Here is an end of things, a nothing, a sort of death. The support and countenance of one's fellow creatures are withdrawn; you are no longer a part of organized social existence. The rights, privileges and courtesies of manhood are stripped from you. You are adjudged unfit to touch the hand of an honest man in greeting; you are made impotent, disgraced, consigned to the refuse heap. The helpless shame put upon you is borne tenfold by those who bear your name, those you love and who love you. All that touches you henceforth shall be sordid, base and foul. The prison officials who stand near you meet your eye with a leer of familiarity; they have handled thousands of men in your situation; they will have a grin or a growl for any remonstrance or protest you may make; power over you has been given to them; in you there is no power. You cannot blame them; their authority was deputed to them by men above them, who in turn received it from others; they are parts of the great machine, working irresistibly and automatically. The judge is blameless; he had said, "The verdict of the jury makes it my painful duty to sentence you!" The jury is not to blame; they had decided upon the evidence, in accordance with their oath. The witnesses who bore testimony against you--did they not testify upon a solemn adjuration to utter nothing but the truth, at the peril of their immortal souls? The indictments to whose truth they bore witness--were they not made and brought by officers appointed by law to seek only impartial justice, and sworn to seek it without fear or favor? Go back yet another step if you will, and consider the inspectors and detectives who gathered the complaints against you--is the beginning with them? No: they did but act for the protection of the community against a crime of which you were suspected, which was resolved to be a crime by the representatives of the nation in Congress assembled--that is, by the nation itself. You yourself, therefore, as part of the nation, share with the rest the responsibility for your present predicament. Then, whether the verdict against you were right or wrong--whether you be innocent or guilty--the blame at last comes home to you. Such is the _reductio ad absurdum_--the lawyers' argument, technically flawless, though proceeding upon a transparent fallacy. That fallacy I shall consider hereafter; the question of the moment is the reporters'--"Have you any statement to make?" Of what avail to answer? Has not enough been said during the trial of the past four months, and in vain? The young fellow stands there, courteously inquisitive, not unsympathetic perhaps, his pencil suspended. Have I any last words for the world which I am leaving? Shall I declaim of injustice, outrage, perjury? Shall I threaten revenge, or entreat mercy? Shall I "break down," or shall I "maintain an appearance of bravado"--he is ready to record either.