sympathy of those who attended the trial.[520] The prisoner himself was most grateful for the consideration shown him, and, in a letter to his betrothed written two days after his trial, he spoke of his short sentence with the deepest gratitude and thankfulness toward the court and jury and the prosecutors themselves. "My sentence," he added, "is far more lenient than my most sanguine hopes have ever anticipated."[521] The termination of the imprisonment of Dillingham was most melancholy. Separated from his aged parents, to whom he was devoted, and from the woman that was to have become his wife, his health soon proved unequal to the severe experiences of prison life; his keepers after nine months gave him respite from heavy work about the prison, and assigned him the place of steward in the hospital. He had not long been in his new station when cholera broke out among the convicts, and his services were in constant demand. His strength was soon exhausted, and about the first of August, 1850, he succumbed to the dread epidemic raging in the prison.[522] [520] A. L. Benedict, _Memoir of Richard Dillingham_, 1852, p. 18. Also Harriet Beecher Stowe, _A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin_, pp. 58, 59. [521] A. L. Benedict, _Memoir of Richard Dillingham_, p. 18. [522] This account of Richard Dillingham is based on the _Memoir_ written by his friend, A. L. Benedict, a Quaker, and published in 1852. Abridged versions of this memoir will be found in the _Reminiscences of Levi Coffin_, Appendix, pp. 713-718; and Howe's _Historical Collections of Ohio_, Vol. II, p. 590.