eived a death certificate from the doctor of pneumonia, or
Bright's disease, or valvular disease of the heart.

But me Warden Atherton could never kill. Never did the urgency arise of
carting my maltreated and perishing carcass to the hospital. Yet I will
say that Warden Atherton tried his best and dared his worst. There was
the time when he double-jacketed me. It is so rich an incident that I
must tell it.

It happened that one of the San Francisco newspapers (seeking, as every
newspaper and as every commercial enterprise seeks, a market that will
enable it to realize a profit) tried to interest the radical portion of
the working class in prison reform. As a result, union labour possessing
an important political significance at the time, the time-serving
politicians at Sacramento appointed a senatorial committee of
investigation of the state prisons.

This State Senate committee _investigated_ (pardon my italicized sneer)
San Quentin. Never was there so model an institution of detention. The
convicts themselves so testified. Nor can one blame them. They had
experienced similar investigations in the past. They knew on which side
their bread was buttered. They knew that all their sides and most of
their ribs would ache very quickly after the taking of their testimony
. . . if said testimony were adverse to the prison administration. Oh,
believe me, my reader, it is a very ancient story. It was ancient in old
Babylon, many a thousand years ago, as I well remember of that old time
when I rotted in prison while palace intrigues shook the court.

As I have said, every convict testified to the humaneness of Warden
Atherton's administration. In fact, so touching were their testimonials
to the kindness of the Warden, to the good and varied quality of the food
and the cooking, to the gentleness of the guards, and to the general
decency and ease and comfort of the prison domicile, that the opposition
newspapers of San Francisco raised an indignant cry for more rigour in
the management of our prisons, in that, otherwise, honest but lazy
citizens would be seduced into seeking enrolment as prison guests.

The Senate Committee even invaded solitary, where the three of us had
little to lose and nothing to gain. Jake Oppenheimer spat in its faces
and told its members, all and sundry, to go to hell. Ed Morrell told
them what a noisome stews the place was, insulted the Warden to his face,
and was recommended by the co