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Show tlN THE ROUNDS" ! OF A DAY I By THE ROUNDER Today the Rounder meets an ex-convict ex-convict who has spent much of his life behind prison walls. Gray hairs and drawn features portray a pathetic picture beset with horrors hor-rors and dull monotony, but"withal a penitent soul, whose long years of dreariness have not completely robbed him of his faith in God and his fellowmen. This subject of today's yarn .was convicted of forgery and spent 15 years of his life in the Eddy-ville, Eddy-ville, Kentucky, prison; During that period he had time to reflect oceans of time. He tells of the , scene at court in which he is given from two to twenty years, and of his entrance behind steel barred doot. "How little we all can know as we grow from the cradle and early : youth to old age and the grave what march we are going to make in the highway marked 'Life'," the old fellow began. "What hangs around the corner? "Some are , successful to the point of home and riches. Others attain fame and not riches; some to the plain old routine marked 'honor and respect of neigh boi and friend.' "Thousands rise only to fall. , Thousands are tramping, tramping, tramp-ing, day after day, month after month and year after year into the 'marking of life past,' as the whistles of the prisons and bells of the convicts' camps sound, morning, noon and night to breakfast, break-fast, to work, to dinner, to cell, to work, to supper, and then again to cell. "Listening, ever listening, to the deep soul-cries of their hearts. "Night shadows fall, the tiny light from a ceiling of steel and concrete goes out 9 o'clock has come sleep ushers in the land of dreams, where loved ones at home are seen. Unfrlt tears dampen the sleeper's cheeks, while again he sees the deed committed and finally fin-ally is awakened from a laborous night by he shrill prison whistle." Reheaising many a weary tale this reformed man would substitute vocational training schools for prisons pris-ons and convict camps. Some place where the man and the woman, wom-an, th- .oy and the girl would be studied, their weaknesses and turns of mind learned, and their desires for learning a trade or a profession fulfilled that they, too,, might earn a place of honor for , themselves among their fellowmeji. |