The straw mattress upon which I slept the first night was missing the second; salt more completely spoiled the mixture called by courtesy coffee, and the only thing which saved me from bodily hurt was the fact that there was no spot on me which was not already suffering. I mention without malice and merely as a fact in race psychology, that the Irish were the most cruel to us, with the Germans a close second, while the Welsh were not only inoffensive, but sometimes kind. One of them, David Hill--smaller than the ordinary Welshman, but with the courage of his Biblical namesake--stood between me and a burly Irish Goliath who wanted to thrash this particular “furriner, who came over here to take away the bread from the lips of _dacent, law-abiding_ Americans.” The jailer maintained no discipline and heeded no complaints. His task was to keep us locked up; the bars were strong and the key invariably turned. The strikers gradually drifted from the jail, being bailed out or released, and I was not sorry to see them go. Poor food, vermin of many varieties and the various small tortures endured, were all as nothing to me compared with the fact that for more than six weeks I was permitted to be in that jail without a hearing; without even the slightest knowledge on my part as to why I had forfeited my liberty. From the barred jail window I could see the workmen going unhindered to their tasks; on Sunday pastor and people passed, as they went to worship their Lord who, too, was once a prisoner. None, seemingly, gave us a thought or even responded by a smile to the hunger for sympathy which I know my face must have expressed. My letters to the Austro-Hungarian Consul remained unanswered, and the jailer gave my repeated questionings only oaths for reply. The day of my hearing finally came, and I was dragged before the judge. The proceedings were shockingly disorderly, irreverent and unjust. I was charged with shooting to kill. The weapon which had been found in my pocket was the revolver bequeathed me by the dying man in the Pittsburgh boarding house. As all its six cartridges were safely embedded in rust, the charge was changed to “carrying concealed weapons.” I think my readers will agree with me that the sentence of one hundred dollars fine and three months in the county jail was out of all proportion to the offence. The court wasted exactly ten minutes on my case, and then I was returned to my quarters in the jail, an accredited prisoner. Let me here record the fact that I carried back to my cell a fierce sense of injustice and a contempt for the laws of this land and its officials, feelings that later ripened into active sympathy with anarchy, which at that time occupied the attention of the American people. My knowledge of that subject came to me through old newspapers which drifted as waste around the jail.