He knew when the Senator from Maxwell completed the recital of facts
and entered upon his plea. He was conscious that it was stronger
than he had anticipated--more logic and less empty exhortation. He
was telling of the boy's life in reformatory and penitentiary since
the commission of the crime,--of how he had expanded under kindness,
of his mental attainments, the letters he could write, the books he
had read, the hopes he cherished. In the twelve years he had spent
there he had been known to do no unkind nor mean thing; he responded
to affection--craved it. It was not the record of a degenerate, the
Senator from Maxwell was saying.

A great many things were passing through the mind of the Senator
from Johnson. He was trying to think who it was that wrote that
book, "Put Yourself in His Place." He had read it once, and it
bothered him to forget names. Then he was wondering why it was the
philosophers had not more to say about the incongruity of people who
had never had any trouble of their own sitting in judgment upon
people who had known nothing but trouble. He was thinking also that
abstract rules did not always fit smoothly over concrete cases, and
that it was hard to make life a matter of rules, anyway.

Next he was wondering how it would have been with the boy Alfred
Williams if he had been born in Charles Harrison's place; and then
he was working it out the other way and wondering how it would have
been with Charles Harrison had he been born in Alfred Williams's
place. He wondered whether the idea of murder would have grown in
Alfred Williams's heart had he been born to the things to which
Charles Harrison was born, and whether it would have come within the
range of possibility for Charles Harrison to murder his father if he
had been born to Alfred Williams's lot. Putting it that way, it was