of the land, and to prosecute with a ferocity that could be no more intense if they had suffered some injury in their own persons from the accused. And there are even men who are willing, for the most meager salaries, to act as guards and wardens in prisons, and to do all manner of things, even to commit crimes, or at least moral wrongs, in order to put men into prison and keep them there, unless they can kill them, and there are plenty who are willing to do that, if only society provides them with a rope or a wire to do it with.
XX
There was, however, in Toledo one man who could
sympathize with my attitude; and that was a man
whose determination to accept literally and to try to
practice the fundamental philosophy of Christianity
had so startled and confounded the Christians
everywhere that he at once became famous throughout
Christendom as "Golden Rule Jones." I had
known of him only as the eccentric mayor of our city,
and nearly everyone whom I had met since my advent
in Toledo spoke of him only to say something disparaging
of him. The most charitable thing they
said was that he was crazy. All the newspapers
were against him, and all the preachers. My own
opinion, of course, could have been of no consequence,
but I had learned in the case of Altgeld that
almost universal condemnation of a man is to be
examined before it is given entire credit. I do not
