In prison my life was a busy one, and the time for meditation and to give the imagination free rein was when the daily task was over and night’s sable curtains enveloped the world in darkness, relieved only by the sentinel stars and the earth’s silver satellite “walking in lovely beauty to her midnight throne.” It was at such times that the “Reverend Stones” preached their sermons, sometimes rising in grandeur to the Sermon on the Mount. It might be a question in the minds of some if this occasion warrants the indulgence of the fancy. It will be remembered that Aesop taught the world by fables and Christ by parables, but my recollection is that the old “stone preachers” were as epigrammatic as an unabridged dictionary. I remember one old divine who, one night, selected for his text George M. Pullman, and said: “George is a bad egg—handle him with care. Should you crack his shell the odor would depopulate Chicago in an hour.” All said “Amen” and the services closed. Another old sermonizer who said he had been preaching since man was a molecule, declared he had of late years studied corporations, and that they were warts on the nose of our national industries,—that they were vultures whose beaks and claws were tearing and mangling the vitals of labor and transforming workingmen’s homes into caves. Another old stone said he knew more about strikes than Carroll D. Wright, and that he was present when the slaves built the pyramids; that God Himself had taught His lightning, thunderbolts, winds, waves and earthquakes to strike, and that strikes would proceed, with bullets or ballots, until workingmen, no longer deceived and cajoled by their enemies, would unify, proclaim their sovereignty and walk the earth free men. O, yes, Shakespeare was right when he said there were sermons in stones. I recall one rugged-visaged old stone preacher who claimed to have been a pavement bowlder in a street of heaven before the gold standard was adopted, and who discussed courts. He said they had been antagonizing the decrees of heaven since the day when Lucifer was cast into the bottomless pit. Referring to our Supreme Court he said it was a nest of rodents forever gnawing at the stately pillars supporting the temple of our liberties. I recall how his eyes, as he lifted their stony lids, flashed indignation like orbs of fire, and how his stony lips quivered as he uttered his maledictions of judicial treason to constitutional liberty.