing some such shock as the loss of citizen
ship entails
Another compensation is to be found in the
adaptibity of man; he accustom himself to
almost anything except physical suffering md IN
course of time he finds the discipline, CALLING to
him at first, in reality is blessing in disguise; he
forgets himself and his troubles in endeavo1ing to
obey the rules and the sound of the dinner gong or
the whistle that marks the close of the days work
brings to him joys that free people have concep
| ton Of
It is safe proposition to say that healthy
man in prison finds something to be thankful for
every moment of the day. There is but time
when he fails to discover any compensation in his
lot-when he thinks, all men in prison do think,
of the innocent and righteous persons who are
suffering for his misdeeds AS we have said before
in these columns the brunt Of the punishment does
not fall upon the offender against the lawsit falls
on the who dependant on him; whose lives
are hopelessly entanged with his; whose moral
sensibi]ities not blunted and whose habits have
not been profigate whose imaginations active
and whose thoughts cannot become reconciled to
the idea of prison life and whose minds continually
harbor the picture of dear shut in by bars and
lost to freedom. They bear the brunt of it. The
convict becomes accustomed to his ot he gets to be
part of machine and his surroundings become such
a matter of course that to be locked in at night is
as natural as to go to dinner. He has many CON-
pensations. It is those who look to him for bread
and to whom he is dear that the almost universal
] law fails to solace.