Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/335

 FROM THE &quot;LONDON TIMES&quot;

occupied during such a dreary stretch of time, and given the chief warden s room and comfortable quarters. His mind was always busy with the catastrophe of his life, and with the slaughtered inventor, and he now took the fancy that he would like to have the telelectroscope and divert his mind with it. He had his wish. The connection was made with the international telephone-station, and day by day, and night by night, he called up one corner of the globe after another, and looked upon its life, and studied its strange sights, and spoke with its people, and realized that by grace of this marvelous instrument he was almost as free as the birds of the air, although a prisoner under locks and bars. He seldom spoke, and I never interrupted him when he was absorbed in this amusement. I sat in his parlor and read and smoked, and the nights were very quiet and reposefully sociable, and I found them pleasant. Now and then I would hear him say, &quot;Give me Yedo&quot;; next, &quot;Give me Hong-Kong&quot;; next, &quot;Give me Melbourne.&quot; And I smoked on, and read in comfort, while he wandered about the remote under- world, where the sun was shining in the sky, and the people were at their daily work. Sometimes the talk that came from those far regions through the microphone attachment inter ested me, and I listened.

Yesterday I keep calling it yesterday, which is quite natural, for certain reasons the instrument remained unused, and that, also, was natural, for it was the eve of the execution-day. It was spent in tears and lamentations and farewells. The governor

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