On either side of me are three murderers, and my cell has a murderer’s
lock. My bed is straw, with a blanket. I slept well last night, and had
a good breakfast this morning, which my keeper kindly procured for me,
and who has extended the kindness of a brother towards me, in obtaining
every thing I desired for my comfort, and in permitting my friends to
visit me. I have read all the daily papers; and to Horace Greeley,
Doctor Frank Tuthill of the _Times_, and to James and Erastus Brooks,
for their genial sympathy, I express my cordial gratitude. The _Courier
& Enquirer_ is silent, and that is preferable to denunciation, in my
shackles and dungeon gloom. Bennett lashes me with the stings of a
scorpion, who has fattened on libel and obscenity, and blasphemy, and
black mail, from the dawn of his infamous editorial career. In his aged
visions he often beholds the poor creatures whom his defamation hurled
into premature graves. Halleck, of the _Journal of Commerce_, is brief
but bitter in his comments on my alleged lunacy. The _Daily News_ I have
not seen, but I learn that its anathema of me is terrible, and has a
bulletin against me written in letters of blood. Its former editor, Mr.
Auld, is the Mayor’s Clerk, which accounts for the severe comments of
the _News_. But the article in the _Sun_ grieved me more than all the
phillippics of my editorial adversaries. The _Sun_ has clung to me for a
dozen years, and to have it desert me now, is like the fatal stab of
Brutus at Caesar. But I will forgive Moses S. Beach and John Vance of
the _Sun_ for their deep and unexpected gashes in my heart. Let all my
friends be cheerful, when I inform them that neither sighs nor tears
have passed from my lips or eyes, and that I only grieve at the official
stabs at the liberty of speech and of the press, which the people will
be sure to avenge, and soon consign the Grand Jury Inquisitions to the
Spanish despots, and all their advocates to an ignominious destiny.