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Show A LESSON IN WILD OATS. i California papers are commenting on the float, in the Fourth of July parade at San Rafael, which waa made by the convicts in San Quentin prison. The float, drawn by two magnificent dapple gray horses and driven by one of the prison, guards, with a second guard Fitting beside him with a rifle across his knees, was built upon a square framework, which was covered with a coarse screen, and this screen was stuck full of brilliant and harmonious flowers, such bios-soms bios-soms as seem to develop only under the hands of the skilled convict gardeners at San Quentin. But it was not the long square frame studded with fragrant blossoms that caught and held the eye. Surmounting this was a miniature cellhouse, an exact reproduction of one of the tollhouses at the prison, with painted gratings and numbers above the cell doors. At each corner of the cellhouse, which was fifteen feet long, stood a miniature guard tower, exact replica of the towers which dot the hilltops outside the prison walls. No free man had a hand in planning or trimming this rather startling float. It was all done by the trusties who work tho gardens and flower beds. They had stuffed the space between the flower covered frame and the gray cellhouse with long grasses. As the float moved through the streets of San Rafael these grasses waved gracefully in the breeze. At a little distance, dis-tance, it is said, the effect was odd, very odd, and the question is asked, had some sly convict worked it out or was it wholly uncon-icious uncon-icious humor? For the effect was of a grim penitentiary resting upon 1 luxuriant foundation of wild oats. The habits formed in boyhood fashion the man. "Wild Oats," those wild oats of youth, have made more than one convict ; perhaps the bigger percentage of imprisoned men can trace their inglorious careers back to the days of the sowing of wild oats. If some prisoner in San Quentin intentionally placed the wild oats in the float, he was thinking of the early mistakes whioh he made mistakes which, if avoided, would have kept him an honored and useful member of society. |