Page:9009 (1908).djvu/128

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9009

At the end of thirty days he was taken before the Prison Board in the warden’s office. There he faced two corporation lawyers whose corporations were then undergoing prosecution, a pig-eyed grocer who adulterated, a wholesale liquor merchant, and a wormy ward politician, and these men took his copper away from him.

He went back to the dungeon and thought. He saw the two smug corporation lawyers who taught their corporations how to sap the law, the pig-eyed grocer who sold pickles preserved in sulphuric acid, the wholesale liquor merchant who helped finance a corrupt municipal party and thus forced his whiskey on all the city saloons, the ward politician who paid for votes with dollars. He knew of these men; he had read their record. He saw them, sitting in a solemn line behind their desks, with an expression of shocked severity taking from him his copper. And suddenly his laugh rang harsh and loud between the steel walls.

He stayed in the dungeon thirty days longer. At regular intervals, which were of twenty-four

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