Tom Gallon

Tinman Tom Gallon

In all that I shall set down here, in telling the strange story of my poor life, I shall write nothing but the truth. It has been written in many odd times and in many odd places: in a prison cell, on paper stamped with the prison mark; on odd scraps of paper in a lonely garret under the stars, with a candle-end for light-and I, poor and old and shivering-scrawling hastily because the time was so short. I have been at once the meanest and the greatest of all men; the meanest-because all men shuddered at the mere mention of my name, and at the thought of what I had done; the greatest-because one woman loved me, and taught me that beyond that nothing else mattered.