? Being well acquainted with this prisoner, a few days after the
doctor had told me of the circumstances I met him, and asked him what
object he had in feigning death the time that he was taken from the
mines to the hospital? His reply was that he hadn't the nerve to take
his own life, as he believed in a future state of punishment, and
that he did not desire to step from the Kansas Hell to the hell of the
future, and that by feigning death he hoped to be taken to the hospital,
placed in a coffin, then taken out to the prison graveyard, and buried
alive, so that he would suffocate in his grave!

There is not a man in those mines but would leave them quickly for a
place on the surface.

I now call to mind one instance where a heart-broken father came to
the prison and offered one of the leading prison officials one thousand
dollars if he would take his son out of the coal mines and give him a
place on the surface during the remainder of his term. A man who labors
in these mines simply spends his time, not knowing but the next hour
will be his last.

As I have stated heretofore the prisoners are allowed to converse in the
mines, and as a result of this almost necessary rule, every convict has
an opportunity to listen to the vilest obscenity that ever falls upon
human ears. At times, when some of these convicts, who seem veritable
encyclopedias of wickedness, are crowded together, the ribald jokes,
obscenity and blasphemy are too horrible for description. It is a
pandemonium--a miniature hell! But worse than this horrible flow of
language are the horrible and revolting practices of the mines.
Men, degraded to a plane lower than the brutes, are guilty of the
unmentionable crimes referred to by the Apostle Paul in his letter to
the Romans, chapter I, verse 27, which is as follows: "And likewise also
the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lusts
one toward another, men with men, working that which is unseemly, and
receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet."
Every opportunity is here offered for this vile practice. They are far
removed from the light and even from the influences of their officers,
and in the darkness and silence old and hardened criminals debase and
mistreat themselves and sometimes the younger ones that are associated
with them in their work. These cases of self-abuse and sodomy are of
daily occurrence, and, although the officials of the prison take every