ng that month I was entirely unfit for any kind of work. The prison
officials, knowing my sorrows, took pity on me and did not insist upon
my performing any kind of labor. I was left alone with my grief. None
but God and the angels knew what I suffered. During the day I could
think of nothing but my dying wife; in the night-time, when the angel
Sleep closes the eyelids down to rest, none came to me; in my dreams the
pale face of my dear one at home in the agonies of death was before me.
I would but drop sometimes into a dull slumber when I fancied that I
could hear her calling for me, and thus aroused, it seemed to me that
I must burst the prison bars and go to her. Knowing how much deeper and
stronger, purer and sweeter the affections and sympathies of woman are
than those of man, what must my poor, dead wife have borne! For thirty
days and nights I endured these torments. At last the hour came when her
sufferings ceased. Reader, doubtless you have lost a loved one. If so,
you were permitted to go down to the very brink of the River of Death;
you were permitted to sit at the bedside and administer words of comfort
and cheer. Not so with me. My loved one passed away, her husband kept
from her side by prison bolts and bars. And, reader, when you buried
your loved one, kind friends condoled with you, and in some degree
assuaged your grief. Not so with me. When the news came that my wife
was dead I sat down in my solitary cell and shed my tears alone. The cup
that was placed to my lips was indeed a bitter one, and I drank to the
dregs. My wife was one of earth's purest and best. We lived together as
husband and wife the fifth of a century. During those twenty years of
married life my wife never uttered a cross word to her husband. What
greater eulogy could be pronounced! In the sunshine, and as certainly
amid the storms of life, she was constant and true. Because of her
goodness of heart my home was cloudless. Many times during life have the
storms and waves swept against my trembling barque, but in that little
harbor called home no storms ever came. Oh, how much a man loses when a
good wife dies! So great was my distress that, had it not been for the
strength imparted by a pitying God, I never could have passed through
that long night of suffering. Gone, never to return.

When my prison days were over, I returned to my old home in Atchison,
but how changed it was. My wife in her grave; my motherless children
among stranger