The Room with the Little Door

CHAPTER IV

The Murderers’ Home Journal

No newspapers were allowed in the Death-Chamber, therefore the longing for them among its inmates may be imagined. But the law that supply always follows demand, was operative even within the walls of the “dead house,” and properly so; for had we not all become intimately acquainted with Law? Therefore we had a newspaper of our own.

Let me tell you of the happy days (happily past) when I was editor-in-chief and proprietor of “The Murderers’ Home Journal,” sometimes lovingly referred to as “The Dead House Squealer.” The public will never turn over a file of its pages, but they may read here some extracts from its columns. As to the paper itself, it was as artistic as black and blue pencils could make it. We all contributed what and when we pleased. It appeared when convenient, and as nothing was charged for advertisements or subscriptions, no wonder it prospered. Every one in our community read it and read no other. It contained real poetry, jokes—what jokes!—essays on our neighbors’ behavior, and news—local news, together with advertisements which simply compelled attention. The letters therein to the editor-in-chief left nothing to the imagination. And the leaders—ah, I wrote them! How proudly I referred to myself as “we”! Sometimes I used a pencil almost as blue as myself, never a pen—a vein can be opened with a pen.

Every proprietor admires and praises his own publication, and I shall proceed to “Munsey” mine. I can say without egotism, since it is but imperfectly expressed justice, that there has never been another newspaper “approaching” it. “Old Sol” does not affect the Death-Chamber; no sun shone on it, so of course we could not “see it in the ‘Sun’”; but we were as up to date in our own affairs as the “Times” permitted, as sensational in local matters as all the “yellows” combined; nothing in the “World” got ahead of our “Journal” in this respect. Having no “News” we invented it, just as do the newspapers for which you pay, but we never had to take anything back. The “Tribune” from which it issued was my cage, and I, the editor-in-chief, remained as deaf as a “Post” to all abuse (I am used to it). As for a “Press,” we had none. It was printed by my tired fingers. The illustrations were alluring, and though we received neither “Telegram” nor “Mail and Express,” yet we never forgot a text to “Herald” our first column. It was always the same one—“Damn the Jury.” Its politics were “sound.” (All politics are that.) We opposed the government with a capital O, and that institution responded with the only practical solution for restraining the license of modern journalism—it killed the editors. I can truthfully say that it cost me a great deal of money to escape even as far as the “Tombs.” Many of my unfortunate associates have also “passed away” to similar places, and I wish some reporters I know of could be assigned to interview them.

I pass over all the local news which appeared in the “Murderers’ Home Journal.” Such announcements as “John, the Greek, has come back for nineteen years—foolish John!” “Bill Newfeldt caught a mouse in his sock last night—poor thing!” Such as the above, and the chronicled fact that Doctor Sam’s office hours in the morning were from twelve A.M. to twelve P.M., and in the afternoon from twelve P.M. to twelve A.M. (in spite of this he had no “patients”), or a brilliantly worded “ad” advising the reader to take “Molineux’s Bromo-Seltzer”; all these were replete with absorbing interest to us, but not to you.

It was when the “divine afflatus” came upon us, as had the influenza the month previous—we all had it—that you might be interested. Many and varied were the verses that deluged the editorial sanctum; jingles, triolets, lyrics, epigrams, and of course the very first offered was—there, you have guessed it—“Spring.” I give it just as it came to me, leaving it for you to decide whether it be humorous or pitiful.

SPRING IN THE DEATH-CHAMBER.

Sweet Spring is here, and we all know it too,
But not, alas, as outside poets do.
Here are no birds, or flowers, or murmuring stream,
Our Spring arrives—when they turn off the steam.

This is a touching song by some true lover of dumb animals, written upon an occasion when one of them insisted upon sharing his couch:

MY RAT.

I love my rat so tenderly,
He is so gentle, don’t you see?
He guards my slumbers every night,
To keep me from the slightest fright.
No lions or ferocious bears
Can steal upon me unawares,
For there is such a noise in here
’Twould fill their cruel hearts with fear.
I love my rat, if he should die
Great tears of anguish I would cry.

Here is a particularly admired effort. It appealed to every member of our community on account of its spirited and militant sentiment. They say I wrote it. Undoubtedly it will appear in evidence against me in case of a new trial—hearsay evidence is “great stuff”:

DAWN.

When morning comes, and Joe pounds on the bar,
Calling me back from happy dreamland far;
Although “they say” that two were killed by me,
How I regret I cannot make it three!

The following admirable pastoral was written by a gentleman with a longing for the delights of rural life—or life of any other kind:

MY ONION.

I love to see my onion grow
And send its shoots up in the air.
It is a homely plant, I know,
But yet its stalks are green and fair.

They say the rose would smell as
If called by any other name,
And so to make my joy complete;
A rose and onion are the same.

For you may call it what you like,
By any name that’s long or small,
And though you smell all day and night,
The onion has no smell at all.

This is wilful peevishness: the protest of some professional kicker:

MY SOCKS.

My feet are number seven, but the law says I must wear
A pair of socks that are five sizes small;
That’s why I cry aloud and dance and at the keepers swear,
And on the State the wrath of Heaven call.

I wish the Sheriff, Governor, the Judge and President
And the Jury were all here behind the locks;
And that ministers of justice would their living long prevent,
For my toes are packed like sardines in a box.

From one of those detestable individuals who wants everything:

THE BARBER.

The barber with his little chair comes every Saturday,
And after he has shaved us all, he vanishes away.
And once a month he cuts our hair; oh, what an hour of pride!
He cuts so much and well that we all want to go outside.
But when I asked the keeper kind (My, I was awful bold!),
“No, no,” he said, “just see your head, I fear you would catch cold.”

SULKY ROLIE.

I go to Sing Sing public school,
Where naughty boys are sometimes sent,
Receiving as a general rule
A goodly share of punishment.

I try so hard to do what’s right,
I study long and never play;
Why then have I this wretched plight
That they should “keep me in” all day?

It is natural for a man to strive for perpetual success; but we, who are to lose our lives, should bear lesser misfortunes with greater fortitude than is expressed by this poet. The editor is not in sympathy with his contributor:

CHESS.

When I play chess with other boys,
It’s one of all my dearest joys
To hear them rant and storm and tear,
If by my skilfulness and care
They should the losers be.
Sometimes I am not feeling well,
Since I the “honest truth” must tell,
And though you would not think they’d dare,
I’m walloped well. Gosh! how I swear!
If they should checkmate me.

In an early issue a gem of an epigram appeared, and straightway epigrams became the mode—we all affected them. The vogue was hard while it lasted. A dozen times a day I was assured over the wireless telephone (Nature’s) that Bill or Mike or another had a “bird” for the next issue. Here are some of them.

This one was the “first offence.” If you like it, it is mine; but of course if any one is going to get mad about it, then another fellow, one of the dead ones, was its author. Is not its sentiment exquisite?

AN EPITAPH WHICH CANNOT BE USED TOO SOON.

Here lies a judge, whose last words I indite:
“I’ll go to Heaven—I’ll go this very night.”
He died as with himself he yet conversed;
As usual—his decision was reversed.

Another of great beauty and singularly apt. I have a shrewd suspicion that it refers to the same person:

TO A VERY LEARNED JUDGE.

His Honor is wrong, in error, unwise.
He blunders in every case that he tries;
With “Wisdom” he will not compromise.
So I asked him the reason why.
The judge replied, after due reflection,
“To ‘Wisdom’ I have a good objection:
She had nothing to do with my election.”
“I agree with you,” said I.

Still another, evidently referring to the same respected jurist. It is a lofty and improving message from the Bench. I am very partial to this one:

HEARD IN COURT.

I’ve changed my mind. Oh, no, I haven’t! Did I?
What? I charged that way? No, indeed! I did!
I mean that I said, No. Yes, Yes! I did not.
Then I will charge it. What? My meaning hid?
My former rulings? I forget them, curse it!
My opinion is not quite clear, and I reverse it!

Modesty restrains me from mentioning the author of this glittering example of pure idealism:

THE COLONEL.

The colonel lay dying. An angel appeared.
This man of great family and titles he cheered,
“Fear not, to a better place you will be borne,”
The colonel’s reply was—“To Hell with reform!”

After a certain assistant district attorney, noted for his verboseness, had made his closing argument, the jury convicted the composer of this couplet. He seems to resent it:

THE JURY.

To call them twelve trees would be nothing unkind;

They were crooked and green; they were swayed by the wind.

To an assistant district attorney who proved nothing but his own desire for notoriety and his ability to make a noise and keep the Court of Appeals busy. Those who heard him sum up the first important case he ever had, and the one on which rests his reputation (for brutality and unfairness), may remember and see the application to a certain part of his closing address:

He persecutes the charming “Bell,”
His “brazen tongue” has now full “swing,”
With clamorous lies he “told” this “knell,”
Produce, produce, produce the—“ring.”

AN EPITAPH TO AN “ABLE ASSISTANT.”

In him a great philanthropist we see,
The friend of negro wench and stable boys,
He taught the gentle art of perjury,
To get convictions every vice employs.

This reminds me of Longfellow (it is so different):

TO A CERTAIN EXPERT.

I’m an expert. I raise chickens, so I know about a “quill,”
How it writes and what you think of while you sign a note or “bill,”
I’ll appear against or for you; either side without regard,
I can tell my favorite rooster by his claw marks in the yard.
Two wings this fowl possesses; o-“pinions” two have I
There’s one for you, or one for him, for any who will buy.
Like him, I love to “scratch” in dirt. I’m crooked as his walk,
I “plume” myself, and like my hens I cackle when I talk,
I’m “hatching” out a plot just now, really it’s very funny,
It’s all a guess—ridiculous—but then, I need the money.

Some lyrics found their way into those columns. Here is only one of them, for I fear your interest, like the newspaper itself, has ceased:

TO HER PHOTOGRAPH.

Painted by sunlight, all the brightness caught,
From out the sky and to my prison brought.
No vision, essence, song, so sweet by half,
As smiles to me from out her photograph.