The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-12-12
MONDAY, DECEMBER IF, 1904.
A HANS LIFE.

The Hartford Times has a true story which reads very much like a romance. It Is of one John Warren who has been shut up in the State prison of Connect icut for forty-five years, and is now asking a pardon from the authorities. Forty-five years is not a long time in the history of a world, or even of a nation, but it is a long period to be cut out of a mans life, especially in this hurrying age. when so many and such great changes are going on in the Industrial and political world and in all other ways. The comments of The Times are so interesting that we copy them entire:
 In, 1859, the year when Warren's long reriod of civil death commenced, Dar- wins origin of Species" startling the world and revolutionizing scientific thought. came from the printing press. Tn that year the use and development Of petroleum began. In that year Oregon. discarding the short trousers of a territory. donned the garb of Statehood and made the thirty-third member of the Union. now there are forty-five States. In 1859 the popula- tion of the United States was 31 ,000, 900 {; new it Is 82.000,0O0. In 1859 the people Of Connecticut numbered 45O,OO0, and a count of noses in the biggest town of tho commonwealth disclosed scarcely 5000 dwellers; now the census of the State has bounded forward to 970,000 and of New Haven to 120,000.
 Warren had been behind grim walls nearly two years when the first shot of the rebellion was fired; nearly four years when the awful carnage at Get tysourg was moving down the flower of both the Northern and the Southern armies; and nearly six years when the historic meeting between Lee and loose the dove of peace. The first web- perfeeting printing press--a crude af- fair but the forerunner of the wonder full mechanism which now turns off the printed daily message with the rapid tty of lightning-wasn't invented until 1883. The first successful submarine cable, spanning the Atlantic and mar rowing the gap between the Old World and the New, was laid in 1868. The deadly Calling gun which can shoot down dozen men as quickly as one could be shot down before, dates from 1867.
 In the year when Warren was round ing out his first full decade of penal servitude the initial trans-continental railroad, uniting with bands of steel the mighty Atlantic and the mightier Pacific. was completed. In 1889. too, the antiseptic principle of treating wounds-a great advance in surgery was f1rSt applied warren had been dead to the world seventeen years when. in 1876. the telephone was in- vented. The next year the photograph first began to absorb and reproduce the human voice. In 1878 the electric light first dazzled the eyes of a wondering world. Water gas was produced five years later and in the same year of 1883 the Brooklyn bridge was finished. Medical science was making great strides the while, and in 1885 Pasteur first inoculated for hydrophobia.
 Warren had reeled off twenty-seven years of his life sentence when in 1886 at Scranton, Pa, the first successful American trolley was put in operation. The Mergenthaler linotype machine. the delicate and complete mechanism by which this article is put into type and which is now a leading feature of inc equipment of every large daily was made practicable. War Tenss term of Imprisonment had mount sd up to at least thirty-five years when the automobile was introduced. and it 1ad passed two-score years when wire ess messages began to be transmitted. These selective incidents strikingly ,uggest how the world has been get ing on by leaps and bounds while War .en has perforce been standing still. if his petition for release should be granted he would have to hustle in order to catch up.