betrayal on the part of a young Russian idealist, who had willingly
sacrificed all personal considerations to help in labor's
emancipation.

In October, 1893, Emma Goldman was tried in the criminal courts of
New York on the charge of inciting to riot. The "intelligent" jury
ignored the testimony of the twelve witnesses for the defense in
favor of the evidence given by one single man--Detective Jacobs. She
was found guilty and sentenced to serve one year in the penitentiary
at Blackwell's Island. Since the foundation of the Republic she was
the first woman--Mrs. Surratt excepted--to be imprisoned for a
political offense. Respectable society had long before stamped upon
her the Scarlet Letter.

Emma Goldman passed her time in the penitentiary in the capacity of
nurse in the prison hospital. Here she found opportunity to shed
some rays of kindness into the dark lives of the unfortunates whose
sisters of the street did not disdain two years previously to share
with her the same house. She also found in prison opportunity to
study English and its literature, and to familiarize herself with the
great American writers. In Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman,
Thoreau, and Emerson she found great treasures.

She left Blackwell's Island in the month of August, 1894, a woman of
twenty-five, developed and matured, and intellectually transformed.
Back into the arena, richer in experience, purified by suffering.
She did not feel herself deserted and alone any more. Many hands
were stretched out to welcome her. There were at the time numerous
intellectual oases in New York. The saloon of Justus Schwab, at
Number Fifty, First Street, was the center where gathered Anarchists,