At the end, with a pride in my rhetorical powers which proceeded from a misunderstanding of the situation, I remarked to the chairman: "I held that audience well; there wasn't an interruption." To which the chairman replied: "Interruption?
Well, I guess not! Seth had sent round word that if any son of a gun peeped he'd kill him!" There was one bit of frontier philosophy which I should like to see imitated in more advanced communities.

Certain crimes of revolting baseness and cruelty were never forgiven.

But in the case of ordinary offenses, the man who had served his term and who then tried to make good was given a fair chance; and of course this was equally true of the women.

Every one who has studied the subject at all is only too well aware that the world offsets the readiness with which it condones a crime for which a man escapes punishment, by its unforgiving relentlessness to the often far less guilty man who _is_ punished, and who therefore has made his atonement.

On the frontier, if the man honestly tried to behave himself there was generally a disposition to give him fair play and a decent show.