receive and record the last words of the condemned.

It was about six o'clock of a dark and rainy March evening. "Any statement
you would like to make?" One stands upon the brink of the living world,
facing the darkness and silence, and hears that question.

Here is an end of things, a nothing, a sort of death. The support and
countenance of one's fellow creatures are withdrawn; you are no longer a
part of organized social existence. The rights, privileges and courtesies
of manhood are stripped from you. You are adjudged unfit to touch the hand
of an honest man in greeting; you are made impotent, disgraced, consigned
to the refuse heap. The helpless shame put upon you is borne tenfold by
those who bear your name, those you love and who love you. All that
touches you henceforth shall be sordid, base and foul.

The prison officials who stand near you meet your eye with a leer of
familiarity; they have handled thousands of men in your situation; they
will have a grin or a growl for any remonstrance or protest you may make;
power over you has been given to them; in you there is no power. You
cannot blame them; their authority was deputed to them by men above them,
who in turn received it from others; they are parts of the great machine,
working irresistibly and automatically.

The judge is blameless; he had said, "The verdict of the jury makes it my
painful duty to sentence you!" The jury is not to blame; they had decided
upon the evidence, in accordance with their oath. The witnesses who bore
testimony against you--did they not testify upon a solemn adjuration to
utter nothing but the truth, at the peril of their immortal souls? The
indictments to whose truth they bore witness--were they not made and
brought by officers appointed by law to seek only impartial justice, and