The Caldwell watchman. (Columbia, La.) 1885-1946, 1912-12-13

L looks almost directly down
ward at the little, evil, black
barred apertures that make the win
dows Of Sing Sing prison, al ugly
clutter of tall-chimneyed buildings
halfway up the hill. In that window
a slender, middle-aged woman has
kept a tireless vigil for years-her
eyes forever directed toward the
prison below. Save for such few
hours as she may have to engage her.
self in household duties and now and
then walk on the country roads she
is always watching the prison, writes
Stuart Clyde in the New York World
When the long drawn morning
whistle shrieks above the prison walls
her watch begins and her minds eye
faithfully pictures big, pallid-faced
man walking through the steel CORR
doris on his way with a long line of
companions to the WORKSHOP benches, a
man in whose blue eyes is a queer
half-insane Light of hope. 1T were
not FOR the woman 1T the wlfdow al
the top Of the hill the hope would
probably have long ago gone out of his
eyes.
But he knows that she is always
faithfully there, thinking of him
ready eagerly to further any new plan
they may be able to devise in long
continued, always baffled quest for pre-
Cious freedom. Once a month she
leaves her window and walks to the
gloomy prison and enters at the gate
She can see him theL with bars be
tween them. She can nave an hours
talk. And in these talks he has de
scribed to her infinitely every detail
of his prison life and they have agreed
on certain hours when they would en-
gage in common thoughts.
She watches the carriages that come
daily winding up the hill and wonders
what nature of man may be sitting
shackled to deputy sheriff within
what his crime has been, what pun
ishment he faces. Sometimes she cal
see in far corners of the prison
grounds men digging holes in thu
ground that mean that some wretch
has secured freedom by way of thu
grave.
One Woman's Vigil Made Easier.
But her vigil now is not as hideou
as it once was, for this woman is tn,
wife of Albert s. Morris, and for ;
time he was condemned to death
Then she lived in a heart-rending hor
ror of some mornings dawn when sh
would see from her window the sud
den dimming Of the corridor light
through the ugly-barred windows O
the prison down the hill. She ha,
learned that this sudden dimming O
the lights and then almost as suddenl
their flaring up again held terribl
meaning-a meaning we'll known ais
to the men inside. When they see
some moan and others scream. An
in the death house the men benin
the black curtains Of their cells ca
only try to scream and choke on tn
utterance. They wiring cold swea
from the fingers of their twistin
hands. The darkness Of their cu]
tanned cells has grown suddenly blacl
err, and only a little while before
scarcely a minute, they have hear
the cruelty distinct shuttle of the sill,
pered feet of the man who was lie
away. When the lights grow dim a
the dawn in Sing Sing it means tina
the electric power has been borrowe
for Just that little while to send a mu,
derer's body straining against tn
straps Of the electric chair, snappin
the life out of him.
1t was queer marriage that thj
woman made with the murderer {
Stephen Brice, the millionaire r,
cluse. 1t was after he had been col
victed of the crime that she had draw
up a contract Of marriage which the
both signed Lat which they might n,
seal with so much as a single kis
But 1t was legal. 1t gave her the pri
ilege Of visiting him more often
the death house and gives her now IL