I took the whole story to Judge Ryan. He always placed great reliance on my judgment in such matters, and I was convinced of Jerry’s innocence. Ryan said he would allow him to withdraw his plea of guilty and stand trial. I had a harder time persuading Jerry to do so. He was inclined to take his medicine—let well enough alone. He might live through a couple of years in prison and die outside, but he was afraid to take a chance on a long term. But finally I argued him into doing it. When at last the case came up for trial, Ryan was off on his vacation, and it was set down before O’Neil, with whom I had less than no influence. Mr. Kaufman had been called out of town by the death of his father. No one appeared to speak for Jerry except the lodging house keeper, who made a poor showing, being mightily frightened under the cross-examination. The district attorney produced a handful of Rogues’ Gallery photographs of Jerry. The police expanded their memory to the point of swearing that they had seen Jerry in the rifled premises. The jury convicted him without leaving the room, of burglary in the second degree. And the judge gave him eight years.... I sneaked out of the court room and locked myself in my office. It is not a pleasant thing to think about or write down even now.... I am sure he was innocent. If I had not meddled—he had not asked me to—he would have gotten off light. And eight years was the same as "life" for him. The next two days when duty took me into the prison, I kept as far as might be from Jerry’s cell. What could I say to him? But on the afternoon of the second day, I met him by accident face to face. He was one of a line of ten men, old and young, chained together—just starting up the river. He jumped at me so hard, it threw the entire line off their feet. His slow, desperate curses as they led them out to the prison-van still haunt me, sometimes, at night. Now that Jerry is dead—he died during the fourth year—I, more than ever before, wish I could believe in a life beyond death. I cannot imagine another life in which we would not understand and forgive the wrongs done us in this. And I cannot think of anything I would rather have than Jerry’s forgiveness. About the same time, I had taken up the work of supervising the men "on parole" from the reformatory. It was very hard to find satisfactory employment for these boys. I wrote an article which was translated and printed in one of the Yiddish dailies. I described the reformatory, told of the conditions on which the inmates were paroled and the civic duty of encouraging them to make good. And I appealed to the Jews to help me find work for the sons of their race. Many offers of employment came as a result of this article.