The reader of it halted,all the way through,on a lame and broken voice;yet he had tried to fortify his feelings by several private readings of the letter before venturing into company with it.
He was practising upon me to see if there was any hope of his being able to read the document to his prayer-meeting with anything like a decent command over his feelings.The result was not promising.However,he determined to risk it;and did.
He got through tolerably well;but his audience broke down early,and stayed in that condition to the end.
The fame of the letter spread through the town.A brother minister came and borrowed the manu,put it bodily into a sermon,preached the sermon to twelve hundred people on a Sunday morning,and the letter drowned them in their own tears.
Then my friend put it into a sermon and went before his Sunday morning congregation with it.It scored another triumph.
The house wept as one individual.
My friend went on summer vacation up into the fishing regions of our northern British neighbors,and carried this sermon with him,since he might possibly chance to need a sermon.
He was asked to preach,one day.The little church was full.
Among the people present were the late Dr.J.G.Holland,the late Mr.Seymour of the 'New York Times,'Mr.Page,the philanthropist and temperance advocate,and,I think,Senator Frye,of Maine.The marvelous letter did its wonted work;all the people were moved,all the people wept;the tears flowed in a steady stream down Dr.Holland's cheeks,and nearly the same can be said with regard to all who were there.
Mr.Page was so full of enthusiasm over the letter that he said he would not rest until he made pilgrimage to that prison,and had speech with the man who had been able to inspire a fellow-unfortunate to write so priceless a tract.
Ah,that unlucky Page!--and another man.If they had only been in Jericho,that letter would have rung through the world and stirred all the hearts of all the nations for a thousand years to come,and nobody might ever have found out that it was the confoundedest,brazenest,ingeniousest piece of fraud and humbuggery that was ever concocted to fool poor confiding mortals with!
The letter was a pure swindle,and that is the truth.
And take it by and large,it was without a compeer among swindles.
It was perfect,it was rounded,symmetrical,complete,colossal!
The reader learns it at this point;but we didn't learn it till some miles and weeks beyond this stage of the affair.
My friend came back from the woods,and he and other clergymen and lay missionaries began once more to inundate audiences with their tears and the tears of said audiences;I begged hard for permission to print the letter in a magazine and tell the watery story of its triumphs;numbers of people got copies of the letter,with permission to circulate them in writing,but not in print;copies were sent to the Sandwich Islands and other far regions.
Charles Dudley Warner was at church,one day,when the worn letter was read and wept over.At the church door,afterward,he dropped a peculiarly cold iceberg down the clergyman's back with the question--'Do you know that letter to be genuine?'
It was the first suspicion that had ever been voiced;but it had that sickening effect which first-uttered suspicions against one's idol always have.Some talk followed--'Why--what should make you suspect that it isn't genuine?'
'Nothing that I know of,except that it is too neat,and compact,and fluent,and nicely put together for an ignorant person,an unpractised hand.
I think it was done by an educated man.'
The literary artist had detected the literary machinery.
If you will look at the letter now,you will detect it yourself--it is observable in every line.
Straightway the clergyman went off,with this seed of suspicion sprouting in him,and wrote to a minister residing in that town where Williams had been jailed and converted;asked for light;and also asked if a person in the literary line (meaning me)might be allowed to print the letter and tell its history.
He presently received this answer--
Rev.-----
MY DEAR FRIEND,--In regard to that 'convict's letter'there can be no doubt as to its genuineness.'Williams,'to whom it was written,lay in our jail and professed to have been converted,and Rev.Mr.----,the chaplain,had great faith in the genuineness of the change--as much as one can have in any such case.
The letter was sent to one of our ladies,who is a Sunday-school teacher,--sent either by Williams himself,or the chaplain of the State's prison,probably.She has been greatly annoyed in having so much publicity,lest it might seem a breach of confidence,or be an injury to Williams.
In regard to its publication,I can give no permission;though if the names and places were omitted,and especially if sent out of the country,I think you might take the responsibility and do it.