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JACOB HODGES. 23
igious culture, was not entertained even
by the Christian community. There was
little of kindness, sympathy, or mercy felt
for the prisoner. All was conducted upon
the ordinary principles of strict, impartial,
legal justice.
Towards Jacob Hodges, a miserable
African, a murderer, there may have been
some severity, owing either to his own
refractory temper, or the character of his
keepers. While, as he told me, he was
not over-worked and had enough to eat
and drink, there was nothing to win his
confidence or to excite his better feelings.
He was treated as an ignorant, aban¬
doned, wretched murderer, who, though
he had escaped the gallows, was unde¬
serving of the ordinary kindness and
sympathy usually extended to the less
flagrantly guilty. We can easily imagine,
too, that Jacob's prison-dress; the neces¬
sary associations with his past history; his
strongly marked, dark African features,
together with his stately, resolute carriage,
may all have served to turn away all