“In December, 1889, I was arrested 400 miles from a city where I had obtained $1,400.00 on a forged draft. While escaping, I changed my clothes, and had my mustache removed, and hair dyed a jet black. When arrested it flashed through my mind as quick as lightning, ‘Feign deafness and dumbness, and that you can neither read nor write.’ I was taken back to the city where I had cashed the draft, and so changed was my appearance, that the cashier was in doubt as to my identity, but they placed me in jail and finally succeeded in holding me for the grand jury. For sixty days I was closely watched, four different men were placed in the cell with me and, instructed by the police, did their utmost to induce me to talk or to write, but by the utmost care I evaded all their little artifices and cunning, and the grand jury did not find a true bill. Thus did I obtain my liberty after maintaining silence for two months and not placing pen or pencil to paper. The most trying time of my life, but I never regretted playing the part inasmuch as it saved me from a sentence of not less than ten years! “That I sorrow o’er the evil I have done is to be believed. I have often wondered why I have had such a wayward career. I sincerely desired to be one of the best men in the world, and in my early manhood believed that I was to become such a man. I am well nigh a fatalist. What God foresees must be equivalent to a law that cannot be evaded. He foresaw my career. I could not do otherwise than I have done. I sometimes so reason. I am grateful to God that in all my unrighteousness I never wholly lost my belief in his saving grace and that he loved me; that there was a glorious reality in the religion of our Saviour; and that the uplift of fallen men and women and their leading noble, useful lives was and is an unanswerable argument in support of his gospel of love, mercy and helpfulness. That I may become a humble, earnest follower of him who made known God the Father unto men, is my earnest prayer. I am soul weary of a life of sin. I have had an unspeakably wretched life for the past twenty-eight years. I mean to get away from my old wayward sinful self—out of self and into Christ! I am glad that I can truthfully say, that there has never been a period in my life when I did not love Christ and venerate God, never a time since I was twelve years of age that I did not at some hour in the day fix my mind on God and ask him for his mercy and guidance. But for all this I have had a very checkered career. Still I believe he heard my prayer and will yet enable me to lead a righteous life. “If I can say anything which will induce any wayward fellow creature to depart from evil and walk Godward—heavenward, I should be most happy to do so. God’s mercy is for all. He never turned a deaf ear to the prayer for mercy. Nothing so beautiful to the angels as a sinner on his knees imploring the mercy of the merciful and loving God!