long sentence–of nine years, I think. He has been sick and threatened
with consumption, but I have not inquired after him lately.
This lady that I speak of corresponds with him, I presume,
and will be quite sure to look after him.
This letter arrived a few days after it was written–and up went
Mr. Williams’s stock again. Mr. Warner’s low-down suspicion
was laid in the cold, cold grave, where it apparently belonged.
It was a suspicion based upon mere internal evidence, anyway;
and when you come to internal evidence, it’s a big field and a game
that two can play at: as witness this other internal evidence,
discovered by the writer of the note above quoted, that ‘it
is a wonderful letter–which no Christian genius, much less
one unsanctified, could ever have written.’
I had permission now to print–provided I suppressed names
and places and sent my narrative out of the country.
So I chose an Australian magazine for vehicle, as being far
enough out of the country, and set myself to work on my article.
And the ministers set the pumps going again, with the letter to
work the handles.
But meantime Brother Page had been agitating.
He had not visited the penitentiary, but he had sent a copy
of the illustrious letter to the chaplain of that institution,
and accompanied it with–apparently inquiries. He got an answer,
dated four days later than that other Brother’s reassuring epistle;
and before my article was complete, it wandered into my hands.
The original is before me, now, and I here append it.
It is pretty well loaded with internal evidence of the most
solid description–
STATE’S PRISON, CHAPLAIN’S OFFICE, July 11, 1873.
DEAR BRO. PAGE,–Herewith please find the letter kindly loaned me.
I am afraid its genuineness cannot be established.
It purports to be addressed to some prisoner here. No such letter
ever came to a prisoner here. All letters received are carefully
read by officers of the prison before they go into the hands
of the convicts, and any such letter could not be forgotten.
Again, Charles Williams is not a Christian man, but a dissolute,
cunning prodigal, whose father is a minister of the gospel.
His name is an assumed one. I am glad to have made your acquaintance.
I am preparing a lecture upon life seen through prison bars,
and should like to deliver the same in your vicinity.
And so ended that little drama. My poor article went into the fire;
for whereas the materials for it were now more abundant and
infinitely richer than they had previously been, there were parties
all around me, who, although longing for the publication before,
were a unit for suppression at this stage and complexion of the game.
They said: ‘Wait–the wound is too fresh, yet.’ All the copies
of the famous letter except mine disappeared suddenly; and from that
time onward, the aforetime same old drought set in in the churches.
As a rule, the town was on a spacious grin for a while, but there
were places in it where the grin did not appear, and where it was
dangerous to refer to the ex-convict’s letter.
A word of explanation. ‘Jack Hunt,’ the professed writer of the letter,
was an imaginary person. The burglar Williams–Harvard graduate,
son of a minister–wrote the letter himself, to himself: got it smuggled
out of the prison; got it conveyed to persons who had supported and
encouraged him in his conversion–where he knew two things would happen:
the genuineness of the letter would not be doubted or inquired into;
and the nub of it would be noticed, and would have valuable effect–
the effect, indeed, of starting a movement to get Mr. Williams pardoned
out of prison.
That ‘nub’ is so ingeniously, so casually, flung in, and immediately
left there in the tail of the letter, undwelt upon, that an indifferent
reader would never suspect that it was the heart and core of the epistle,
if he even took note of it at all, This is the ‘nub’–
‘i hope the warm weather is doing your lungs good–I WAS AFRAID
WHEN YOU WAS BLEEDING YOU WOULD DIE–give my respects,’ etc.
That is all there is of it–simply touch and go–no dwelling upon it.