The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1913-09-09

words used by Governor Rice in granting a communication of sentence to life Imprisonment.
 It was on Sept. ', 1876, that the | gates of CharIestown prison changed
 shut behind Jesse Pomeroy, and the whole world brea athed a sigh of relief
 at being rid of the monster. He was l in his seventeenth year when he en- i tered his solitary cell, and he is now | an old man of fifty-three. It was 1 only his youth that saved Pomeroy from the gallows and sent him to tho | living tomb where he sits thinking. 1 always thinking, perhaps repenting of | his past, perhaps-and this seems
 more Hkely-pIanning means of es cape and revenge on society.
 PomerOy, despite the strain of f1end- ish degeneracy that led him to com init the most horrid outrages on little children, is by no means a fool, and for years he has waged a cIeVerly-cOn- trived but fruitIess campaign to se- cure a pardon, even writing his own autobiography in an attempt to arouse sympathy. His protestations of re7 pentence and piOus professions of re- igion have occasionally led to appeals for c1emency in his behalf, but these have always aroused a storm of indig- nant remonstrance. Boston ren1en-
 bers how Jesse after his first crimes, was sent to a reform institution, how earnest were his protestations of re- pentence, and how ferocious his deeds immediately following his release.
 On numerous occasions Pomeroy has sought to escape from the prison. A little over a month ago a, steel spike and a strip of tin were found in his cell. Last December the prisoner succeeded in getting out of his cell by saving three bars from the door, but the moving of a cat which follow ed him along the corridor attracted the attention of a guard, and he was thrown back into his cell. Three times before he was baffled in at tenpts to secure his liberty. In 1892 when a number of prisoners escaped, Pomeroy begged piteously to be per-
 nitted to accompany them, but ne was harshly refused. On another oc- casion he was attacked, by a convict. and ever since Pimeroy has realized that he can expect no sympathy nor aid from his fellow prisoners.
 Through all the years of his confne- nnent Pomeroy's health has been good. Only once in thirty-seven years has he looked upon the face of any woman but his mother, and that was last Christmas when Governor and Mrs. Foss visited the prison. The prisoner reads much, but spends most of his time plunged in thought.
 No other State in the Union has so much civic pride to the Square foot as California, and this spirit of eTalted self-esteem and generous ela- tfon reaches its exuberant and effer- i vescent apotheosis to-day. This is 1 California's own private holiday, the l glorious Ninth of September, the an niversary Of the admission of the l Golden State to the Union, the day dedicated to patriotism, prosperity, progress and pugilisrn. In the effete |
 
 are those who assume a certain | naughty uppishness because their an | cestors came over in the Mayfower, | signed the Declaration of Indepen- | dence. or "fit and bled'' in the reVolu- ton, Yet their pride is as modest as the self-d -depresations of the "um- | ble" Uriah Heep compared with that | of a Native Son of the Golden Vest | or a descendant of the Argonauts. | True, some of these Argonauts were persons one would not have. cared to | meet at night on a dark street, but rous souls, else they would not have dared to essay the hardships of the trip to California in the days of '49.
 California became a State of the Union on Sept. g, 1850, and it was just a. quarter of a century later that by the Order of the Native Sons of the Golden West. The Native Sons are Justified in their pride, for they come from one of the most hardy, vigorous and adventurous ancestries the world has ever known. The pio- neer spirits of the whole world aided in the transformation of a barren, semi-c civilized country into one of the richest commonwealths on the map.
 The early Californians. says Elijah R. Kennedy. in his ''The Contest for California in 1861," ::sailed in cock leshells over the vast oceans, cut their perilous way through the deadly thickets of Panama and Nicaragua, weathered the boisterous Horn, or dragged for months across the Plains and over snow-capPed mountains. Many of them, shipwrecked on the coast of Mexico. subsisted roots and wild fruits for weeks while they trusted the guidance of the North Star as they forced their weary bodies to- ward their Fl Dorado"
 Writing of those early days, the au- thor continues: "The essence of Cali fornia was a combination of mutabi1- ity and reckIessness. Newspapers treated coast affairs with talent, and in some instances displayed genius; vantages of telegraphic comm unica- ton with the world outside, and they depended for exchanges on the mails that only once a fortnight came in the padd1e-wheel wooden steamers that slowly pIoughed their way up from Panama. Eastern newspapers often sold for a dollar each on their arri- that California had been admitted to the Union as a State were snatched up at $5.''
 The writer points out that ''the rel suit of the infrequency of the mails and of the entire absence of the tele- 1I,i1