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but I cannot let the occasion pass without expressing my emphatic condemnation of your
offense. The misapplication of public money has become the great crime of the age. If not
promptly and firmly checked, it will ultimately destroy our institutions. When a republic becomes
honeycombed with corruption its vitality is gone. It must crumble upon the first pressure.
"In my opinion, the public is much to blame for your offense and others of a similar character.
Heretofore, official fraud has been regarded with too much indifference. What we need is a
higher and purer political morality--a state of public opinion which would make the improper use
of public money a thing to be execrated. It was the lack of this which made your offense
possible. Beyond that I see nothing of extenuation in your case." Judge Payderson paused for
emphasis. He was coming to his finest flight, and he wanted it to sink in.
"The people had confided to you the care of their money," he went on, solemnly. "It was a high,
a sacred trust. You should have guarded the door of the treasury even as the cherubim
protected the Garden of Eden, and should have turned the flaming sword of impeccable
honesty against every one who approached it improperly. Your position as the representative of
a great community warranted that.
"In view of all the facts in your case the court can do no less than impose a major penalty. The
seventy-fourth section of the Criminal Procedure Act provides that no convict shall be sentenced
by the court of this commonwealth to either of the penitentiaries thereof, for any term which shall
expire between the fifteenth of November and the fifteenth day of February of any year, and this
provision requires me to abate three months from the maximum of time which I would affix in
your case--namely, five years. The sentence of the court is, therefore, that you pay a fine of five
thousand dollars to the commonwealth for the use of the county"-- Payderson knew well enough
that Stener could never pay that sum-- "and that you undergo imprisonment in the State
Penitentiary for the Eastern District, by separate and solitary confinement at labor, for the period
of four years and nine months, and that you stand committed until this sentence is complied
with." He laid down the briefs and rubbed his chin reflectively while both Cowperwood and
Stener were hurried out. Butler was the first to leave after the sentence--quite satisfied. Seeing
that all was over so far as she was concerned, Aileen stole quickly out; and after her, in a few
moments, Cowperwood's father and brothers. They were to await him outside and go with him
to the penitentiary. The remaining members of the family were at home eagerly awaiting
intelligence of the morning's work, and Joseph Cowperwood was at once despatched to tell
them.
The day had now become cloudy, lowery, and it looked as if there might be snow. Eddie
Zanders, who had been given all the papers in the case, announced that there was no need to
return to the county jail. In consequence the five of them--Zanders, Steger, Cowperwood, his
father, and Edward--got into a street-car which ran to within a few blocks of the prison. Within
half an hour they were at the gates of the Eastern Penitentiary. 
Chapter LIII
The Eastern District Penitentiary of Pennsylvania, standing at Fairmount Avenue and Twenty-
first Street in Philadelphia, where Cowperwood was now to serve his sentence of four years and
three months, was a large, gray-stone structure, solemn and momentous in its mien, not at all
unlike the palace of Sforzas at Milan, although not so distinguished. It stretched its gray length
for several blocks along four different streets, and looked as lonely and forbidding as a prison
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