318 Sheet – American State Trials 1918 Volume X Leo Frank Document

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Reading Time: 3 minutes [418 words]

Here is the translated text as follows:

986 X, AMERICAN STATE TRIALS,

You can find good men and women in all strata of life, and yet the detectives, working with microscopes and with the aid of my friend, Dorsey, excited almost beyond peradventure, found only two to swear against Frank. They found Dalton and they found Conley. Well, I'll take up Conley at a more fitting time, but Dalton, who is Dalton? God Almighty writes on a man's face, and he doesn't always write a pretty hand, but he writes a legible one. When you see Dalton, you put your hand on your pocketbook.

When Dalton took the stand, Mr. Arnold and I had never had the pleasure of seeing his sweet countenance before, but Mr. Arnold leaned over and whispered in my ear, "There's a thief if there ever was one." I smelt about him the odor of the chain gang, and I began to feel him out. I asked him if he had ever been away from home for any length of time, and he knew at once what I meant and he began to dodge and to wriggle, and before he left the stand, I was sure he was a thief.

Dalton was in trouble three times in Walton County and then in another county where he probably went to escape further trouble in Walton; he got into trouble again. It wasn't just the going wrong of a young man who falls once and tries to get over it, but it was the steady thievery of a man at heart a thief. Of course, Dalton comes here to Atlanta and reforms. Yes, he joined a Godly congregation and persuaded them that he had quit his evil ways. That's an old trick of thieves, and they use it to help their trade along.

I believe in the divine power of regeneration; I believe that you can reform, that there's always time to turn back and do right, but there's one kind of man whom I don't believe can ever reform. Once a thief, always a thief.

Our Master knew it. He recognized the qualities of a thief. You remember when they crucified Him and He hung on the cross there on the hill? Well, He had a thief hanging beside Him, and He said to that thief, "This day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise." He didn't dare say tomorrow. He knew He'd better say today, because by tomorrow that thief would be stealing again in Jerusalem. Dalton disgraced the name.