were cases where I either commuted sentences or pardoned
offenders with very real pleasure. For instance, when President, I
frequently commuted sentences for horse stealing in the Indian Territory
because the penalty for stealing a horse was disproportionate to the
penalty for many other crimes, and the offense was usually committed by
some ignorant young fellow who found a half-wild horse, and really did
not commit anything like as serious an offense as the penalty indicated.
The judges would be obliged to give the minimum penalty, but would
forward me memoranda stating that if there had been a less penalty they
would have inflicted it, and I would then commute the sentence to the
penalty thus indicated.

In one case in New York I pardoned outright a man convicted of murder
in the second degree, and I did this on the recommendation of a friend,
Father Doyle of the Paulist Fathers. I had become intimate with the
Paulist Fathers while I was Police Commissioner, and I had grown to feel
confidence in their judgment, for I had found that they always told me
exactly what the facts were about any man, whether he belonged to their
church or not. In this case the convicted man was a strongly built,
respectable old Irishman employed as a watchman around some big
cattle-killing establishments. The young roughs of the neighborhood,
which was then of a rather lawless type, used to try to destroy the
property of the companies. In a conflict with a watchman a member of one
of the gangs was slain. The watchman was acquitted, but the neighborhood
was much wrought up over the acquittal. Shortly afterwards, a gang of
the same roughs attacked another watchman, the old Irishman in question,
and finally, to save his own life, he was obliged in self-defense to
kill one of his assailants. The feeling in the community, however, was
strongly against him, and some of the men high up in the corporation
became frightened and thought that it would be better to throw over the
watchman. He was convicted. Father Doyle came to me, told me that he
knew the man well, that he was one of the best members of his church,
admirable in every way, that he had simply been forced to fight for his
life while loyally doing his duty, and that the conviction represented
the triumph of the tough element of the district and the abandonment of
this man, by those who should have stood by him, under the influence of
an unworthy fear. I looked into the case, came to the co