They had my
word for it--and you know how they replied.... The infamous tyranny of
the majority. The greatest judicial crime in a decade, and they laughed.
"So now I lie awake in the long nights with nine years of _that_ to look
back on.
"Let my life be a lesson to you teaching you--if nothing else--that it
is of no use to fight society. They have a hopeless advantage, the
contemptible advantage of numbers, and they are not ashamed to use
it.... But my spirit would not let me lie quiet under injury and
insult. I was ever a fighter, born to die with my spurs on. And when I
die at last, they will find that I go with a Parthian shot ... and after
all have the last word.
"So I came out into a bright world again, an old man before my time,
ruined forever, marked with a scarlet mark to wear to my grave....
"And then in time, as of course it would, the resolve came to me to come
straight back here to die. A man wants to die among his own people. They
were all that ever meant anything to me--they have that to boast of....
I loved this city once. To die anywhere else ... why, it was
meaningless, a burlesque on death.
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