“Forget It,” Advises The Judge
Submitted by Peggy A. Wells
Ironton Sunday Tribune, 19 September 1926, Sunday, Page 1
NEBRASKA CITY, Neb., Sept. 18.–AP–Conscience stricken because he had stolen chickens during the Civil War and desiring to square accounts before it is too late, “Tim” Crook, an 80-year-old war veteran who lives in the hill country near Minersville, Neb., went before Dist. Judge Begley here and asked to be allowed to “plead guilty.”
Judge Begley just smiled and told him to forget about it.
“You see, when I was in company A of the Tenth Kansas infantry,” the grizzled veteran said, “we did not get to eat, but every once in a while and a stray goat or chicken was our meal. I guess I shot and stole from the big plantations as many as the next one.
They say that all is fair in love and war, and we were lots and eating little, and maybe it was all right, but I ain’t felt right about it ever since. When this bread and water sentence business at Tekamah came up, I decided that if they were going to be that rough on poor fellows violating the liquor laws in other parts of the state, that might be I had done wrong.
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