And so queer is Arvilly's mind since what she's went through that she spoke right up and told Tommy that there wuz lots of rulers to-day jest as wicked and fur wickeder. Sez she, "There are plenty of men in every city in America that get the right from the rulers of the country to destroy children in a much worse way than to cut their heads off."
Sez she, "There are men who entice young children to smoke cigarettes, drugged on purpose to form a thirst for strong drink, then enticed into drinking-dives, where goodness and innocence are murdered and evil passions planted and nursed into life, for the overthrowing of all their goodness, for the murder of their family's safety and happiness and making them the nation's menace and greatest danger."
And Tommy wonnered and wonnered what could make men do so, and so did I.
And Arvilly sez, "What is cuttin' off the heads of twenty or thirty babies compared to the thousands and thousands of murders that this licensed evil causes every year?"
Tommy's pretty face looked sad and he sez: "Why do good folks let it go on?"
And Arvilly sez, "Heaven knows--I don't. But I've cleared my skirts in the matter. There won't be any innocent blood on my skirts at the last day."
And Tommy bent his head and looked intently at the bottom of her dress; and I see my pardner furtively glance at the bottom of his own pantaloons; he acted guilty.
It is about two milds and a quarter round the city; the walls are thirty or forty feet high; there are thirty-four towers on the walls, and the city has eight gates. It has a population of one hundred thousand, more Jews than any other race; for according to the Scripture, jest as the Jews wuz scattered to the four winds of heaven, they have of late been flocking home to Jerusalem jest as the old prophets predicted exactly.
During their hours of prayer, many Jews wear phylactrys bound to their forwards and arms, and Robert Strong said he saw one nailed to a doorpost.
It is a long, narrer case, shaped some like a thermometer, with a round hole towards the top of it covered with a lid which they can lift up and see a few words of the ancient parchment inside, some as the little boy had his prayer printed on the head-board, and on cold nights would pint to it, sayin', "O Lord, them's my sentiments."