“Of course, most folks would think that anyone like me wouldn’t have given away a half a peck of potatoes, but they don’t really understand them things; you’ve got to do a thing before you can know all about it. If I was makin’ the laws I wouldn’t let anyone be on a jury and try a feller for murder unless he’d killed someone. Most fellers don’t know anything about how anyone kills a person and why they do it, and they ain’t fit to judge. Now, of course, most everybody would think that anyone who had killed anyone, unless it was in war or somethin’ like that, was bad through and through; they wouldn’t think that they could ever do anything good; but here I give away that half peck of potatoes just because I knew the lady was poor and needed ‘em—and I see things every day here in jail that shows it ain’t so. Just a little while ago one of the prisoners was took down with small-pox and everyone was scared, and another prisoner who was in here for burglary went to the ward and nursed him and took care of him, and took the disease and died. And most all of the fellers will do anything for each other. The other day there were five fellers on trial for robbin’ a safe, and the State’s Attorney done all he could to get one of ‘em to tell on another feller who hadn’t been caught or indicted, and he promised every one of ‘em that he wouldn’t do a thing with ‘em if they’d tell, and he couldn’t get a word out of any of ‘em, and they went to the penitentiary, just because they wouldn’t tell; and the State Attorney and the judge all of ‘em seemed to think that if they could get one feller to tell on someone else that he’d be the best one of the lot and ought to be let out. If you’d just stay here a few days and see some of the wives and fathers and mothers come into the jail and see how they’d cry and go on over some of these people, and tell how good they was to them, it would open your eyes. They ain’t one of them people, unless it’s me, that don’t have someone that loves ‘em, and says they’ve been awful good to ‘em and feel sorry for ‘em and excuses ‘em, and thinks they’re just like everybody else. Now there was them car-barn murderers that killed so many people and robbed so much. Everyone wanted to tear ‘em to pieces and no one had a single good word for ‘em, but you’d ought to seen Van Dine’s mother and how she hung on to her boy and cried about him and loved him and told how many good thing’s he done, just like anyone else; and then that Niedemeyer, who tried to kill himself so he couldn’t get hung, you know he went to a detective and confessed a lot of crimes, so that the detective could get the money after he was hung, and the detective agreed to divide the money with his mother. If you was here a while you’d find these fellers doin’ just as many things to help each other as the people on the outside. It’s funny how human nature is, how anybody can be so good and so bad too. Now I s’pose most people outside