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Show A Sad Case. At !nst men came to eet me froc-I froc-I nsk'il not w hy. and rcok'd not where My very chains and I jrrcw Iremls, So much a lonir communion Tends To uiiiV.e us what w e are: oven I Jtejrai ned my freedom with a irh. A sad story comes from Lansing, Mich. Early in tne Ws James Hitchcock, Hitch-cock, who lived in Hunker Hill of that State, quarreled with an acquaintance on the highway and killed him by in-tl'cling in-tl'cling a Miife wound. He was "tried by due course nf law and s nteuced to the p. uiteuiiiy fjr i:fe. He insisted that he killed his acquaintance in self-defence, self-defence, but c.u!d not establish it in court. A few days aero, however, the pri'ieii.nl witness died and confessed on his death bed to perjury in the Hi; - ;ie, c': c .se. it was this w hich led io il ;ic::co; k's p.iidon after serving tinriy-lh'.ee years in the state prison. W: e:i tic iuoiiensive o'd man waspar-d.re.l waspar-d.re.l he w as: he oldest, convict in the prson. It was a new world that he s epp d ii.r.. trom his ! ving tomb. He e d i eer ridden on a railway train, never h '.'.r i '.h- click of a telegraph m-trirue':'. . u-u' the ariicuiative vibrations vi-brations f t-i.e telephone. Sadder stid, his wife as dead and his family soca1ered that no truce of them could lv foi'.nd. Liberty had come but if bk-saiuffs to him mot! be a deeper loneliness than imprisonment. The old man is a pitiable figure, l owed and bent, his hair and beard snowy white and his face colorless. He wanders wan-ders about the capitol corridors daily, peering wistfully through swinging doors into the legislative halls. He has asked the Legislature to appropriate appropri-ate $3,000 for him in his old age on the assumption that he is innocent and was wrongfully imprisoned, which doubtless is the case. There ought to be. little hesitancy if the facts are as reported. It would be but a small compensation for the wrong the state has inflicted on him through the false testimony of a wretch for whom the fires of hell are altogether too cool. Cases of this k nd splendidly illustrate the doctrine in law that it is better that ninety-nine guilty persons should escape the penalty of the law than that one innocent man should suffer. Herald. |