Trooper Tales — page 205: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Last Cell to the Right. Igl but everywhere her eyes followed the baby. They were filled with seeming consciousness of that crime which gave him life in a prison cell. They were bright with the staring brightness of fever. Had they shone from a skull wrapped in brown paper they would not have made you shudder more. The father of the infant was never seen, but day and night his moans were heard in the plaza. There are men and women in Porto Rican prisons who have committed no crime. When families can furnish no home for themselves the province gives them a cell. At 11 o'clock each day the province also gives them a cupful of clay-colored soup, the primary mystery of which no soldier has yet solved. The province does not care if its paupers obtain other articles of food. They are welcome to anything which they can beg on the outside. But when the life spark has become gray and chilled, as in the case of Tad’s mother and father—so depleted that they crawl with groans and great difficulty—then they have nothing but clay-colored soup to make their dying longer. In- deed, some paupers have been dying for years upon it. © This is a matter of no consequence to the province. American paupers and soldiers have an enlightened habit of eating three times a day. They are unlike the Porto Rican in this respect. One’s bones need little food. When all one’s muscles are attenuated and dried into stiff, brown cords from eat- ing clay-colored soup, then one’s stomach ceases its pain- ful gnawings at a vacuum. Tad’s mother was like this. His father was not yet in that condition, You could tell GOMIGDOOKS-GomM