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A Convict's Answer

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Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 17, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 3.

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A Convict's Answer.

WHEN the notorious James Robinson, or “Jack Sheppard,” as he is known to the detectives, was sentenced at Philadelphia to three years in the Eastern penitentiary, he was advised by the Judge to try to lead a better life, which lay entirely with himself. “Yes,” answered he, “I worked three years in your State Prison, and I know as much about shoe-making as I do about watches. They taught me in your prison to be dishonest. My principal work was to paste leather and pasteboard together to make a thick sole to impose upon the public. The man having the contract was a Christian, a member of the church, and at the time I called his attention to the pasteboard business, he was foreman of the grand jury. They send me to the State Prison to make me honest, and that is the way they do it.—Sel.