At the meeting we had there in the afternoon, Aristides reported our
having been warned against our danger in the night by that murderer, and
public record of the fact was made. The Altrurians consider any sort of
punishment which is not expiation a far greater sin than the wrong it
visits, and altogether barren and useless. After the record in this case
had been made, the conference naturally turned upon what Aristides had
seen of the treatment of criminals in America, and when, he told of our
prisons, where people merely arrested and not yet openly accused are
kept, I did not know which way to look, for you know I am still an
American at heart, Dolly. Did you ever see the inside of one of our
police-stations at night? Or smell it? I did, once, when I went to give
bail for a wretched girl who had been my servant, and had gone wrong, but
had been arrested for theft, and I assure you that the sight and the
smell woke me in the night for a month afterwards, and I have never quite
ceased to dream about it.
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