The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1904-12-18

is one or complete familiarity with MS
subject and love of it.
MY lost Fifteen Years. Mrs. May
bricks own Story. BY Florence
Elizabeth Maybrick New York:
Funk & Wagnalls. Cloth; price,
$1.20 net.
1t is unnecessary to identify Mrs.
Maybrick Everybody knows of her.
For fifteen years she languished in an
English prison for a crime which she
says she is entirely innocent. Stripped
of her fortune. stripped of her children,
Mrs. Maybrick returns 10 her native
America and tells her sad story, a
story full of the most intense. personal
interest. She has written with her
own hand a book giving for the first
time her side of this awful tragedy.
1t is a most deeply interesting story
from beginning to end. Only a frag
ment of this thrilling history has been
told in the newspapers or ma gaines.
In her Foreword Mrs. May
brick quotes from the sketch of her
ancestry written by Gail Hamilton,
which proves that she is descended, on
both paternal and maternal sides, from
good American stock-the Thurstons,
the Ingrahams, the Phillipses and the
Holbrooks of New England, and the
Campbells and Chambers of Georgia.
The story is told without affecta-
ton, and is powerful narrative.
Some extracts from it follow:
Mrs. Maybrick was condemned to
spend the first nine months at Wok-
ing Prison in solitary confinement.
Il followed the warder to a door,
perhaps not more than two feet in
width. She unlocked it and said Pass
in l stepped forward, but started
back in horror. Through the open
door l saw. by the dim light of a
small window that was never cleaned,
a cell sever feet by four.
s. oh, don't put me in there!' 1 cried,
i can not bear it
For answer the warder took me
roughly by the shoulder, gave me
push, and shut the door. There was
nothing to sit upon but the cold slate
floor. l sank to my knees. 1 felt
suffocated. 1t seemed that the walls
We're drawing nearer and nearer to-
gether, and presently the life would
be crushed out of me. / sprang to
my feet and beat wildly with my
hands against the door. For Gods
sake let me Quit Let me Quit! But
my voice could not penetrate that
massive barrier. and exhausted sank
once more to the floor. l cannot re-
call those nine months of solitary con-
hnement without feeling of horror.
My cell contained only a hammock
rolled up in a corner, and three
shelves let into the wall--no table nor
stool. For a seat l was compelled
to place my bedclothes on the floor. :"
After giving a graphic picture of the
deadly routine of this period, when
even the daily exercise is taken in a
stone-fiagged, ugly walled yard. more
like a bear-pit than an airing-ground
for human beings" Mrs. Maybrick
digresses in a characteristic manner
most significant of her altruistic spirit
in order to voice some heartfelt OBJ
servations on the indefensible cruelty
of solitary confinement:
SOLITARY confinement is by far the
most cruel feature of English penal
servitude. 1t infiicts upon the prisoner
at the commencement of her sentence,
when most sensitive to the horrors
which prison punishment entails, the
voiceless solitude, the hopeless mono
tony, the long vista of tomorrow, to-
morrow, tomorrow stretching before
her. all filled with desolation and de-
pair. Once a prisoner has crossed the
threshold of a convict prison, not
only is she dead to the world, but she
is expected in word and deed to lose
or forget every vestige of her per-
sonality. Verify,
The mills of the gods grind slowly,
But they grind exceedingly small,
And woe to the wight unholy
On whom those millstones fall.
$50 it is with the Penal Code which
directs this vast machinery, doing its