189G. 



THE AMERICAN DKK-KKKPER. 



109 



••WHEN ELI'S HAD 'HIS DINNER." 



On loni,', hot Sinulay aftornoons, 



Wlii'ij we've K<'t lionio from meetin. 

 An Eli's cliiinf^^'d his pantaloons, 



He's awlul set on catin. 

 He's iliar out latii'oiiseross 'twould shame 



An uni'onverti^l sinner. 

 I havtr to stand a heap of blams 



Till i-AVa got his dinner. 



An so I'm never very slow 



To K -t the kettU' l.ilin; 

 I call it <iuty, for I know 



His temper is a spilin, 

 I warm the taters an the meat 



^n don't let nothin hinder, 

 An then I let the feller eat. 



An Eli gets his dinner. 



Now, Eli's not a greedy man. 



But .somehow, eome a Sunday, 

 He'll I'at a bigger dinner than 



He'd think of on a Monday. 

 An when he's done ho tips his chair 



Baek 'gainst the kitcnen winder. 

 An soon you'll hear a snorin there 



When Eli's got his dinner. 



But when he's dozed a little while. 



Half wakin an half sleepin. 

 He'll wake up in a better style 



For Sunday an a deakin. 

 He'll talk so pious an so kind, 



'Twould touch u hardened sinner; 

 A better man you'd never find 



Than Eli after dinner. 



—Chicago Inter Ocean. 



BIG TOM, CONVICT. 



There were those who said that con- 

 vict 1280 was ianoceut of the crime 

 ■which sent him to prison for such a long 

 term of years, but that there was scarce 

 a hope of his ever being a free man 

 again. They meant that he was tech- 

 nically guilty. He had sought to save a 

 •woman from a beating at the hands of 

 her husband, and in the struggle and 

 excitement he had struck a blow which 

 caused the death of the man. It was 

 accident, iu a sense, but it was also 

 manslaughter. No man who is a man 

 will stand by and see a woman beaten, 

 and yet if he interferes he must take 

 his chances with the law. Big Tom, as 

 the convict was sometimes referred to, 

 was, like most big men, a child in his 

 gentleness and goodnature. He did not 

 complain, but he gru^ved. He thought 

 of the years and years which must drag 

 away before the prison doors would open 

 to him, and he moved about like a 

 •weak, old man. The prison officials felt 



pity for tuo inuu, Lui a couvict is a con- 

 vict, and all must be treated alike — all 

 who show obedience to the rules. They 

 sized him up as childlike and good na- 

 tured, and yet they said to each other as 

 they talked of bim : 



"Look out for Big Tom! He will 

 break loose some day and do some des 

 perate thing!" 



They thought it would come during 

 the tirst six mouths of his term — then 

 during the second — then they almost 

 became afraid of him. Men who are 

 slow to anger — who go on grieving, 

 brooding and bearing a mental burden 

 for weeks and mouths are devils when 

 the climax comes. 



Big Tom had the management of the 

 trip hammer in the machine shop. Had 

 they put him in the shoe shop or tailor 

 shop he would have rebelled at once. 

 His place was beside the biggest pieca 

 of machinery in the shops, two pieces 

 of machinery, as it were — Tom and 

 Trip. Day by day and week by week 

 and month by month, as the ponderous 

 hammer rose and fell and its blows 

 shook the very earth for yards around, 

 making the convict smile and look 

 proud, the guards had an eye on him 

 and kept saying to each other: 



"It will come. It is only delayed. 

 When he breaks loose, he will kill some 

 one and have to be killed in turn." 



Nearly half of the second year had 

 passed, and the giant convict had never 

 even sulked, when one day there came 

 into the sliop as sightseers a husband, 

 wife and little girl 4 or 5 years old. 

 Children are seldom seen in prisons, 

 and it is a rare thing that they are 

 taken into the shops in the yards. If 

 any one in that prison knew that 

 convict 1280 had a daughter — a fair 

 haired, handsome child, who could only 

 walk alone when the jury pronounced 

 his verdict of "guilty" — he had for- 

 gotten the fact. His wife had visited 

 him as often as visitors were allowed, 

 but the child had never been seen with- 

 in the grim walls. Knowing that her 

 husband had killed a man by accident, 

 the wife could bear to see him wearing 

 the horrible stripes of a convict, but to 

 let the child look upon him, to gaze in 

 wonder at the iron bars, to ask why all 

 those men were there, a thousand times 

 no I And so this was the first child Big 

 Tom had seen since the heavy doors shut 



