While
in the grade school at San Quentin we had a teacher who used to
dramatize the hangings for our benefit. I suppose she thought it was
a good object lesson to teach us how to avoid such a fate. She was an
Old Maid type and was not well liked. She used to spend nearly an
hour a day reading to us from the Bible.
One
day, on a Black Friday, she lectured us on the evils of crime and
told us how that poor, wretched man was soon to die. She would look
at the clock and say, "That poor man has only thirty minutes to
live". Then she would repeat this at twenty minutes, ten minutes
and so forth. Then as the clock struck ten, she would say, "He's
gone." Now get out your arithmetic books and go to work."
Author:
William J. Duffy, Jr.
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