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Title: The Man Behind the Bars

Author: Winifred Louise Taylor

Release date: December 3, 2017 [eBook #56112]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by ellinora, Martin Pettit and the Online
        Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
        file was produced from images generously made available
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN BEHIND THE BARS ***




Produced by ellinora, Martin Pettit and the Online
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file was produced from images generously made available
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THE MAN BEHIND THE BARS

BY

WINIFRED LOUISE TAYLOR

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1914

COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Published October, 1914

[Illustration: Logo]


TO

MY PRISON FRIENDS




PREFACE


Lest any one may charge me with extravagant optimism in regard to
convicts, or may think that to me every goose is a swan, I wish to say
that I have written only of the men--among hundreds of convicts--who
have most interested me; men whom I have known thoroughly and who never
attempted to deceive me. Every writer's vision of life and of humanity
is inevitably colored by his own personality, and I have pictured these
men as I saw them; but I have also endeavored, in using so much from
their letters, to leave the reader free to form his own opinion.
Doubtless the key to my own position is the fact that I always studied
these prisoners as men; and I tried not to obscure my vision by looking
at them through their crimes. In recalling conversations I have not
depended upon memory alone, as much of what was said in our interviews
was written out while still fresh in my mind.

I have no wish to see our prisons abolished; but thousands of
individuals and millions of dollars have been sacrificed to wrong
methods of punishment; and if we aim to reform our criminals we must
first reform our methods of dealing with them, from the police court to
the penitentiary.

WINIFRED LOUISE TAYLOR.

_August 6, 1914._




THE MAN BEHIND THE BARS




CHAPTER I


I have often been asked: "How did you come to be interested in prisoners
in the first place?"

It all came about simply and naturally. I think it was W. F. Robertson
who first made clear to me the truth that what we put into life is of
far more importance than what we get out of it. Later I learned that
life is very generous in its returns for what we put into it.

In a quiet hour one day it happened that I realized that my life was out
of balance; that more than my share of things worth having were coming
to me, and that I was not passing them on; nor did I see any channel for
the passing on just at hand.

The one thing that occurred to me was to offer my services as teacher in
a Sunday-school. Now, I chanced to be a member of an Episcopal church
and their Sunday-school was held at an hour inconvenient for my
attendance; however, in our neighborhood was a Methodist church, and as
I had little regard for dividing lines among Christians I offered my
services the next Sunday to this Methodist Sunday-school. My preference
was for a class of young girls, but I was assigned as teacher to a class
of ten young men, of ages ranging between eighteen and twenty years, and
having the reputation of decided inclination toward the pomps and the
vanities so alluring to youth.

It was the season of revival meetings, and within a month every member
of my class was vibrating under the wave of religious excitement, and
each one in turn announced his "conversion." I hardly knew how to handle
the situation, for I was still in my twenties, and as an Episcopalian I
had never experienced these storm periods of religious enthusiasm. So
while the recent converts were rejoicing in the newly found grace, I was
considering six months later when a reaction might set in.

Toward the close of the revival one of the class said to me: "I don't
know what we're going to do with our evenings when the prayer-meetings
are over, for there's no place open every evening to the men in this
town except the saloons."

"We must make a place where you boys can go," was my reply.

What the class proceeded to do, then and there, was to form a club and
attractively furnish a large, cheerful room, to which each member had a
pass-key; and to start a small circulating library, at one stroke
meeting their own need and beginning to work outward for the good of the
community.

The first contribution toward this movement was from a Unitarian friend.
Later, Doctor Robert Collyer--then preaching in Chicago--and Doctor E.
E. Hale, of Boston, each gave a lecture for the benefit of our infant
library. Thus from the start we were untrammelled by sectarianism, and
in three months a library was founded destined to become the nucleus of
a flourishing public library, now established in a beautiful Carnegie
building, and extending its beneficent influence throughout the homes,
the schools, and the workshops of the city.

Of course I was immensely interested in the class, and in the success of
their library venture, and as we had no money to pay for the services
of a regular librarian the boys volunteered their services for two
evenings in the week, while I took charge on Saturday afternoons. This
library was the doorway through which I entered the prison life.

One Saturday a little boy came into the library and handed me the
charming Quaker love story, "Dorothy Fox," saying: "This book was taken
out by a man who is in jail, and he wants you to send him another book."

Now, I had passed that county jail almost every day for years; its rough
stone walls and narrow barred windows were so familiar that they no
longer made any impression upon me; but it had not occurred to me that
inside those walls were human beings whose thoughts were as my thoughts,
and who might like a good story, even a refined story, as much as I did,
and that a man should pay money that he had stolen for three months'
subscription to a library seemed to me most incongruous.

It transpired that the prisoner was a Scotch boy of nineteen, who, being
out of work, had stolen thirty-five dollars; taking small amounts as he
needed them. According to the law of the State the penalty for stealing
any amount under the value of fifteen dollars was a sentence to the
county jail, for a period usually of sixty days; while the theft of
fifteen dollars or more was a penitentiary offence, and the sentence
never for less than one year. I quote the statement of the case of this
Scotch boy as it was given me by a man who happened to be in the library
and who knew all the circumstances.

"The boy was arrested on the charge of having taken ten dollars--all
they could prove against him; and he would have got off with a jail
sentence, but the fool made a clean breast of the matter, and now he has
to lie in jail for six months till court is in session, and then he will
be sent to the penitentiary on his own confession."

Two questions arose in my mind: Was it only "the fool" who had made a
clean breast of the case? And if the boy was to go to prison on his own
confession, was it not an outrage that he should be kept in jail for six
months awaiting the formalities of the next session of the circuit
court? I did not then think of the taxpayers, forced to support this boy
in idleness for six months.

That night I did not sleep very well; the Scotch boy was on my mind, all
the more vividly because my only brother was of the same age, and then,
too, the words, "I was in prison and ye visited me not," repeated
themselves with insistent persistence until I was forced to meet the
question, "Did these words really mean anything for to-day and now?"

Next morning I asked my father if any one would be allowed to talk with
a prisoner in our jail. My father said: "Yes, but what would you have to
say to a prisoner?" "I could at least ask him what books he would like
from the library," I replied. But I could not bring my courage to the
point of going to the jail; it seemed a most formidable venture. Sunday,
Monday, and Tuesday passed, and still I held back; on Wednesday I was
driving with my brother, and when very near the jail the spring of the
carriage broke, and my brother told me that I would have to fill in time
somewhere until the break was repaired. I realized that the moment for
decision had come; and with a wildly beating heart I took the decisive
step, little dreaming when I entered the door of that jail that I was
committing myself to prison for life.

But we all take life one day, one hour, at a time; and five minutes
later when my hand was clasped through the grated door, and two big
gray eyes were looking straight into mine, I had forgotten everything
else in my interest in the boy. I asked him why he told that he had
taken thirty-five dollars when accused only of having taken ten, and he
simply said: "Because when I realized that I had become a thief I wanted
to become an honest man and I thought that was the place to begin."

Had I known anything of the law and its processes I should doubtless
have said: "Well, there's nothing for you to do now but to brace up and
meet your fate. There's nothing I can do to help you out of this
trouble." But in my fortunate ignorance of obstacles I said: "I'll see
what I can do to help you." I had only one thought--to save that young
man from the penitentiary and give him a fresh start in life.

I began with the person nearest at hand, the sheriff's wife, and she
secured the sheriff as my first adviser; then I went to the wife of the
prosecuting attorney for the State, and she won her husband over to my
cause. One after another the legal difficulties were overcome, and this
was the way the matter was settled: I secured a good situation for Willy
in case of his release; Willy gave the man from whom he had taken the
money a note for the full amount payable in ninety days--the note signed
by my father and another responsible citizen; the case was given a
rehearing on the original charge of ten dollars, and Willy's sentence
was ten days in the county jail; and this fortunate settlement of the
affair was celebrated with a treat of oranges and peanuts for Willy and
his fellow prisoners. A good part of that ten days Willy spent in
reading aloud to the other men. Immediately after release he went to
work and before the expiration of the ninety days the note for
thirty-five dollars was paid in full. Now, this was the sensible, fair,
and human way of righting a wrong. Nevertheless, we had all joined hands
in "compounding a felony."

With Willy's release I supposed my acquaintance with the jail was at an
end, but the boy had become interested in his companions in misery and
on his first visit to me he said: "If you could know what your visits
were to me you would never give up going to the jail as long as you
live." And then I gave him my promise. "Be to others what you have been
to me," has been the message given to me by more than one of these men.

While a prisoner Willy had made no complaint of the condition of things
in the jail, but after paying the note of his indebtedness, he proceeded
to buy straw and ticking for mattresses, which were made and sent up to
the jail for the other prisoners, while I furthered his efforts to make
the existence of those men more endurable by contributing various
"exterminators" calculated to reduce the number of superfluous
inhabitants in the cells.

At the time I supposed that Willy was an exception, morally, to the
usual material from which criminals are made. I do not think so now,
after twenty-five years of friendships with criminals; of study of the
men themselves and of the conditions and circumstances which led to
their being imprisoned.

Willy's was a kindly nature, responsive, yielding readily to surrounding
influences, not so much lacking in honesty as in the power of
resistance. Had he been subjected to the disgrace, the humiliation, and
the associations of a term in the penitentiary, where the first
requirement of the discipline is non-resistance, he might easily have
slipped into the ranks of the "habitual" criminal, from which it is so
difficult to find an exit. I am not sure that Willy was never dishonest
again; but I am sure of his purpose to be honest; and the last that I
knew of him, after several years of correspondence, he was doing well,
running a cigar-stand and small circulating library in a Western town.

From that beginning I continued my visits to the jail, usually going on
Sunday mornings when other visitors were not admitted. And on Sunday
mornings when the church-bells were calling, the prisoners seemed to
be--doubtless were--in a mood different from that of the week-days.
There's no doubt of the mission of the church-bells, ringing clear above
the tumult of the world, greeting us on Sunday mornings from the cradle
to the grave.

I did not hold any religious services. I did not venture to prescribe
until I had found out what was the matter. It was almost always books
that opened the new acquaintances, for through the library I was able to
supply the prisoners with entertaining reading. They made their own
selections from our printed lists, and I was surprised to find these
selections averaging favorably with the choice of books among good
citizens of the same grade of education. There certainly was some
incongruity between the broken head, all bandages, the ragged apparel,
and the literary taste of the man who asked me for "something by George
Eliot or Thackeray."

A short story read aloud was always a pleasure to the men behind the
bars; more than once I have been able to form correct conclusions as to
the guilt or the innocence of a prisoner by the expression of his face
when I was reading something that touched the deeper springs of human
nature. And my sense of humor stood me in good stead with these men; for
there's no freemasonry like that of the spontaneous smile that springs
from the heart; and after we had once smiled together we were no longer
strangers.

One early incident among my jail experiences left a vivid impression
with me. A boy of some thirteen summers, accused of stealing, was
detained in jail several weeks awaiting trial, with the prospect of the
reform school later. In appearance he was attractive, and his youth
appealed to one's sympathy. Believing that he ought to be given a better
chance for the future than our reform schools then offered, I tried to
induce the sheriff to ask some farmer to take him in hand. The sheriff
demurred, saying that no farmer would want the boy in his family, as he
was a liar and very profane, and consequently I dropped the subject.

In the jail at the same time was a man of forty or over who frankly told
me that he had been a criminal and a tramp since boyhood, that he had
thrown away all chances in life and lost all self-respect forever. I
took him at his own valuation and he really seemed about as hopeless a
case as I have ever encountered. One lovely June evening when I went
into the corridor of the jail to leave a book, this old criminal called
me beside his cell for a few words.

"Don't let that boy go to the reform school," he began earnestly. "The
reform school is the very hotbed of crime for a boy like that. Save him
if you can. Save him from a life like mine. Put him on a farm. Get him
into the country, away from temptation."

"But the sheriff tells me he is such a liar and swears so that no decent
people would keep him," I replied.

"I'll break him of swearing," said the man impetuously, "and I'll try to
break him of lying. Can't he see what _I_ am? Can't he _see_ what he'll
come to if he doesn't brace up? I'm a living argument--a living example
of the folly and degradation of stealing and lying. I can't ever be
anything but what I am now, but there's hope for that boy if some one
will only give him a chance, and I want you to help him."

The force of his appeal was not to be resisted, and I agreed to follow
his lead in an effort to save his fellow prisoner from destruction. As I
stood there in the twilight beside this man reaching out from the wreck
and ruin of his own life to lend a hand in the rescue of this boy, if
only the "good people" would do their part, I hoped that Saint Peter and
the Recording Angel were looking down. And as I said good night--with a
hand-clasp--I felt that I had touched a human soul.

The man kept his word, the boy gave up swearing and braced up generally,
and I kept my part of the agreement; but I do not know if our combined
efforts had a lasting effect on the young culprit.

As time passed many of these men were sent from the jail to the State
penitentiary, and often a wife or family was left in destitution; and
the destitution of a prisoner's wife means not only poverty but
heart-break, disgrace, and despair. Never shall I forget the first time
I saw the parting of a wife from her husband the morning he was taken to
prison. A sensitive, high-strung, fragile creature she was; and going
out in the bitter cold of December, carrying a heavy boy of eighteen
months and followed by an older girl, she seemed the very embodiment of
desolation. I have been told by those who do not know the poor that they
do not feel as we do, that their sensibilities are blunted, their
imagination torpid. Could we but know! Could we but know, we should not
be so insensate to their sufferings. It is we who are dull. To that
prisoner's wife that morning life was one quivering torture, with
absolutely no escape from agonizing thoughts. Her "home" to which I went
that afternoon was a cabin in which there was one fire, but scant food,
and no stock of clothing; the woman was ignorant of charitable societies
and shrinking from the shame of exposing her needs as a convict's wife.

It is not difficult to make things happen in small towns when people
know each other and live within easy distances. In less time, really
less actual time than it would have taken to write a paper for the
Woman's Club on "The Problems of Poverty," this prisoner's wife was
relieved from immediate want. To tell her story to half a dozen
acquaintances who had children and superfluous clothing, to secure a
certain monthly help from the city, was a simple matter; and in a few
months the woman was taking in sewing--and doing good work--for a
reliable class of patrons.

I have not found the poor ungrateful; twenty years afterward this woman
came to me in prosperity from another town, where she had been a
successful dressmaker, to express once more her gratitude for the
friendship given in her time of need. Almost without exception with my
prisoners and with their families I have found gratitude and loyalty
unbounded.

When the men sent from the jail to the penitentiary had no family they
naturally wrote to me. Sometimes they learned to write while in jail or
after they reached the prison just for the pleasure of interchanging
letters with some one. All prison correspondence is censored by some
official; and as my letters soon revealed my disinterested relation to
the prisoners, the warden, R. W. McClaughrey, now of national fame, sent
me an invitation to spend several days as his guest, and thus to become
acquainted with the institution.

It was a great experience, an overwhelming experience when first I
realized the meaning of prison life. I seemed to be taken right into the
heart of it at once. The monstrous unnaturalness of it all appalled me.
The great gangs of creatures in stripes moving in the lock-step like
huge serpents were all so unhuman. Their dumb silence--for even the eyes
of a prisoner must be dumb--was oppressive as a nightmare. The hopeless
misery of the men there for life; already entombed, however long the
years might stretch out before them, and the wild entreaty in the eyes
of those dying in the hospital--for the eyes of the dying break all
bonds--these things haunted my dreams long afterward. Later I learned
that even in prison there are lights among the shadows, and that sunny
hearts may still have their gleams of sunshine breaking through the
darkness of their fate; but my first impression was one of unmitigated
gloom. When I expressed something of this to the warden his response
was: "Yes, every life here represents a tragedy--a tragedy if the man is
guilty, and scarcely less a tragedy if he is innocent."

As the guest of the warden I remained at the penitentiary for several
days and received a most cordial standing invitation to the institution,
with the privilege of talking with any prisoner without the presence of
an officer. The unspeakable luxury to those men of a visit without the
presence of a guard! Some of the men with whom I talked had been in
prison for ten years or more with never a visitor from the living world
and only an occasional letter.

My visits to the penitentiary were never oftener than twice a year, and
I usually limited the list of my interviews to twenty-five. With
whatever store of cheerfulness and vitality I began these interviews, by
the time I had entered into the lives of that number of convicts I was
so submerged in the prison atmosphere, and the demand upon my sympathy
had been so exhausting, that I could give no more for the time. I found
that the shortest and the surest way for me to release myself from the
prison influence was to hear fine stirring music after a visit to the
penitentiary. But for years I kept my list up to twenty-five, making new
acquaintances as the men whom I knew were released. Prisoners whom I did
not know would write me requesting interviews, and the men whom I knew
often asked me to see their cell-mates, and I had a touch-and-go
acquaintance with a number of prisoners not on my lists.

Thus my circle gradually widened to include hundreds of convicts and
ex-convicts of all grades, from university men to men who could not
read; however, it was the men who had no friends who always held the
first claim on my sympathy; and as the years went on I came more and
more in contact with the "habitual criminals," the hopeless cases, the
left-over and forgotten men; some of them beyond the pale of interest
even of the ordinary chaplain--for there are chaplains and chaplains, as
well as convicts and convicts.

I suppose it was the very desolation of these men that caused their
quick response to any evidence of human interest. In their eagerness to
grasp the friendship of any one who remembered that they were still
men--not convicts only--these prisoners would often frankly tell the
stories of their lives; admitting guilt without attempt at extenuation.
No doubt it was an immense relief to them to make a clean breast of
their past to one who could understand and make allowance.

This was not always so; some men lied to me and simply passed out of my
remembrance; but I early learned to suspend judgment, and when I saw
that a man was lying through the instinct of self-defence, because he
did not trust me, I gave him a chance to "size me up," and reassure
himself as to my trustworthiness. "Why, I just couldn't go on lying to
you after I saw that you were ready to believe in me," was the candid
admission of one who never lied to me again.

Among these convicts I encountered some unmistakable degenerates. The
most optimistic humanitarian cannot deny that in all classes of life we
find instances of moral degeneracy. This fact has been clearly
demonstrated by sons of some of our multimillionaires. And human nature
does not seem to be able to stand the strain of extreme poverty any
better than it stands the plethora caused by excessive riches. The true
degenerate, however, is usually the result of causes too complicated or
remote to be clearly traced. But throughout my long experience with
convicts I have known not more than a dozen who seemed to me
black-hearted, deliberate criminals; and among these, as it happened,
but one was of criminal parentage. Crime is not a disease; but there's
no doubt that disease often leads to crime. Of the defective, the
feeble-minded, the half-insane, and the epileptic there are too many in
every prison; one is too many; but they can be counted by the hundreds
in our aggregate of prisons. Often warm-hearted, often with strong
religious tendencies, they are deficient in judgment or in moral
backbone. The screw loose somewhere in the mental or physical make-up of
these men makes the tragedies, the practically hopeless tragedies of
their lives; though there may never have been one hour when they were
criminal through deliberate intention. Then there are those whose crimes
are simply the result of circumstances, and of circumstances not of
their own making. Others are prisoners unjustly convicted, innocent of
any crime; but every convict is classed as a criminal, as is inevitable;
and under the Bertillon method of identification his very person is
indissolubly connected with the criminal records. Even in this twentieth
century, in so many directions an age of marvellous progress, there is a
menacing tendency among legislators to enlarge the borders of life
sentences--_not_ according to the number of crimes a man may have
committed, but according to the number of times a man has been convicted
in courts notoriously indifferent to justice; too often according to
the number of times the man has been "the victim of our penal
machinery."

I well remember a man three times sent from my own county to the
penitentiary for thefts committed during the brain disturbance preceding
epileptic convulsions. On one occasion, between arrest and conviction, I
saw the man in an unconscious state and in such violent convulsions that
it was necessary to bind him to the iron bedstead on which he lay. I
knew but little of physiological psychology then; and no one connected
the outbreaks of theft with the outbreaks of epilepsy. And the man,
industrious and honest when well, was in consequence of epileptic mental
disturbance convicted of crime and sent to the penitentiary, and owing
to previous convictions from the same cause was classed as an "habitual
criminal."

Like instances of injustice resulting from ignorance are constantly
occurring. In our large cities where "railroading" men to prison is
purely a matter of business, no consideration is given to the individual
accused, he is no longer a human being, he is simply "a case." A very
able and successful prosecuting attorney--success estimated by the
number of "cases" convicted--once said to me: "I have nothing to do with
the innocence of the man: _I'm here to convict_."

By far the most brutal man whom I have ever personally encountered was a
modern prototype of the English judge, Lord George Jeffreys--a judge in
one of our large cities, who had held in his unholy hands the fate of
many an accused person. However, with this one exception, in my
experience with judges I have found them courteous, fair-minded, and
glad to assist me when convinced that a convict had not been accorded
justice.

We find in the prisons the same human nature as in the churches; far
differently developed and manifested; but not so different after all, as
we should expect, remembering the contrast between the home influence,
the education, environment, and opportunity of the inmates of our
prisons with that of the representatives of our churches. In our prisons
we find cowardice, brutality, dishonesty, and selfishness. Are our
church memberships altogether free from these defects? Surely,
unquestionably, in our churches we do find the highest virtues: love,
courage, fortitude, tenderness, faithfulness, unselfishness. And in
every prison in this land these same virtues--love, tenderness, courage,
fortitude, faithfulness, unselfishness--are to be found; often hidden in
the silence of the heart, but living sparks of the divine life which is
our birthright. And yet between these prisons and the churches there has
long existed an almost impassable barrier of distrust, equally strong on
both sides.

I once called with a friend upon the wife of a convict who, relating an
incident in which she had received great kindness from a certain lady
very prominent in church circles, said: "I was so surprised: I could not
understand her being so kind--_for she was a Christian_." "Why, there's
nothing strange in the kindness of a Christian," said my friend. "Miss
Taylor and I are both Christians." The prisoner's wife paused a moment,
then said, with slow emphasis: "_That is impossible_."

We all have our standards and ideals, not by which we live but by which
we judge one another. This woman knew the sweat-shops and she knew that
Christian as well as Jew lived in luxury from the profits derived from
the labor of the sweat-shops, and of the underpaid shop-girls. To her
the great city churches meant oppression and selfishness, power and
wealth, arrayed against poverty and weakness, against fair pay and fair
play. Her own actual personal experience with some persons classed as
Christians had been bitter and cruel; thus her vision was warped and her
judgment misled. Much of the same feeling had prevailed through the
prisons; and I know that one reason why so many of "the incorrigibles"
gave me their confidence was owing to the word passed round among them:
"You can trust her; _she is no Christian_."

This has a strange sound to us. But it does not sound strange at all
when we hear from the other side: "You can't trust that man--he's been a
convict."

Through the genius, the energy, the spiritual enthusiasm of that
remarkable woman known among prisoners as "The Little Mother," the
barrier between the churches and the prisons is recently and for the
time giving way on the one side. The chaplains are taken for granted as
part of the prison equipment, and their preaching on Sunday as the work
for which they are paid. But "The Little Mother" comes from the outside,
literally giving her life to secure a chance for ex-convicts in this
world. She brings to the prisons a fresh interpretation of the
Christian religion, as help for the helpless, as a friend to the
friendless. In her they find at once their ideal of human goodness and a
lovely womanhood, and through her they are beginning to understand what
the Christian churches intend to stand for. But to undermine the barrier
on the side of society--to bring about a better understanding of the
individuals confined behind the walls which society still believes
necessary in self-protection--is, in the very nature of the case, a far
more difficult undertaking. Almost inaccessible to the outsider is the
heart of a convict, or the criminal's point of view of life. In fact
their hearts and their points of view differ according to their natures
and experiences. But to think of our prisoners in the mass--the thousand
or two thousand men cut off from the world and immured in each of our
great penitentiaries--is to think of them as the Inarticulate. The
repression of their lives has been fearful. All that was required of
them was to be part of the machinery of the prison system; to work, to
obey, to maintain discipline. Absolutely nothing was done to develop the
individual. The mental and psychic influence of the prison has been
indescribably stifling and deadening. Every instinctive impulse of
movement, the glance of the eye, the smile of understanding, the stretch
of weary muscles, the turning of the head, all must be guarded or
repressed. The whole tendency of prison discipline has been to detach
the individual from his fellow man; at all costs to prevent
communication between convicts; and to stifle all expression of
individuality except between cell-mates when the day's work was over.
And companionship of cell-mates is likely to pall when the same two men
are confined in a seven-by-four cell for three hundred and sixty-five
evenings in a year. Gradually but inevitably the mind dulls; mental
impressions lose their clear outlines and the faculties become
atrophied. I have seen this happen over and over again.

When first the drama of prison life began to unfold before me I looked
for some prisoner to tell the story; he only could know what it really
meant. But the desire to forget, to shake off all association, even the
very thought of having been connected with convict life, has been the
instinctive aim of the average man seeking reinstatement in society.
Occasionally a human document from the pen of an ex-convict appeared in
print, but few of them were convincing. The writer's own consciousness
of having been a convict may have prevented him from striking out from
the shoulder, from speaking as man to man, or something in the mind of
the reader may have discounted the value of the statement coming from an
ex-convict; more likely than either the spirit was so gone out of the
man before his release that he had no heart or courage to grapple with
the subject; and he, too, shared the popular belief that prisons are
necessary--for others.

It was the poet and the artist in Oscar Wilde that made it
possible--perhaps inevitable--for him to rend the veil that hides the
convict prison execution, and to etch the horror in all its blackness--a
scaffold silhouetted against the sky--in "The Ballad of Reading Gaol."
The picture is a masterpiece, and it is the naked truth; more effective
with the general reader than his "De Profundis," which is no less
remarkable as literature but is more exclusively an analysis of Oscar
Wilde's own spiritual development during his prison experience. The
Russian writer Dostoyevski, also with pen dipped in the tears and blood
of actual experience, has given scenes of Russian convict life so
terrible and intense that the mind of the reader recoils with horror,
scoring one more black mark against Russia and thanking God that in our
dealings with convicts we are not as these other men. But not long ago a
cry from the inside penetrated the walls of a Western prison in "Con
Sordini," a poem of remarkable power, written by a young poet-musician
who, held by the clutches of the law, was suffering an injustice which a
Russian would be slow to indorse. No doubt other gifted spirits will
have their messages. But in the mind of the public, genius seemed to
lift these men out of the convict into the literary class, and their
most human documents were too likely to be regarded only as
literature.[1]

Genius is rare in all classes of life and my prison friends were of the
common clay. The rank and file of our convicts are almost as
inarticulate as dumb, driven cattle, many of them incapable of tracing
the steps by which they fell into crime or of analyzing the effects of
imprisonment. Some of them have not learned how to handle words and
find difficulty in expressing thoughts or feelings; especially is this
true of the ignorant foreigners.

One of the men whom I knew, not a foreigner, but absolutely illiterate,
early fell into criminal life, and before he was twenty years old was
serving a sentence of life imprisonment. After a period of unspeakable
loneliness and mental misery he was allowed attendance at the prison
evening school. He told me that he could not sleep for joy and
excitement when first he realized that through printed and written words
he could come into communication with other minds, find companionship,
gain information, and come in touch with the great free world on the
outside.[2]

As I look back through my twenty-five years of prison friendship it is
like looking through a long portrait-gallery, only the faces are living
faces and the lips unite in the one message: "We, too, are human beings
of like nature with yourselves." To me, however, each face brings its
own special message, for each one in turn has been my teacher in the
book of life. And now for their sakes I am going to break the seal of my
prison friendships, and to let some of these convicts open their hearts
to the world as they have been opened to me, and to give their vision of
human life; to draw the picture as they have seen it. Some of them bear
the brand of murderer, others belong to the class which the law
denominated as "incorrigible." I believe I had the reputation of knowing
the very worst men in the prison, "the old-timers." It could not have
been true that my friends were among the worst men there, for my prison
friendships, like all friendships, were founded upon mutual confidence;
and never once did one of these men betray my trust.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Recent periodicals have given many disclosures convincing to the
public from men who know only too well the cruel and barbarous
conditions of convict life. I have long held that no judge should be
authorized to sentence a man to prison until the judge knew by
experience what prison life really was. And now we are having authentic
reports from those in authority who have taken a voluntary experience of
convict life.

[2] In 1913 an _Intra-Mural School_ was started in the Maryland
penitentiary, and the story of its effect on the minds and the conduct
of the thirty per cent of illiterate individuals in that prison is most
interesting. It unquestionably confirms my statement that the rank and
file of our convicts are inarticulate.




CHAPTER II


Not only did the prisoners whom I knew never betray my confidence, but
ex-convicts who knew of me through others sometimes came to me for
advice or assistance in getting work; and many an odd job about our
place was well done by these men, who never gave us cause to regret our
confidence in them. A stranger fresh out of jail applied to me one cold
December day just before the holidays. I was in the high tide of
preparations for Christmas, and to this young man I gladly intrusted the
all-day work of trimming the house with holly and evergreen under my
direction, and never was it done more effectively or with more of the
Christmas spirit. The man had a beautiful time and confided to my mother
his longing to have a home of his own. He left us at evening with a
heart warmed by the vision of a real home, and his pay supplemented by a
good warm overcoat. These men used to make all sorts of frank admissions
to me in discussing their difficulties. I remember one man saying:

"I want to be an honest man; I don't like this kind of a life with all
its risks; I want to settle down, but I never can get a start. Now, if I
could just make a clean steal of one hundred dollars I could get some
decent clothes, pay in advance at a respectable boarding-house; then I
could get a job and I could keep it; but no one will give me work as I
am, and no one will trust me for board." And that was the hard fact. As
the man was leaving he asked:

"Could you give me one or two newspapers?" As I handed him the papers he
explained: "You see, if a fellow sleeps on the bottom of a freight-car
these cold nights--as I am likely to do--it's not quite so cold and hard
with a newspaper under you, and if I button them under my coat it isn't
quite so cold out-of-doors." It was no wonder that the man wanted to
settle down.

Several incidents of honor among thieves are recorded in the annals of
our household. One evening as we were starting for our usual drive my
mother exclaimed: "Stop a minute! There is Katy's sweetheart, and I want
to speak to him."

Katy was our cook and her sweetheart was a stout, blond working man
closely resembling the one walking up our front driveway. My mother
stopped the man and gave him this bit of information:

"The house is all open and any one could go in and help himself. I wish
you would ask Katy to lock the front door." The man bowed, and we drove
on.

When we returned Katy reported that a strange man had come to the
kitchen door and told her that the mistress wished her to lock the front
door. She left the man while she did this and found him waiting when she
came back. Then he asked her for something to eat, stating that he was
just out of prison, and wished to see Miss ---- (mentioning my name).
The cook gave him a lunch and made an appointment for me to see him next
day.

Katy did not resent the man's being taken for her Joe, for she noticed
the resemblance, but there was reproach in her tone as she added: "But
you know Joe always dresses up when he comes to see me."

At the appointed hour the man came again, bringing me a message from an
acquaintance, a fellow convict who had been his cell-mate in prison. He
did not refer to the fact that had he chosen he might have taken
advantage of the information received from my mother, but no better
plan for a robbery could have been devised than the circumstance that
fell ready to his hand.

But of all the ex-convicts employed at various times on our place the
one in whom the family took the greatest interest was George--his other
name does not matter because it was changed so often.

One Sunday morning I found George the only prisoner in our county jail.
He was a thief awaiting trial at the next term of court several weeks
ahead. He had "shifty" eyes and a sceptical smile, was thin, unkempt,
and altogether unprepossessing; but I did not think so much of that as
of his loneliness. He was reserved concerning himself but seemed to have
some education and a taste for reading, so I supplied him with books
from the library and called on him once or twice a week; but I made slow
progress with acquaintance, and one day George said to me:

"I understand perfectly why it is that you come to see me and bring me
things to read; _you think that you will gain a higher place in heaven
when you die_." In other words, George thought that I was using him as a
stepping-stone for my own advantage--his sceptical smile was not for
nothing.

How I disarmed his suspicions I do not know; but in the weeks that
followed before he was taken to prison we came to know each other very
well. The prison life was hard on George, so hard that when I first saw
him in the convict stripes I did not know him, so emaciated had he
become; and I was startled when his smile disclosed his identity.
Clearly he would be fit for no honest work when released from prison. He
made no complaint--he did not need to, for his appearance told the story
only too well. George was an insignificant-looking man, only one of the
hundreds consigned to that place of punishment, and by mere chance had
been given work far beyond his strength. When I called the warden's
attention to George he was immediately transferred to lighter work, and
was in better condition when I saw him next time.

And then we had some long and serious talks about his way of life, which
he invariably defended on the score that he would rather be "a downright
honest thief" than to get possession of other people's property under
cover of the law, or to grind the poor in order to pile up more money
than any one could honestly possess. George _thought_ that he really
believed all business men ready to take any unfair advantage of others
so long as their own safety was not endangered.

With the expiration of this term in prison George's letters to me ceased
for a while, to be resumed later from a prison in another State where he
was working in the greenhouses and had become interested in the flowers.
That gave me my chance.

In a fortunate hour I had encountered a little story by Edward Everett
Hale, "How Mr. Frye Would Have Preached It," and that story had formed
my ideal of loyalty to my prisoners when once they trusted me, and by
this time I had won the confidence of George. Accordingly, I wrote
George a Christmas letter making a direct appeal to his better
nature--for I knew it was there--and I asked him to come to me on his
release the following July, which he was glad to do.

Now, my mother had always been sympathetic with my interest in
prisoners, and she dearly loved her flower garden, and had difficulty in
finding intelligent help in the care of her flowers. She knew that
George was just out of prison, and after introducing him as a man who
might help her with her roses I left them together.

A few minutes later my mother came to me and reported:

"I don't like the looks of your George: he looks like a thief."

"Yes," I answered, "you know he has been a thief, and if you don't want
him I'll try and get another place for him."

But the flowers were pulling at my mother's heart and she decided to
give George a trial. And what a good time they both had that summer! It
was beautiful to see the two together morning after morning, caring for
those precious flowers as if they were babies. My mother had great
charm, and George was devoted to her and proved an altogether
satisfactory gardener. Unquestionably the two months that George spent
with us were the happiest of his life. My mother at once forgot all her
misgivings as to his honesty and came to regard him as her special ally;
she well knew that he would do anything in his power to serve her.

One afternoon my mother informed me that she was going driving with the
family that evening--she was always nervous about "leaving the house
alone"--and that the maids were going to be out, too; "but George is
going to stay in charge of the house, so everything will be all right
and I shall not worry," she said with all confidence.

I smiled; but I had no misgiving, and sure enough we all went off, not
even locking up the silver; while George, provided with newspapers and
cigars, was left in charge.

On our return, some two hours later, I noticed that George was unusually
serious and silent, and apparently didn't see any joke in the situation,
as he had on a former occasion when I sent him for something in a closet
where the family silver was in full view. He told me afterward that the
time of our absence covered the longest two hours of his life, and the
hardest to bear.

My home is on the edge of the town in the midst of twelve acres with
many trees. "You had not more than gone," said George, "when I began to
think 'what if some one should come to rob the house and I could not
defend it. And they could _never know_ that I had not betrayed their
trust.'"

George spent his Sundays under our trees, sometimes on guard in the
orchard, which rather amused him; and I generally gave him an hour of my
time, suggesting lines of work by which he could honestly earn his
living, and trying my best to raise his moral standards. But he
reserved his right to plan the general course of his life, or, as he
would have said, to follow his own line of business. He knew that his
work with us was but for the time, and he would never commit himself as
to his future. This was the way he stated his position:

"I have no health; I like a comfortable place to sleep and good things
to eat; I like a good class of entertainments and good books, and to buy
magazines and send them to my friends in prison, and I like to help a
man when he is just out of prison. Now, you ask me to forego all this;
to work hard just to earn the barest living--for I could never earn big
wages; you ask me to deny myself everything I care for just for the sake
of a moral idea, when nobody in the world but you cares whether I go to
the devil or not, and I don't really believe in either God or devil.
Now, how many churchgoing men do you know who would give up a
money-making business and accept the barest poverty and loneliness just
for the sake of a moral idea?" And I wondered how many, indeed.

However, for all his arguments in defence of his way of life, when the
time came to leave us better desires had taken root. My mother's taking
his honesty for granted had its effect, and seemed to commit him to an
effort in the right direction. We had fitted him out with respectable
clothing and he had earned money to last several weeks. My mother gave
him a letter of recommendation as gardener and he left us to seek
employment in the parks of a large city.

But his appearance was against him and he had no luck in the first city
where he applied; the time of the year, too, was unfavorable; and before
his money had quite melted away he invested the remainder in a peddler's
outfit of needles and other domestic requisites. These he sold among the
wives of farmers, and in that way managed to keep body and soul together
for a time. Frequent letters kept me informed of his whereabouts, though
little was said of his hardships.

One morning George appeared at our door seeming more dulled and
depressed than I had ever seen him. He stayed for an hour or more but
was not very communicative. It was evident, however, that he had found
the paths of honesty quite as hard as the way of the transgressor. As he
was leaving he said:

"You may not believe me, but I walked all night in order to have this
visit with you. I was off the railroad and couldn't otherwise make
connections with this place in time to keep an appointment with a friend
this evening; and I wanted to see you."

He hurried away then without giving me time for the inevitable surmise
that the "friend" whom he was to meet was an "old pal," and leaving me
to question whether I had another friend on earth who would walk all
night in order to see me.

Only once again did I see George; he was looking more prosperous then,
and handed me a ten-dollar bill, saying: "At last I can return the money
you lent me; I wanted to long ago but couldn't."

I did not remember having lent him the money, and so I told him. "But I
want you to take it anyway," he said.

And then, brought face to face with the thief in the man, I replied:

"I cannot take from you money that is not honestly yours."

Flushing deeply he slowly placed the bill among some others, saying:
"All right, but I wanted you to take it because I knew that you would
make better use of it than I shall." Never had the actual dividing line
between honesty and dishonesty been brought home to George as at that
moment; I think for once he realized that right and wrong are white and
black, not gray.

For some years after I had occasional notes from George; I answered them
if an address was given, but his was then a roving life. Always at
Christmas came a letter from him with the season's greetings to each
member of the family, and usually containing a line to the effect that
he was "still in the old business." When my sister was married, on my
mother's golden wedding-day, among the notes of congratulation to the
bride of fifty years before and the bride of the day was one from
George; and through good or ill report George never lost his place in
the regard of my mother.

His last letter was written from an Eastern Catholic hospital where he
had been ill. Convalescent he then was "helping the sisters," and he
hoped that they might give him employment when he was well. Helpful I
knew he would be, and loyal to those who trusted him. I wrote him at
once but received no reply; and the chances are, as I always like to
think, that the last days of George were apart from criminal
associations, and that the better elements in his nature were in the
ascendant when the end came.

I believe George was the only one of my prisoners who even made a bluff
in defence of the kind of life he had followed; and in his heart he knew
that it was all wrong. I do not defend him, but I do not forget that the
demoralization of the man, his lack of moral grip, was the logical
product of the schools of crime, the jails, and prisons in which so much
of his youth was passed. Yes, the life of George stands as a moral
failure; and yet as long as flowers bloom in that garden where he and my
mother spent so many pleasant hours helping the roses to blossom more
generously, so long will friendly memories cluster around the name of
George, and he certainly did his part well in the one opportunity that
life seems to have offered him.




CHAPTER III


During the last twenty-five years there has been a general tendency to
draw sharp hard-and-fast dividing lines between the "corrigible" and the
"incorrigible" criminal. It has been assumed that a man only once
convicted of a crime may yet be amenable to reform, but that a second or
third conviction--convictions, not necessarily crimes--is proof that a
man is "incorrigible," that the criminal dye is set and the man should
therefore be permanently removed from society. This really does appear a
most sensible arrangement as we look down upon the upper side of the
proposition; to those who look up to it from below the appearance is
altogether different.

A distinguished professor in a law school has said: "If any person shall
be a third time convicted of _any crime, no matter of what nature_, he
should be imprisoned at hard labor for life." At a National Prison
Congress in 1886 another eminent professor thus indorsed this sentiment:
"I believe there is but one cure for this great and growing evil, and
this is the imprisonment for life of the criminal once pronounced
'incorrigible.'" Later the governor of my own State told me that he
would consider no petition for shortening the sentence of an "habitual
criminal." Any leniency of attitude was stigmatized as "rose-water
sentiment." And the heart of the community hardened itself against any
plea for the twice-convicted man. What fate he was consigned to was not
their affair so long as he was safely locked up.

In our eagerness for self-protection at any cost we lose sight of the
fact that the criminal problem is one of conditions quite as much as of
"cases." In our large cities, the great reservoirs of crime, we are but
reaping the harvest of centuries of evil in older civilizations, and in
our own civilization as well.

So far we have been dealing with effects more than with causes. Indeed,
our dealings with lawbreakers, from the hour of arrest to the hour of
discharge from prison have served to increase rather than to diminish
the causes of crime. True enough it is that thousands of our fellow men
have found life one great quicksand of criminal and prison experience in
which cause and effect became in time inextricably tangled.

And it sometimes happens that the twice-convicted man is in no way
responsible for his first conviction, as happened to James Hopkins, a
good boy reared in a New England family to a belief in God and respect
for our courts. He was earning his living honestly when he was arrested
on suspicion in Chicago and convicted of a burglary of which he knew
nothing. He knew nothing either of the wiles of the courts and depended
on his innocence as his defence. But the burglary was a daring one; some
one must be punished, no other culprit was captured, so Hopkins was sent
to one of our schools of crime supported by public taxation under the
name of penitentiaries. Pure homesickness simply overpowered the boy at
first. "Night after night I cried myself to sleep," he told me. His cell
happened to be on the top row where there was a window across the
corridor, and summer evenings he could look across out into a field so
like the field at home where he had played as a child. But the darkness
of the winter evening shut out every glimpse of anything associated with
home. He had not written his mother; he could not disgrace her with a
letter from a convict son. She had warned him of the dangers of the
city, but she had never dreamed of what those dangers really were. She
firmly believed that the courts were for the protection of the innocent,
and would she believe that a court of justice had sent an innocent man
to prison? He lost all faith in God and his heart hardened. Branded as a
criminal, a criminal he resolved to be; and when I met him twenty years
later he had a genuine criminal record as a scientific safe-blower.

In spite of his criminal career some of the roots of the good New
England stock from which he was descended cropped out. With me he was
the gentleman pure and simple, discussing courts and prisons in a manner
as impersonal as my own; and he was a man of intelligence and an
interesting talker. I had come in touch with Hopkins because I was at
the time planning the future of his young cell-mate and I wanted the
advice of the older man, as well as his assistance in preparing the
younger to meet the responsibilities and temptations of freedom; and a
better assistant I could not have had. Concerning his own future Hopkins
maintained discreet reserve and unbroken silence as to his inner life.
He had deliberately stifled a Puritan conscience; but I doubt if it was
completely silenced, for while the lines in his face indicated nothing
criminal nor dissipated it was the face of a man in whom hope and
ambition were forever dead, a face of unutterable sadness.[3]

I am free to admit that when I glance over the newspaper reports of
brutal outrages and horrible crimes my sympathy swings over wholly to
the injured party; I, too, feel as if no measure could be too severe for
the perpetrator of the crime. That there are human beings whose
confinement is demanded by public safety I do not question, but modern
scientific study is leading us to the conclusion that back of abnormal
crimes are abnormal physiological conditions or abnormal race
tendencies. And the "habitual criminal" is _not_ so designated because
of the nature of his crimes but because of the number of his infractions
of the law.

I might have concurred with the opinions of the learned professors were
it not that just when legislation in my own State was giving no quarter
to second and third offenders I was being led into the midst of this
submerged tenth of our prison population, and my loyalty to their cause
has been unswerving ever since.

"Have any of your 'habituals' permanently reformed?" I am asked.

They certainly have, more of them than even my optimism expected and
under circumstances when I have been amazed that their moral
determination did not break. In my preconceived opinion, the most
hopeless case I ever assisted surprised me by settling down, under
favorable environment, into an honest, self-supporting citizen; and we
may rest assured that he is guarding his boys from all knowledge of
criminal life.

After I came to understand how all the odds were against the penniless
one, scarred and crippled by repeated crimes and punishments, it was not
his past nor his future that interested me so deeply as _what was left
of the man_. I suppose I was always in search of that something which we
call the soul. And I sometimes found it where I least looked for
it--among the very dregs of convict life.

John Bryan stands out in clear relief in this connection. How well I
remember my first meeting with this man, who was then more than forty
years old, in broken health, serving a twenty-year sentence which he
could not possibly survive. He had no family, received no letters, was
utterly an outcast. Crime had been his "profession."[4] His face was not
brutal, but it was hard, guarded in expression and seamed with lines.
The facts of his existence he accepted apparently without remorse,
certainly without hope. This was life as he had made it, yes--but also
as he had found it. His friends had been men of his own kind, and,
judged by a standard of his own, he had respected them, trusted them,
and been loyal to them. I knew this well for I sought his acquaintance
hoping to obtain information supposed to be the missing link in a chain
of evidence upon which the fate of another man depended. I assured Bryan
that I would absolutely guard the safety of the man whose address I
wanted, but Bryan was uncompromising in his refusal to give it to me,
saying only: "Jenkins is a friend of mine. You can't induce me to give
him away. You may be sincere enough in your promises, but it's too
risky. I don't know you; but if I did you couldn't get this information
out of me." Knowing that "honor among thieves" is no fiction I respected
his attitude.

However, something in the man interested me, and moved to break in upon
the loneliness and desolation of his life I offered to send him
magazines and to answer any letters he might write me. Doubtless he
suspected some ulterior motive on my part, for in the few letters that
we exchanged I made little headway in acquaintance nor was a second
interview more satisfactory. Bryan was courteous--my prisoners were
always courteous to me--but it was evident that I stood for nothing in
his world. One day he wrote me that he did not care to continue our
correspondence, and did not desire another interview. Regretting only
that I had failed to touch a responsive chord in his nature I did not
pursue the acquaintance further.

Some time afterward, when in the prison hospital, I noticed the name
"John Bryan" over the door of one of the cells. Before I had time to
think John Bryan stood in the door with outstretched hand and a smile
of warmest welcome, saying:

"I am so glad to see you. Do come in and have a visit with me."

"But I thought you wanted never to see me again," I answered.

"It wasn't _you_ I wanted to shut out. It was the thought of the whole
dreadful outside world that lets us suffer so in here, and you were a
part of that world."

In a flash I understood the world of meaning in his words and during the
next hour, in this our last meeting, the seed of our friendship grew and
blossomed like the plants of the Orient under the hand of the magician.
It evidently had not dawned on him before that I, too, knew his world,
that I could understand his feeling about it.

For two years he had been an invalid and his world had now narrowed to
the "idle room," the hospital yard, and the hospital; his associates
incapacitated, sick or dying convicts; his only occupation waiting for
death. But he was given ample opportunity to study the character and the
fate of these sick and dying comrades. He made no allusion to his own
fate but told me how day after day his heart had been wrung with pity,
with "the agony of compassion" for these others.

He knew of instances where innocent men were imprisoned on outrageously
severe and unjust sentences, of men whose health was ruined and whose
lives were blighted at the hands of the State for some trifling
violation of the law; of cases where the sin of the culprit was white in
comparison with the sin of the State in evils inflicted in the name of
justice. He counted it a lighter sin to rob a man of a watch than to rob
a man of his manhood or his health. It was, indeed, in bitterness of
spirit that he regarded the courts and the churches which stood for
justice and religion, yet allowed these wrongs to multiply. His point of
View of the prison problem was quite the opposite of theirs.

Now, as I could have matched his score with cases of injustice, as my
heart, too, had been wrung with pity, when he realized that I believed
him and felt with him the last barrier between us was melted.

There were at that time few persons in my world who felt as I did on the
prison question, but in this heart suddenly opened to me I found many of
my own thoughts and feelings reflected, and we stood as friends on the
common ground of sympathy for suffering humanity.

Another surprise was awaiting me when I changed the subject by asking
Bryan what he was reading. It seemed that his starving heart had been
seeking sympathy and companionship in books. He had turned first to the
Greek philosophers, and in their philosophy and stoicism he seemed to
have found some strength for endurance; but it was in the great
religious teachers, those lovers of the poor, those pitiers of the
oppressed, Jesus Christ and Buddha, that he had found what he was really
seeking. He had been reading Renan's "Jesus," also Farrar's "Life of
Christ," as well as the New Testament.

"Buddha was great and good and so were some of the other religious
teachers," he said, "but Jesus Christ is better than all the rest." And
with that Friend of the friendless I left him.

Strange indeed it seemed how the criminal life appeared to have fallen
from him as a garment, and yet in our prison administration this man
stood as the very type of the "incorrigible." What his course of action
would have been had Bryan been given his freedom I should not care to
predict. Physically he was absolutely incapable of supporting himself
honestly, and he might have agreed with another who said to me: "Any man
of self-respect would rather steal than beg." There are those to whom no
bread is quite so bitter as the bread of charity. But I am certain that
the John Bryan who revealed himself to me in that last interview was the
_real_ man, the man who was going forward, apparently without fear, to
meet the judgment of his Maker.

A noted preacher once said to me: "Oh, give up this prison business.
It's too hard on you, too wearing and depressing." And I replied: "Not
all the preachers in the land could teach me spiritually what these
convicts are teaching me, or give me such faith in the ultimate destiny
of the human soul." Perhaps my experience has been exceptional, but it
was the older criminals, the men who had sowed their wild oats and come
to their senses, who most deepened my faith in human nature.

I am glad to quote in this connection the words of an experienced warden
of a large Eastern penitentiary, who says: "I have yet to find a case
where I believe that crime has been taught by older criminals to younger
ones. I believe, on the contrary, that the usual advice of the old
criminal to the boys is: 'See what crime has brought me to, and when you
get out of here behave yourselves.'"

My whole study of "old-timers" verifies this statement; moreover, I am
inclined to believe that in very many instances the criminal impulses
exhaust themselves shortly after the period of adolescence, when the
fever of antagonism to all restraint has run its course, so to say; and
I believe the time is coming when this branch of the subject will be
scientifically studied.

It is greatly to be regretted that the juvenile courts, now so efficient
in rescuing the young offender from the criminal ranks, had not begun
their work before the second or third offence had blotted hope from the
future of so many of the younger men in our penitentiaries; for the
indeterminate sentence under the board of pardons has done little to
mitigate the fate of those whose criminal records show previous
convictions.

Hitherto we have been dealing with crimes. But the time is at hand when
we shall deal with men.[5]

FOOTNOTES:

[3] We instinctively visualize "confirmed criminals" with faces
corresponding to their crimes. But our prejudices are often misleading.
I once handed to a group of prison commissioners the newspaper picture
of a crew of a leading Eastern university. The crew were in striped
suits and were assumed to be convicts, with the aid of a little
suggestion. It was interesting to see the confidence of the
commissioners as they pronounced one face after another "the regular
criminal type." The fact is that with one or two exceptions my
"habituals," properly clothed, might have passed as church members, some
of them even as theological students.

[4] I seldom heard the terms "habitual" or "incorrigible" used by men of
his class, but the "professionals" seemed to have a certain standing
with each other.

[5] For full discussion of this matter the reader is referred to
"Individualism in Punishment," by M. Salielles, one of the most valuable
contributions yet made to the study of penology. Also Sir James Barr's
"The Aim and Scope of Eugenics" demands the recognition of the
_individual_ in the criminal.




CHAPTER IV


Alfred Allen was one of my early acquaintances among prisoners, having
had the good fortune to receive his sentence on a second conviction
before the habitual-criminal act was in force in Illinois. Our
introduction happened in this way: in one of my interviews with a young
confidence man, who did not hesitate to state that he had always been
studying how to sell the imitation for the genuine, to get something for
nothing, my attention was diverted by his suddenly branching off into a
description of his cell-mate.

"Alfred is the queerest sort of a chap," the man began. "He's a
professional burglar, and the most innocent fellow I ever knew; always
reading history and political economy, and just wild to get into the
library to work. He hasn't a relative that he knows and never has a
visit nor a letter, and I wish you'd ask to see him."

On this introduction I promised to interview Alfred Allen the next
evening. The warden allowed me the privilege of evening interviews with
prisoners, the time limited only by the hour when every man must be in
his cell for the night.

It was an unprecedented event for Alfred to be called out to see a
visitor, and he greeted me with a broad smile and two outstretched
hands. With that first hand-clasp we were friends, for the door of that
starved and eager heart was thrown generously open and all his soul was
in his big dark eyes. I understood instantly what the other man meant by
calling Alfred "innocent," for a more direct and guileless nature I have
never known. The boy, for he was not yet twenty-one, had so many things
to say. The flood-gates were open at last. I remember his suddenly
pausing, then exclaiming: "Why, how strange this is! Ten minutes ago I'd
never seen you, and now I feel as if I'd known you all my life."

In reply to my inquiries he rapidly sketched the main events in his
history. Of Welsh parentage he had learned to read before he was five
years old, when his mother died. While yet a child he lost his father,
and when ten years old, a homeless waif, morally and physically
starving, in the struggle for existence he was a bootblack, newsboy, and
sometimes thief. "To get something to eat, clothes to cover me, and a
place to sleep was my only thought; these things I must have. Often in
the day I looked for a place where the sun had warmed the sidewalk
beside barrels, and I'd go there to sleep at night."

At last, when about thirteen years old, he found a friendly, helping
hand. A man whose boots he had blacked several times, who doubtless
sized up Alfred as to ability, took the boy to his house, fed him well,
and clothed him comfortably. Very anxiously did the older man, who must
have _felt_ Alfred's intrinsic honesty, unfold to the boy the secret of
his calling and the source from which he garnered the money spent for
the comfort of the street waif. And Alfred had small scruple in
consenting to aid his protector by wriggling his supple young body
through small apertures into buildings which he had no right to enter.
And so he was drifted into the lucrative business of store burglary.[6]
After the strain and stress and desperate scramble for existence of the
lonely child, one can imagine how easily he embraced this new vocation.
It was a kind of life, too, which had its fascination for his
adventurous spirit; it even enabled him to indulge in what was to him
the greatest of luxuries, the luxury of giving. His own hardships had
made him keenly sensitive to the suffering of others. But Alfred was not
of the stuff from which successful criminals are made, for at eighteen
he was in prison for the second time and was classed with the
incorrigible.

It was during this last imprisonment that thought and study had
developed his dominant trait of generosity into a broader altruism. He
now realized that he could serve humanity better than by stealing money
to give away. He was studying the conditions of the working and of the
criminal classes, the needs of the side of society from which he was an
outgrowth. The starting-point of this change was an Englishman's report
of a visit to this country as "A place where each lived for the good of
all." (?) "When I read that," said Alfred, "I stopped and asked myself:
'Have I been living for the good of all?' And I saw how I had been an
enemy to society, and that I must start again in the opposite
direction." It was not the cruelty of social conditions which he accused
for his past. His good Welsh conscience came bravely forward and
convicted him of his own share in social wrong-doing. "Now that I'm
going to be a good man," Alfred continued, "I suppose I must be a
Christian"--reversing the usual order of "conversion"--"and so I've been
studying religion also lately. I've been hard at work trying to
understand the Trinity." Alfred did not undertake things by halves.

I advised him not to bother with theology, but to content himself with
the clear and simple working principles of Christianity, which would
really count for something in his future battle with life.

When we touched upon books I was surprised to find this boy perfectly at
home with his Thackeray and his Scott, and far more deeply read in
history and political economy than I. He said that he had always read,
as a newsboy at news-stands, at mission reading-rooms, wherever he could
lay his hands on a book. He talked fluently, picturesquely, with
absolute freedom from self-consciousness.

In Alfred's physiognomy--his photograph lies before me--there was no
trace of the so-called criminal type; his face was distinctively that of
the student, the thinker, the enthusiast. His fate seemed such a cruel
waste of a piece of humanity of fine fibre, with a brain that would have
made a brilliant record in any university. But the moral and physical
deprivations from which his boyhood suffered had wrought havoc with his
health and undermined his constitution.

This November interview resulted immediately in a correspondence,
limited on Alfred's side to the rule allowing convicts to write but one
letter a month. On my part, the letters were more frequent, and
magazines for the Sundays were regularly sent. Alfred was a novice in
correspondence, probably not having written fifty letters in his life. I
was surprised at the high average of his spelling and the uniform
excellency of his handwriting. In order to make the most of the allotted
one leaf of foolscap paper he left no margins and soon evolved a small,
upright writing, clear and almost as fine as magazine type.

In using Alfred's letters I wish I might impart to others the power to
read between the lines that was given me through my acquaintance with
the writer. I could hear the ring in his voice and often divine the
thought greater than the word. But in letting him speak for himself he
will at least have the advantage of coming directly in contact with the
mind of the reader. The first extracts are taken from one of his
earliest letters.


     "MY DEAR FRIEND:

     "On coming back to my cell the day after Christmas, I saw a letter,
     a magazine and a book lying on my bed. I knew from the handwriting
     that they came from you. After looking at my present and reading
     the sunshiny letter I tried to eat my dinner. But there was a lump
     in my throat that would not let me eat, and before I knew what was
     up I was crying over my dear friend's remembrance. I was once at a
     Mission Christmas tree where I received a box of candy. But yours
     was my first individual gift. It is said that the three most
     beautiful words in the English language are Mother, Home and
     Heaven. I have never known any of them. My first remembrance is of
     being in a room with the dead body of my mother. All my life it
     seems as if everybody I knew belonged to some one; they had mother,
     brother, sister, some one. But I belonged to no one, and I never
     could repress the longing in my heart to belong to somebody. I have
     my God, but a human heart cannot help longing for human as well as
     divine sympathy."


In a similar vein in another letter he writes:

"I've sometimes wondered if I should have been a different boy if
circumstances in my childhood had been better. I have seen little but
misery in life. In prison and out it has been my fate to belong to the
class that gets pushed to the wall. I have walked the streets of Chicago
to keep myself from freezing to death. I have slept on the ground with
the rain pouring down upon me. For two years I did not know what bed
was, while more than once I have only broken the fast of two or three
days through the kindness of a gambler or a thief. This was before I had
taken to criminal life as a business.... Still when I think it over I
don't see how I could have kept in that criminal life. I remember the
man who taught me burglary as a fine art told me I would never make a
good burglar because I was too quick to feel for others."

Only once again did Alfred refer to the bitter experiences of his
childhood and that was in a conversation. He had many other things to
write about, and his mind was filled with the present and the future.
Four years of evenings in a cell in a prison with a good library give
one a chance to read and think, although an ill-lighted, non-ventilated
four-by-seven cell, after a day of exhausting work, is not conducive to
intellectual activity. The godsend this prison library was to Alfred is
evident through his letters.

"All my life," he writes, "I have had a burning desire to study and
educate myself, and I do not believe that a day has passed when I have
not gone a little higher. Some time ago I determined to read a chapter
in the new testament every night, though I expected it would be tedious.
But behold! The first thing I knew I was so interested that I was
reading four or five chapters every night. The Chaplain gave me a
splendid speller and I'm going to study hard until I know every word in
it."

Proof that Alfred was a genuine book-lover runs through many of his
letters. He tells me:

"Much as I hate this place if I could be transferred to the library from
the shop I should be the happiest boy in the State. I'd be willing to
stay an additional year in the prison. Twice when they needed an extra
man in the library they sent me. It was a joy just to handle the books
and to read their titles and I felt as if they knew that I loved
them.... Thank you for the _Scribner Magazine_. But the leaves were
uncut. I want all the help and friendship you can spare me. I am glad to
have any magazine you are through with. But you must not buy new ones
just for me. The _Eclectic_ and _Harpers_ were most welcome. _Man versus
the State_ was a splendid article, also, _Education as a Factor in
Prison Reform_, and Prof. Ely on the Railroad Problem. The magazines you
send will do yoeman service they are passed on to every man my cell-mate
or I know."[7]

Alfred was devoted to the writings of John Draper and devoured
everything within his reach on sociology, especially everything relating
to the labor problems. He had theories of his own on many lines of
public welfare, but no taint of anarchy or class hatred distorts his
ideals of justice for all. He always advocates constructive rather than
destructive measures.

Occasionally Alfred refers to the poets. He enjoys Oliver Wendell
Holmes, and Lowell is an especial favorite; while delighting in the
"Biglow Papers," he quotes with appreciation from Lowell's more serious
poetry. The companionship of Thackeray, Dickens, and Scott brightened
and mellowed many dark, hard hours for Alfred. "Sir Walter Scott's
novels broke my taste for trashy stuff," he writes. Naturally, Victor
Hugo's "Les Miserables" absorbed and thrilled him. "Shall I ever forget
Jean Valjean, the galley slave; or Cosette? While reading the story I
thought such a character as the Bishop impossible. I was mistaken." Of
Charles Reade he says: "One cannot help loving Reade. He has such a
dashing, rollicking style. And then he hardly ever wrote except to
denounce some wrong or sham." Even in fiction his preference follows the
trend of his burning love and pity for the desolate and oppressed. How
he would have worshipped Tolstoi!

Complaint or criticism of the hardships of convict life forms small part
of the thirty letters written me by Alfred while in prison. He takes
this stand: "I ought not to complain because I brought this punishment
upon myself." "I am almost glad if anyone does wrong to me because I
feel that it helps balance my account for the wrongs I have done
others." Shall we never escape from that terrible idea of the moral
necessity of expiation, even at the cost of another?

Nevertheless, Alfred feels the hardships he endures and knows how to
present them. And he is not "speaking for the gallery" but to his one
friend when he writes:

"Try to imagine yourself working all day on a stool, not allowed to
stand even when your work can be better done that way. If you hear a
noise you must not look up. You are within two feet of a companion but
you must not speak. You sit on your stool all day long and work. Nothing
but work. Outside my mind was a pleasure to me, in here it is a torture.
It seems as if the minutes were hours, the hours days, the days
centuries. A man in prison is supposed to be a machine. So long as he
does ten hours' work a day--don't smile, don't talk, don't look up from
his work, does work enough to suit the contractors and does it well and
obeys the long number of unwritten rules he is all right. The trouble
with the convicts is that they can't get it out of their heads that they
are human beings and not machines. The present system may be good
statesmanship. It is bad Christianity. But I doubt if it is good
statesmanship to maintain a system that makes so many men kill
themselves, go crazy, or if they do get out of the Shadow alive go out
hating the State and their fellowmen. As a convict said to me, 'It's
funny that in this age of enlightenment they have not found out that to
brutalize a man will never reform him. I have not been led to reform by
prison life. It has made me more bitter at times than I thought I ever
could be. One cannot live in a prison without seeing and hearing things
to make one's blood boil....'

"Times come to me here when it seems as if I could not stand the strain
any longer. Then again, even in this horrid old shop I have some very
happy times, thinking of your friendship and building castles in the
air. My favorite air castle is built on the hope that when my time is
out I can get into a printing office and in time work up to be an
editor. And perhaps do a little something to help the poor and to aid
the cause of progress. Shall I succeed in my dream? Do we ever realize
our ideals?"


     "I wonder if ever a sculptor wrought
      Till the cold stone warmed to his ardent heart;
     Or if ever a painter with light and shade
      The dream of his inmost heart portrayed."


"I did have doubts as to whether Spring was really here till the violets
came in your letter. Now I am no longer an unbeliever. I am afraid that
I love all beautiful things too much for my own comfort. If a convict
cares for beauty that sensitiveness can only give him pain while in
prison. I love music and at times I have feelings that it seems to me
can only be expressed through music; and I hope I shall be able to take
piano lessons some time."

I discovered later that there was a strain of the old Welsh minstrel in
Alfred's blood, but small prospect there was at that time of his ever
realizing the hope of studying music. For all this while the boy was
steadily breaking down under the strain of convict life, the "nothing
but work" on a stool for ten hours a day on the shoe contract. Physical
exhaustion was evident in the handwriting of the shorter letters in
which he tells me of nature's revolt against the prison diet, and how
night after night he "dreams of things to eat." "I sometimes believe I
am really starving to death," he writes. But the trouble was not so much
the prison food as that the boy was ill.

I went to see him at about this time and was startled by the gaunt and
famished face, the appeal of the hungry eyes that looked into mine. I
felt as if starvation had thrust its fangs into my own body, and all
through the night, whether dreaming or awake, that horror held me.
Fortunately: for well I knew there would be no rest for me until forces
were set in motion to bring about a change for the better in Alfred.

In the general routine of prison life, if the prison doctor pronounces a
convict able to work the convict must either work or be punished until
he consents to work; or----? In the case of Alfred or in any case I
should not presume to assign individual responsibility, but as soon as
the case was laid before the warden Alfred was given change of work and
put on special diet with most favorable results as to health.

Alfred's imprisonment lasted about two years after I first met him, this
break in health occurring in the second year. As the day of release drew
near his hopes flamed high, breaking into words in his last letter.

"Next month I shall be a free man! Think of it! A free man. Free to do
everything that is right, free to walk where I please on God's green
earth, free to breathe the pure air, and _to help the cause of social
progress_ instead of retarding it as I have done."

Now, I had in Chicago a Heaven-sent friend whose heart and hand were
always open to the needs of my prisoners, indeed to the needs of all
humanity. This friend was a Welsh preacher. He called upon me in Chicago
one November afternoon when I had just returned from a visit to the
penitentiary. I was tingling with interest in the Welsh prisoner whom I
had met for the first time the evening before. Sure of my listener's
sympathy I gave myself free rein in relating the impression that Alfred
made upon me. I felt as if I had clasped the hand of Providence
itself--and had I not?--when my friend said:

"Your Welsh boy is a fellow countryman of mine. If you will send him to
me when released I think I can open a way for him." This prospect of a
good start in freedom was invaluable to Alfred, giving courage for
endurance and a moral incentive for the rest of his prison term.

Every man when released from prison in my State is given a return ticket
to the place from which he was sent, ten dollars in cash, and a suit of
clothing. These suits are convict-made, and while not distinctive to the
ordinary observer, they are instantly recognizable to the police all
over the State. Half-worn suits I had no difficulty in obtaining through
my own circle of friends. So when Alfred's day of freedom came a good
outfit of business clothing was awaiting him and before evening no
outward trace of his convict experience remained.

According to previous arrangement Alfred went directly to the Welsh
preacher. This minister was more than true to his promise, for he
entertained the boy at his own home over night, then sent him up to a
small school settlement in an adjoining State where employment and a
home for the winter had been secured, the employer knowing Alfred's
story.

And there for the first time in his life Alfred had some of the right
good times that seem the natural birthright of youth in America. Here is
his own account:

"I had a splendid time Thanksgiving. All the valley assembled in the
little chapel, every one bringing baskets of things to eat. There were
chickens, geese and the never-forgotten turkey, pies of every variety of
good things known to mortal man. In the evening we boys and girls filled
two sleighs full of ourselves and went for a sleigh-ride. You could have
heard our laughing and singing two miles off. We came back to the school
house where apples, nuts, and candy were passed round, and bed time
that night was twelve o'clock."

It was not the good times that counted so much to Alfred as the chance
for education. He began school at once, and outside of school hours he
worked hard, not only for his board but picking up odd jobs in the
neighborhood by which he could earn money for personal expenses. He
carried in his vest pocket lists of words to be memorized while working,
and still wished "that one did not have to sleep but could study all
night." The moral influences were all healthful as could be. The people
among whom he lived were industrious, intelligent, and high-minded.
Among his studies that winter was a course in Shakespeare, and the whole
mental atmosphere was most stimulating. Within a few months a chance to
work in a printing-office was eagerly accepted and it really seemed as
if some of his dreams might come true. But while the waves on the
surface of life were sparkling, beneath was the perilous undertow of
disease. Symptoms of tuberculosis appeared, work in the printing-office
had to be abandoned after a few weeks, and Alfred's doctor advised him
to work his way toward the South before cold weather set in; as another
severe Northern winter would probably be fatal. After consultation with
his friends this course was decided upon; and, confident in the faith
that he could surely find transient work with farmers along the line, he
fared forth toward the South, little dreaming of the test of moral fibre
and good resolutions that lay before him. The child had sought refuge
from destitution in criminal life from which his soul had early
revolted; but the man was now to encounter the desperate struggle of
manhood for a foothold in honest living.

For the first month all went fairly well, then began hard luck both in
small towns and the farming country.

"The farmers have suffered two bad seasons; there seems to be no money,
and there's hardly a farm unmortgaged," he wrote me, and then: "When I
had used the last penny of my earnings I went without food for one day,
when hunger getting the best of me, I sold some of my things. After that
I got a weeks work and was two dollars ahead. I aimed for St. Louis, one
hundred miles away and walked the whole distance. What a walk it was! I
never passed a town without trying for work. The poverty through there
is amazing. I stuck to my determination not to beg. I must confess that
I never had greater temptation to go back to my old life; and I think if
I can conquer temptation as I did that day when I was _so_ hungry I need
have no fears for the future.

"I reached St. Louis with five cents in my pocket. For three days I
walked the streets of the City trying to get work but without success. I
scanned the papers for advertisements of men wanted, but for every place
there were countless applicants. My heart hurt me as I walked the
streets to see men and women suffering for the bare necessaries of
existence. The third night I slept on the stone steps of a Baptist
Church. Then I answered an advertisement for an extra gang of men to be
shipped out to work on railroad construction somewhere in Arkansas. A
curious crew it was all through; half the men were tramps who had no
intention of working, several were well-dressed men who could find
nothing else to do, some were railroad men who had worked at nothing
else. When one of the brakesmen found where we were bound for he said,
'That place! You'll all be in the hospital or dead, in two months.'

"The second evening we stopped at the little town where we now are. The
work is terrible, owing to the swamps and heat. Out of the twenty five
who started only eight are left. Yesterday I fainted overcome by the
heat, but if it kills me I shall stick to the work until I find
something better."

The work did not kill Alfred, but malarial fever soon turned the
workmen's quarters into a sort of camp hospital where Alfred, while
unable to work, developed a talent for nursing those who were helpless.
His letters at this time were filled with accounts of sickness and the
needs of the sick. He had never asked me for money; it seemed to be
almost a point of honor among my prison friends _not_ to ask me for
money; but "if you could send me something to get lemons for some of the
boys who haven't a cent" was his one appeal; to which I gladly
responded.

Better days were on the way, however. Cooler weather was at hand, and
during the winter Alfred found in a lumber mill regular employment,
interrupted occasionally by brief illnesses. On the whole, the next year
was one of prosperity. Life had resolved itself into the simple problem
of personal independence, and with a right good will Alfred took hold
of the proposition, determined to make himself valuable to his employer.
That he accomplished this I have evidence in a note of unqualified
recommendation from his employer.

When the family with whom he had boarded for a year were about to leave
town he was offered the chance to buy their small cottage for two
hundred and fifty dollars, on monthly payments; and by securing a man
and his wife as tenants he was able to do this.

"At last, I am in my own house," he writes me. "I went out on the piazza
to-day and looked over the valley with a feeling of pride that I was
under my own roof. I have reserved the pleasant front room for myself,
and I have spent three evenings putting up shelves and ornamenting them
and trying to make the room look pretty. I shall get some nice mouldings
down at the mill to make frames for the pictures you sent me. And I'm
going to have a little garden and raise some vegetables."

But the agreeable sense of ownership of a home and pleasure in the
formation of social relations were invaded by haunting memories of the
past. The brighter possibilities opened to his fancy seemed but to
emphasize his sense of isolation. Outward conditions could not alter his
own personality or obliterate his experiences. It was a dark hour in
which he wrote:

"How wretched it all is, this tangled web of my life with its suffering,
its sin and its retribution. It is with me still. I can see myself now
standing inside the door of my prison cell, looking up to the little
loop-hole of a window across the corridor, trying to catch a glimpse of
the blue heavens or of a star, longing for pure air and sunshine,
longing for freedom....

"Strong as is my love for woman, much as I long for someone to share my
life, I don't see how I can ever ask any woman to take into her life
half of that blackened and crime-stained page of my past. I must try to
find happiness in helping others."

But nature was too much for Alfred. Not many months later he tells me
that he is going to be married and that his sweetheart, a young widow,
"is kind and motherly. When I told her all of my past she said, 'And so
you were afraid I would think the less of you? Not a bit. It only hurts
me to think of all you have been through.'"

The happy letters following this marriage give evidence that the tie of
affection was strong between the two. Here we have a glimpse of the
early married days:

"I have been making new steps to our house, putting fancy wood work on
the porch and preparing to paint both the inside and the outside of the
house next month."--Alfred was night-watch at the lumber mill.--"It is
four o'clock in the afternoon; I am writing by an open window where I
can look out and see my wife's flowers in the garden. I can look across
the valley to the ridge of trees beyond, while the breeze comes in
bringing the scent of the pines. Out in the kitchen I can hear my wife
singing as she makes some cake for our supper. But my old ambition to
own a printing office has not left me. I am still looking forward to
that."

Just here I should like to say: "And they lived happy ever after." But
life is not a fairy-story; to many it seems but a crucible through which
the soul is passed. But the vicissitudes that followed in Alfred's few
remaining years were those of the common lot. In almost every letter
there were indications of failing health, causing frequent loss of time
in work. Three years after his marriage, in the joy of fatherhood,
Alfred writes me of the baby, of his cunning ways and general dearness;
and of what he did when arrayed in some little things I had sent him.
Then, when the child was a year old came an anxious letter telling of
Baby Alfred's illness, and then:


     "MY DEAR FRIEND:

     "My baby is dead. He died last night.

     "ALFRED."


This tearing of the heart-strings was a new kind of suffering, more
acute than any caused by personal hardship. Wrapped in grief he writes
me: "To think of those words, 'My baby's grave.' I knew I loved him
dearly, but how dearly I did not know until he was taken away. It isn't
the same world since he died. Poor little dear! The day after he was
taken sick he looked up in my face and crowed to me and clapped his
little hands and called me 'da-da,' for the last time. Oh! my God! how
it hurts me. It seems at times as though my heart must break....

"Since the baby died night watching at the lumber mill has become
torture to me. In the long hours of the night my baby's face comes
before me with such vividness that it is anguish to think of it."

The end of it all was not far off; from the long illness that followed
Alfred did not recover, though working when able to stand; the wife,
too, had an illness, and the need of earnings was imperative. Alfred
writes despairingly of his unfulfilled dreams, and adds: "I seem to have
succeeded only in reforming myself," but even in the last pencilled
scrawl he still clings to the hope of being able to work again.

I can think of Alfred only as a good soldier through the battle of life.
As a child, fighting desperately for mere existence, defeated morally
for a brief period by defective social conditions; later depleted
physically through the inhumanity of the prison-contract system; then
drawing one long breath of happiness and freedom through the kindness of
the Welsh preacher; but only to plunge into battle with adverse economic
conditions; and all this time striving constantly against the most
relentless of foes, the disease which finally overcame him. His was,
indeed, a valiant spirit.

Of those who may study this picture of Alfred's life will it be the
"habitual criminals" who will claim the likeness as their own, or will
the home-making, tender-hearted men and women feel the thrill of
kinship?

Truly Alfred was one with all loving hearts who are striving upward,
whether in prison or in palace.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] Alfred never entered private houses.

[7] Mrs. Burnett's charming little story, "Editha's Burglar," went the
rounds among the burglars in the prison till it was worn to shreds.




CHAPTER V


An habitual criminal of the pronounced type was my friend Dick Mallory.
I have no remembrance of our first meeting, but he must have been thirty
years old at the time, was in the penitentiary for the third time, and
serving a fourteen-year sentence. Early in our acquaintance I asked him
to write for me a detailed account of his childhood and boyhood, the
environment and influences which had made him what he was, and also his
impression of the various reformatories and minor penal institutions of
which he had been an inmate. This he was allowed to do by special
permission, and the warden of the penitentiary gave his indorsement as
to the general reliability of his statements. The following brief sketch
of his youth is summarized from his own accounts.

One cannot hold Dick Mallory as a victim of social conditions, neither
was he of criminal parentage. One of his grandfathers was a farmer, the
other a mechanic. His father was a working-man, his mother a
big-hearted woman, thoroughly kindly and to the last devoted to her son.
There must have been some constitutional lack of moral fibre in Dick,
who was the same wayward, unmanageable boy known to heart-broken mothers
in all classes of life. Impulsive, generous, with an overflowing
sociability of disposition, he won his way with convicts and guards in
the different penal institutions included in his varied experience. I
hate to put it into words, but Dick was undeniably a thief; and his
career as a thief began very early. When seven years of age he was sent
to a parish school, and there, he tells me, "A tough set of boys they
were, including myself. There I received my first lessons in stealing.
We would go through all the alley ways on our way to and from school,
and break into sheds and steal anything we could sell for a few cents,
using the money to get into cheap theatres."

This early lawlessness led to more serious misdemeanors until the boy at
thirteen was sent to the reform school. This reform-school
experience--in the late seventies--afforded the best possible culture
for all the evil in his nature. This reform school was openly designated
a "hotbed of crime" for the State. Inevitably Dick left it a worse boy
than at his entrance. Another delinquency soon followed, for which he
was sent to jail for a month, the mother hoping that this would "teach
him a lesson." "It did. _But oh, what a lesson._ Oh! but it was a hard
place for a boy! There were from three to seven in each cell, some of
them boys younger than I, some hardened criminals. We were herded
together in idleness, learning only lessons in crime. In less than six
months I was there a second time. Then mother moved into another
neighborhood, but alas, for the change. That same locality has turned
out more thieves than any other portion of Chicago, that sin-begrimed
city. From the time I became acquainted in that neighborhood I was a
confirmed thief, and a constant object of suspicion to the police.

"One evening I was arrested on general principles, taken into the police
station and paraded before the whole squad of the police, the captain
saying, 'This is the notorious Dick Mallory, take a good look at him,
and bring him in night or day, wherever you may find him.'" This
completed his enmity to law and order.

Soon after followed an experience in the house of correction of which he
says: "This was my first time there and a miserable time it was. Sodom
and Gomorrah in their palmiest days could not hold a candle to it. You
know that by this time I was no spring chicken, but the place actually
made me sick; it was literally swarming with vermin, the men half
starved and half clad." This workhouse experience was repeated several
times and was regarded afterward as the lowest depth of moral
degradation of his whole career. "I did not try to obtain work in these
intervals of liberty, because I was arrested every time I was met by a
policeman who had seen me before."

Thoroughly demoralized Dick Mallory sought the saloons, at first for the
sake of sociability, then for the stimulant which gave temporary zest to
life, until the habit of drinking was confirmed and led to more serious
crimes.

Perhaps neither our modern juvenile courts nor our improved methods in
reform school and house of correction would have materially altered the
course of Dick Mallory's life, although a thorough course of manual
training might have turned his destructive tendencies into constructive
forces and the right teaching might have instilled into him some
principles of good citizenship. Be that as it may, the fact remained
that before this boy had reached his majority his imprisonment had
become a social necessity; he had become the very type against whom our
most severe legislation has been directed.

But this was not the Dick Mallory whom I came to know so well ten years
later, and who was for two years or more my guide and director in some
of the best work I ever accomplished for prisoners. Strange to say, this
man, utterly irresponsible and lawless as he had heretofore been, was a
model prisoner. He fell into line at once, learned his trade on the shoe
contract rapidly, became an expert workman, earning something like sixty
dollars a year by extra work. He was cheerful, sensible, level-headed;
and settled down to convict life with the determination to make the best
of it, and the most of the opportunity to read and study evenings. The
normal man within him came into expression. His comparison between the
house of correction and the penitentiary was wholly in favor of the
latter. He recognized the necessity of a strict discipline for men like
himself; he appreciated the difficulties of the warden's position and
his criticisms of the institutions were confined mostly to the abuses
inherent in the contract system. Never coming into contact with the
sick or disabled, himself blessed with the irrepressible buoyancy of the
sons of Erin, physically capable of doing more than all the work
required of him, his point of view of convict life and prison
administration was at that time altogether different from that of John
Bryan. He plunged into correspondence with me with an ardor that never
flagged, covering every inch of the writing-paper allotted him,
treasuring every line of my letters, and re-reading them on the long
Sunday afternoons in his cell. For years he had made the most of the
prison libraries. His reading was mainly along scientific lines; Galton,
Draper, and Herbert Spencer he treasured especially. His favorite novel
was M. Linton's "Joshua Davidson," a striking modern paraphrase of the
life of Jesus. His good nature won him many small favors and privileges
from the prison guards, and the time that I knew him as a prisoner was
unquestionably the happiest period of his life.

We always had some young prisoner on hand, whom we were trying to rescue
from criminal life. It was usually a cell-mate of Dick's with whom he
had become thoroughly acquainted. And on the outside was Dick's mother
always ready to help her boy set some other mother's boy on his feet.
Our first mutual experiment along this line was in the beginning
somewhat discouraging. The following extract from one of Dick's letters
speaks for itself, not only of our _protégé_, Harry, but of Dick's
attitude in this and similar cases.

"My brother wrote me that Harry had burnt his foot and was unable to
work for a month, during which time a friend of mine paid his board. On
recovering he went back to work for a few days, drew his pay and left
the city, leaving my friend out of pocket. Now I would like to make this
loss good because I feel responsible for Harry. I have never lost
confidence in him; and what makes me feel worst of all is that I am
unable to let him know that I am not angry with him. I would give twenty
dollars this minute if I knew where a letter would reach him.

"I have never directly tried to bring any man down to my own level, and
if I never succeed in elevating myself much above my present level I
would like to be the means of elevating others." However, Harry did not
prove altogether a lost venture and Dick was delighted to receive better
news of him later.

We had better luck next time when Ned Triscom, a young cell-mate of
Dick's, was released. Dick had planned for this boy's future for weeks,
asking my assistance in securing a situation and arranging for an
evening school, the bills guaranteed by Dick. Our plans carried even
better than we hoped. Ned proved really the right sort, and when I
afterward met him in Chicago my impressions more than confirmed Dick's
favorable report. But Ned was Dick's _find_, and Dick must give his own
report.

"I want to thank you for what you have done for my friend Ned. He has
written me every week since he left, and it does me good to know that he
is on the high road to success. As soon as you begin to receive news
from your friends who have met him you will hear things that will make
your heart glad. He is enthusiastic in his praise of Miss Jane Addams,
has spent some evenings at the Hull House, and goes often to see my
mother. He is doing remarkably well with his work and earned twenty-four
dollars last week. He has no relative nearer than an aunt, whom he will
visit in his vacation. I never asked him _anything about his past_, and
he never told me anything. I simply judged of him by what I saw of him.
I always thought him out of place here and now I wonder how he ever
happened to get here."

I liked Dick for never having asked Ned anything about his past. Now
through Dick's interest in the boy Ned was placed at once in healthy
moral environment in Chicago, and he was really a very interesting and
promising young man with exceedingly good manners. He called on me one
evening in Chicago and seemed as good as anybody, with the right sort of
interests, and he kept in correspondence with me as long as I answered
his letters.

Mrs. Mallory was as much interested in Dick's philanthropic experiments
as I was, and several men fresh from the penitentiary spent their first
days of freedom in the sunshine of her warm welcome and under the
shelter of her hospitable roof. Thus Dick Mallory, his mother, and I
formed a sort of first aid to the ex-convict society.

Another of Mallory's protégés was Sam Ellis, whose criminal sowing of
wild oats appeared to be the expression of a nature with an insatiable
appetite for adventure. The adventure of lawlessness appealed to him as
a game, the very hazards involved luring him on, as "the red game of
war" has lured many a young man and the game of high finance has
ensnared many an older one.

But Sam Ellis indulged in mental adventures also--in the game of making
fiction so convincing as to be accepted as fact, for Sam was born a
teller of stories. Perhaps I ought to have regarded Sam as a plain liar,
but I never could so regard him, for he frankly discussed this faculty
as he might have discussed any other talent; and he told me that he
found endless fascination in making others believe the pure fabrications
of his imagination. I always felt that as a writer of fiction he would
have found his true vocation and made a success. He had a feeling for
literature, too, and I think he has happily expressed what companions
books may be to a prisoner in the following extract from one of his
letters:

"I have been fairly devouring Seneca, Montaigne, Saadi, Marcus Aurelius,
Rochefoucauld, Bacon, Sir Thomas More, Shelley, Schopenhauer, Clodd,
Clifford, Huxley, Spencer, Fiske, Emerson, Ignatius Donnelly, Bryan, B.
O. Flower, J. K. Hosmer, and a host of lesser lights." Of Emerson he
says: "We are friends. It was a great rise for me and a terrible
come-down for him. I've done nothing but read, think, talk, and dream
Emerson for two weeks, and familiarity only cements our friendship the
stronger. It must have taken some extraordinary high thinking to create
such pure and delightful things. He uplifts one into a higher atmosphere
and carries the thought along on broad and liberal lines. Instead of
making one look down into the gutter to see the reflection of the sky,
he has us look up into the sky itself." In hours of depression this man
sought the companionship of Marjorie Fleming. Truly he understood the
value of the old advice: "To divert thyself from a troublesome fancy
'tis but to run to thy bookes." And to think of that dear Pet Marjorie
winging her way through the century and across the sea to cheer and
brighten the very abode of gloom and despair! No desire had this man to
read detective stories--he lived them--his life out of prison was full
of excitement and escapade. When seasons of reflection came he turned to
something entirely different; and were not the forces working upward
within him as vital and active as the downward tendencies?

However that may be, neither Dick Mallory nor I succeeded in getting any
firm grip on that mercurial being; but he never tried to impose on
either of us, was always responsive to my interest in him, and found a
chance to do me a good turn before he disappeared from my horizon in a
far western mining district where doubtless other adventures awaited
him. Dick Mallory always regarded Sam with warm affection, and his
clear-cut personality has left a vivid picture in my memory.

I find that Dick Mallory was the centre from which radiated more of my
acquaintances in the prison than from any one other source. His mind was
always on the alert regarding the men around him, and he was always on
the lookout for means of helping them. In one of our interviews his
greeting to me was:

"There are two Polish boys here that you must see; and you must do
something for them."

"Not another prisoner will I get acquainted with, Dick," was my reply.
"I've more men on my list now than I can do justice to. I've not time
for another one."

"It makes no difference whether you have time or not, these boys ought
to be out of here and there's nobody to get them out but you," said Dick
in a tone of finality.

I saw instantly that not only was the fate of the Polish boys involved,
but my standing in the opinion of Mallory; for between us two was the
unspoken understanding that we could count on each other, and Dick knew
perfectly well that I could not fail him. Nothing in all my prison
experience so warms my heart as the thought of our Polish boys. Neither
of them was twenty years of age; they were working boys of good general
character, and yet they were serving a fifteen-year sentence imposed
because of some technicality in an ill-framed law.

My interview with the younger of the boys was wholly satisfactory. I
found him frank and intelligent and ready to give me every point in his
case. But with the older one it was different; he listened in silence to
all my questions, refusing any reply. At last I said: "You must answer
my questions or I shall not be able to do anything for you." Then he
turned his great black velvet eyes upon me and said only: "You mean to
do me some harm?" What a comment on the boy's experience in Chicago
courts! He simply could not conceive of a stranger seeking him with any
but a harmful motive. And we made no further progress that time, but
when I came again there was welcome in the black velvet eyes, and with
the greeting, "I know now that you are my friend," he gave me his
statement and answered all my questions.

Now it seemed impossible that such a severe sentence could have been
passed on those boys without some just cause. But I had faith in Dick
Mallory's judgment of them, and my own impressions were altogether
favorable; furthermore, my good friend the warden was convinced that
grave injustice had been done.

It was two years before I had disentangled all the threads and
marshalled all my evidence and laid the case before the governor. The
governor looked the papers over carefully, and then said:

"If I did all my work as thoroughly as this has been done I should not
be criticised as I am now. What would you like me to do for these boys?"

Making one bold dash for what I wanted I answered: "I should like you to
give me two pardons that I can take to the boys to-morrow."

The governor rang for his secretary, to whom he said: "Make out two
pardons for these Polish boys." And ten minutes later, with the two
pardons in my hand, I left the governor's office. And so it came to
pass that I was indebted to Dick Mallory for one of the very happiest
hours of my life.

When I reached the prison next day the good news had preceded me. One of
the officers met me at the door and clasped both my hands in welcome,
saying:

"There isn't an officer or a convict in this prison who will not rejoice
in the freedom of those boys, and every convict will know of it."

As for the Polish boys themselves, the blond, a dear boy, was expecting
good news; but the black velvet eyes of the dark one were bewildered by
the unbelievable good fortune. I stood at the door and shook hands with
them as they entered into freedom, and afterward received letters from
both giving the details of their homecoming. And so the purpose of
Mallory was accomplished.

These are but few of the many who owed a debt of gratitude to this man.
Only last year a man now dying in England, in one of his letters to me,
referred gratefully to assistance given him by Mallory on his release
from prison many years ago. Mallory's letters are all the record of a
helping hand. Through them all runs the silver thread of human
kindness, the traces of benefits conferred and efforts made on behalf of
others.

And what of Dick Mallory's own life after his release from prison? He
had always lacked faith in himself and in his future, and now the
current of existence seemed set against him. He was thirty-two years old
and more than half his life had been spent in confinement, under
restraint. In his ambition to earn money for himself while working on
prison contracts, he had drawn too heavily on both physical and nervous
resources. In his own words: "I did not realize at all the physical
condition I was in. If I could only have gone to some place where I
could have recuperated under medical attention! But no! I only wanted to
get to work. _All I knew was work._"

The hard times of '93 came on, a man had to take what work he could get,
and Mallory could not do the work that came in his way. His mother died
and the home was broken up. He again resorted to the sociability of the
saloon, and with the renewal of old associations and under the
influences of stimulants the reckless lawlessness of his boyhood again
broke out into some action that resulted in a term in another prison.

The man was utterly crushed. His old criminal record was brought to
light and he found himself ensnared in the toils of his past. He was
bitterly humiliated--he was in no position to earn a penny, and no
channel for the generous impulses still strong within him was now open.
The old buoyancy of his nature still flickered occasionally from the
dying embers, but gradually darkened into a dull despair as far as his
own life was concerned. But his interest in others survived, and the
only favors he ever asked of me were on behalf of "the boys" whom he
could no longer help. He still wrote me freely and his letters tell
their own story:

"At one time in our friendship I really believed that everything was
possible in my future. I never meant to deceive you-- And when I
realized my broken promises my heart broke too. I have never been the
same man since and can never be again. I cannot help looking on the dark
side for life has been so hard for me. Ah! it is a hard place when you
reach the stage where the future seems so hopeless as it does to me."

And hopeless it truly was; imprisonment and dissipation had done their
work and his death came shortly after his release from this prison.
Since his life had proved a losing game it was far better that it should
end. But was not Robert Louis Stevenson right in his belief that all our
moral failures do not lessen the value of our good qualities and our
good deeds? The good that Mallory did was positive and enduring; and
surely his name should be written among those who loved their fellow
men.

To me the very most cruel stroke in the fate of Dick Mallory was this:
that in the minds of many his history may seem to justify the severity
of legislation against habitual criminals. With all his efforts to save
others, himself he could not save--and well as he knew the injustice
resulting from life sentences for "habituals," the sum of his life
counted against clemency for this class.




CHAPTER VI


Dick Mallory himself was given the maximum sentence of fourteen years
for larceny under the habitual-criminal act; and he did not resent the
sentence in his own case because he found life in the penitentiary on
the whole as satisfactory as it had been on the outside; and when I met
him he had become deeply interested in the other prisoners. But he
resented the fact that the "habitual act" was applied without
discrimination to any one convicted of a second offence. He was doing
some study on his own account of the individual men called "habituals."
I never understood how Dick Mallory contrived to know as much about
individual convicts as he did know; but he was a keen observer and
quick-witted, and the guards and foremen often gave him bits of
information. He admitted, however, that his real knowledge of the men
under the "habitual act" was meagre, and asked me to make some personal
observations. To this end he gave me a list of some half-dozen men whom
I promised to interview, and in this way began my acquaintance with
Peter Belden, an acquaintance destined to continue many years after Dick
Mallory had passed beyond the reach of earthly courts.

Peter Belden was then a man something over thirty years of age, stunted
in growth, somewhat deaf, with his right arm paralyzed through some
accident in the prison shop. His hair, eyes, and complexion were much of
a color, but his good, strong features expressed intelligence. He wore
the convict stripes, which had the effect of blotting individuality
throughout the prison.

Notwithstanding these physical disadvantages, a criminal record and a
lifetime of unfavorable environment, some inherent force and manliness
in his nature made itself felt. He took it for granted that I would not
question his sincerity, neither did I. He said nothing of his own
hardships, made no appeal to my sympathy, but discussed the
habitual-criminal act quite impersonally and intelligently; assuming at
once the attitude of one ready to assist me in any effort for the
benefit of the criminal class to which he belonged.

But while he was talking about others I was thinking about him, and
when I inquired what I could do for him personally he asked me to obtain
the warden's permission to have a pencil and a writing-tablet in his
cell, as he liked to work at mathematical problems in his cell. This was
the only favor the man asked of me while he was in prison, and to this
day I do not know if he thought his fourteen-year sentence was unjust.
As he was quite friendless, and neither received nor wrote letters, he
was only too glad to correspond with me. I was surprised on receiving
his first letter to find his left-handed writing regular and clear, with
only an occasional slip in spelling or in correct English.

Always interested in the origin and in the formative influences which
had resulted in the criminal life of these men, I asked Belden to write
for me the story of his youth; and I give it from his own letters, now
before me, in his own words as far as possible:

"I have often thought that the opportunities of life have been pretty
hard with me, still I have tried always to make the best of it. I know
there are many who have fared worse than I, and in my pity towards them
I have managed to find the hard side of life easier than otherwise.

"I was born on an island off the coast of England. My father and mother
were of Irish descent, but we all spoke both English and French, and I
was in school for four years before I was twelve. My studies were French
and English, history, grammar and spelling; but I put everything aside
for arithmetic and other branches of mathematics: as long as I can
remember I had a greedy taste for figures; I earned my school expenses
by doing odd jobs for a farmer, for we were very poor. My father was a
hard drinker and there were fourteen of us in the family. There were
days when we did not have but a meal or two, and some days when we had
nothing at all to eat."

The boy's mother was ambitious for his education; she had relatives in
one of our western States, and when Peter was twelve years old he was
sent to this country with the understanding that he was to be kept in
school.

"But instead of going to school as I had expected I was knocked and
kicked about here and everywhere. My cousin would say, 'It's schoolin'
ye want is it? I'll give ye schoolin',' and her schoolin' was always
given with a club or a kick. 'Learnin' and educatin'? It's too much of
thim ye have already; go out and mind the cow.'"

The boy endured this life for several months, "dreading this cousin so
much that sometimes I'd stay out all night, sleeping in the near-by
woods." Then, in an hour of desperation, he decided to run away, and
after two or three temporary places where he worked for his board he
drifted into the lumber regions of Michigan. There his ambition for an
education was gratified in an unlooked-for and most curious fashion.

During the seventies various rumors of immoral houses in connection with
these lumber regions were afloat, and later measures were taken which
effectually dispersed the inmates. One of these houses was kept by a
college graduate from the East, who had been educated for the ministry
but had deflected from the straight and narrow path into the business of
counterfeiting; in consequence he spent five years in prison and
afterward sought refuge from his past in the wilds of Michigan.

Chance or fate led Peter Belden, a boy of thirteen, into the circle of
this man's dominion, where, strangely enough, the higher side of the
boy's nature found some chance of development. Peter was given
employment at this "Rossman's" as caretaker to the dogs and as
general-errand boy. The man, Rossman, studied the boy, and discovering
his passion for learning cemented a bond between them by the promise of
an equivalent to a course in college.

It seemed, indeed, like falling into the lap of good fortune for Peter
to be clothed and fed and given a room of his own "with college books on
the shelves" open to his use at any time; "and there was, besides, a
trunk full of books--all kinds of scientific books."

And here, to his heart's content, the boy revelled in the use of books.
Study was his recreation: and true to his word Rossman gave him daily
instruction, taking him through algebra, trigonometry, and the various
branches of higher mathematics, not omitting geography and history
and--_Bible Study_ every Sunday. Who can fathom the heights and depths,
the mysterious complexities of Rossman's nature? This is Peter's tribute
to the man:

"I was with him for three years; I always thought he was very kind, not
only to me but to all the girls in the house and to every one."

In this morally outlawed community Peter grew to be sixteen years old,
attracting to him by some magnetism in his own nature the best elements
in his unfavorable environment. And here the one romance in his life
occurred; on his part at least it seems to have been as idyllic as was
Paul's feeling for Virginia. The girl, young and pretty, was a voluntary
member of "Rossman's." She, too, had a history. Somewhat strictly reared
by her family, she had been placed in a convent school, where she found
the repression and restraint unbearable. In her reckless desire for
freedom, taking advantage of a chance to escape from the convent school,
she found refuge in the nearest city, and while there was induced to
join the Rossman group with no knowledge of the abyss into which she was
plunging. She was still a novice in this venture when she became
interested in Peter Belden, the young student. Together they worked at
problems in figures, their talk often wandering from the problems in
books to the problems of life, especially their own lives, until the day
came when Peter told her that he could not live without her.

Then the two young things laid their plans to leave that community, be
honestly married, and to work out the problem of life together.
However, this was not to be--for death claimed the wayward girl and
closed the brief chapter of romance in Belden's life. And the man, near
sixty years old now, still keeps this bit of springtime in his heart,
and "May"--so aptly named--through the distillation of time and the
alchemy of memory appears to him now an angel of light, the one love of
his life.

Other changes were now on the wing. "Rossman's" was no longer to be
tolerated, and the proprietor was obliged to disband his group and leave
that part of the country. It was then that the truly baleful influence
of Rossman asserted itself, blighting fatally the young life now bound
to him by ties of gratitude and habit, and even turning the development
of his mathematical gift into a curse. Forced to abandon the
disreputable business in which he had been engaged, Rossman opened a
gambling-house in Chicago, initiating Belden into all the ways that are
dark and all the artful dodges practised in these gambling-hells. Here
Belden's natural gift for calculation and combination of numbers,
reinforced by mathematical training, came into play. The fascination of
the game for its own sake has even crept into one of Belden's letters to
me, where several pages are devoted to proving how certain results can
be obtained by scientific manipulation of the cards. But again Rossman's
business fell under the ban of the law, and soon after, for some overt
act of dishonesty, Belden was sent to the penitentiary.

A year later an ex-convict with power of resistance weakened by the
rigidity of prison discipline, with no trade, the ten dollars given by
the State invested in cheap outer clothing to replace the suit,
recognizable at a glance by the police, which the State then bestowed
upon the ex-convict, Belden returned to Chicago. Friendless, penniless,
accustomed to live by his wits, Belden was soon "in trouble" again, was
speedily convicted under the habitual-criminal act and given the maximum
sentence of fourteen years. Three years of this sentence Belden served
after the beginning of our acquaintance. He had met with the accident
resulting in the paralysis of his arm, and his outlook was hopeless and
dreary. However, after the loss of the use of his right hand he
immediately set to work learning to write with his left hand, and this
he speedily accomplished. The tablet granted by the warden at my request
was soon covered with abstruse mathematical problems; differential
calculus was of course meaningless to the guards, but a continuous
supply of tablets was allowed as a safe outlet for a mind considered
"cracked" on the subject of figures. Owing to his infirmities Belden's
prison tasks were light; his devotion to Warden McClaughrey, who treated
him with kindness, kept him obedient to prison rules, while his obliging
disposition won the friendly regard of fellow prisoners. And so the time
drifted by until his final release. This time he left the prison clad in
a well-fitting second-hand suit sent by a friend. Dick Mallory, who was
then a free man, welcomed him in Chicago, saw him on board the train for
another city in which I had arranged for his entrance into a "home," and
with hearty good will speeded his departure from criminal ranks. This
was in the year 1893; from that day forward Peter Belden has lived an
honest life.

The inmates of the home, or the members of that family, as the sainted
woman who established and superintended the place considered these men,
were expected to contribute toward the expense of the home what it
actually cost to keep them. During the hard winters of 1894 and 1895
able-bodied men by thousands were vainly seeking work and awaiting
their turn in the breadline at the end of a fruitless day, while Peter
Belden, with his right arm useless, by seizing every chance to earn
small amounts, and by strictest self-denial, contrived to meet the bare
needs of his life. Once or twice for a few days he could not do this,
but the superintendent of the home tided him over these breaks; and I
knew from her that Belden was unflagging in his effort to make his
expenses. That this was far from easy is shown by the following extract
from a letter written in the winter of 1895:

"I am in pretty good health, thank you, but I have had a hard, hard
time. Do the very best I can I can't get ahead; yesterday I had to
borrow a dollar from the home. Still I am pegging away, day in and day
out, selling note paper. I have felt like giving up in despair many
times these last few months. A _something_, however, tells me to keep
on. You have kindly asked me if I needed clothing. Yes, thank you, I
need shoes and stockings and I haven't money to buy them. Now, dear
friend, don't spend any money in getting these things for me; I shall be
glad and thankful for anything that has been used before."

As financial prosperity gradually returned, making the ends meet became
easier to Belden. Among his round of note-paper customers he established
friendly relations and was able to enlarge his stock of salable
articles, and he won the confidence of two large concerns that gave him
goods on the instalment plan. At this time the superintendent of the
home wrote me:

"I am deeply interested in Peter Belden, for he has been a good, honest,
industrious man ever since he came to us. I want to tell you that your
kindly efforts are fully appreciated by him. He is earnestly working up
in a business way, and all who have anything to do with him as a man
have confidence in him."

Belden's interests, too, began to widen and his frequent letters to me
at this time are like moving pictures, giving glimpses of interiors of
various homes and of contact with all sorts of people--a sympathetic
Jewish woman, a brilliant Catholic bishop, a fake magnetic healer and
spiritualistic fraud. He even approached the celebrated Dean Hole at the
conclusion of a lecture in order to secure the dean's autograph, which
he sent me; and he had interesting experiences with various other
characters. He was frequently drawn into religious discussions, but
firmly held his ground that creeds or lack of creeds were nothing to him
so long as one was good and helpful to others. This simple belief was
consistent with his course of action. Pity dwelt ever in his heart, and
I do not believe that he ever slighted a chance to give the helping
hand. He did not forget the prisoners left behind in the penitentiary
where he had been confined, sending them magazines and letters, and
messages through me. In one of his letters I find this brief incident,
so characteristic of the man as I have known him:

"While I was canvassing to-day I saw a poor blind dog-- It was a very
pitiful sight. He would go here a little and there a little, moving
backward and forward. The poor thing did not know where he was, for he
was blind as could be, and not only blind but lame also. Something
struck me when I saw him; I said to myself, 'I am crippled but I might
be like this poor dog some day; who can tell? I certainly shall do what
I can for him.'

"I could not take him home with me but I did the next best thing, for I
took him from the pack of boys who began chasing him and gave him to a
woman who was looking out of a window evidently interested and
sympathetic; she promised to care for him."

In the hundreds of letters written me by Belden I do not find a line of
condemnation or even of harsh criticism of any one, although he shares
the prejudice common to men of his class against wealthy church-members.
Not that he was envious of their possessions, but, knowing too well the
cruelty and the moral danger of extreme poverty and ready to spend his
last dollar to relieve suffering, he simply could not conceive how it
was possible for a follower of Christ to accumulate wealth while
sweat-shops and child labor existed.

At this period of Belden's life his knowledge of mathematics afforded
him great pleasure, and it brought him into prominence in the newspaper
columns given to mathematical puzzles, where "Mr. Belden" was quoted as
final authority. Numerous were the newspaper clippings enclosed in his
letters to me, and I have before me an autograph note to Belden from the
query editor of a prominent paper, in which he says:

"Your solution of the problem is a most ingenious and mathematically
learned analysis of the question presented, and highly creditable to
your talent."

This recognition of superiority in the realm of his natural gift and
passion was precious indeed to Belden, but he was extremely sensitive in
regard to his past and avoided contact and acquaintance with those who
might be curious about it. And to be known as an inmate of the home was
to be known as an ex-convict.

This maimed, ex-convict life he must bear to the end: only outside of
that could he meet men as their equal; and so he guarded his incognito,
but not altogether successfully.

Once he made the experiment of going to a neighboring city and trying to
make some commercial use of his mathematics, but he could not gain his
starting-point. He had no credentials as teacher, and while he might
have been valuable as an expert accountant his disadvantages were too
great to be overcome.

More and more frequently as the years passed came allusions to loss of
time through illness. His faithful friend, the superintendent of the
home, had passed to her reward, and the home as Belden had known it was
a thing of the past.

Life was becoming a losing game, a problem too hard to be solved, when
tubercular tendencies of long standing developed and Belden became a
charge on some branch of the anti-tuberculosis movement, where he spent
a summer out of doors. Here he frankly faced the fact of the disease
that was developing, and characteristically read all the medical works
on the subject that the camp afforded, determined to make a good fight
against the enemy. He seemed to find a sort of comfort in bringing
himself into companionship with certain men of genius who had fought the
same foe; he mentions Robert Louis Stevenson, Chopin, and Keats, and,
more hopefully, others who were finally victorious over the disease.

With the approach of cold weather it was thought best to send Belden to
a warmer climate; arrangements were made accordingly, and he was given a
ticket to a far distant place where it was supposed he would have a
better chance of recovery. There for a time he rallied and grew
stronger, but only to face fresh hardships. He was physically incapable
of earning a living, and it was not long before he became a public
charge and was placed in an infirmary for old men; for more than fifty
years of poverty and struggle with fate had left the traces of a
lifetime on the worn-out body. But the "something" which he felt told
him to keep on through many hardships does not desert him now, and the
old spirit of determination to make the best of things holds out still.
His letters show much the same habit of observation as formerly; bits of
landscape gleam like pictures through some of his pages, and historical
associations in which I might be interested are gathered and reported.
His one most vital interest at present seems to be the production of
this book, as he firmly believes that no one else can "speak for the
prisoners" as the writer.

It seems that even Death itself, "who breaks all chains and sets all
captives free," cannot be kind to Peter Belden, and delays coming,
through wearisome days and more wearisome nights. But at last, when the
dark curtain of life is lifted, we can but trust that a happier fortune
awaits him in a happier country.




CHAPTER VII


At the time of my first visit to the penitentiary of my own State the
warden surprised me by saying: "Among the very best men in the prison
are the 'life' men, the men here for murder."

How true this was I could not then realize, but as in time I came to
know well so many of these men the words of the warden were fully
confirmed.

The law classes the killing of one person by another under three heads:
murder in the first degree; murder in the second degree; and
manslaughter. The murder deliberately planned and executed constitutes
murder in the first degree; and for this, in many of our States, the
penalty is still capital punishment; otherwise, legal murder
deliberately planned and officially executed, the penalty duplicating
the offence in general outline. This is the popular conception of
fitting the punishment to the crime; and its continuance ignores the
obvious truth that, so long as the law justifies and sets the example of
taking life under given circumstances, so long will the individual
justify himself in taking life under circumstances which seem to him to
warrant doing so; the individual simply takes the law into his own
hands. War and the death penalty are the two most potent sources of
mental suggestion in the direction of murder.

In every execution within the walls of a penitentiary the suggestion of
murder is sown broadcast among the other convicts, and is of especial
danger to those mentally unsound. As long as capital punishment is
upheld as necessary to the protection of society each State should have
its State executioner; and executions should take place at the State
capital in the presence of the governor and as many legislators as may
be in the city. In relegating to the penitentiary the ugly office of
Jack Ketch we escape the realization of what it all is--how revolting,
how barbarous--and we throw one more horror into the psychic atmosphere
of prison life.

Several factors have combined to hold the death penalty so long on the
throne of justice. Evolution has not yet eliminated from the human being
the elementary savage instinct of bloodthirstiness, so frightfully
disclosed in the revolting rush of the populace eager to witness the
public executions perpetrated in France in the present century; public
executions in defiance of the established fact that men hitherto
harmless have gone from the sight of an execution impelled to kill some
equally harmless individual.

Many good men and women, ignoring the practical effect of anything so
obscure as "suggestion," honestly believe that fear of the death penalty
has a restraining influence upon the criminal class. In those States and
countries which have had the courage to abolish the death penalty the
soundness of the "deterrent effect" theory is being tested; statistics
vary in different localities but the aggregate of general statistics
shows a decrease in murders following the abolition of the death
penalty.

A silent partner in the support of capital punishment is the general
assumption that the murderer is a normal and a morally responsible human
being. Science is now leading us to a clearer understanding of the
relation between the moral and the physical in human nature, and we are
beginning to perceive that complex and far-reaching are the causes, the
undercurrents, the abnormal impulses which come to the surface in the
act of murder. Some years ago in England, upon the examination of the
brains of a successive number of men executed for murder, it was
ascertained that eighty-five per cent of those brains were organically
diseased. Granting that these men were criminally murderers, we must
grant also that they were mentally unsound, themselves victims of
disease before others became their victims. Where the moral
responsibility lies, the Creator alone can know; perhaps in a crowded
room of a foul tenement an overworked mother or a brutal father struck a
little boy on the head, and the little brain _went wrong_, some of those
infinitesimal brain-cells related to moral conduct were crushed, and
years afterward the effect of the cruel blow on the head of the
defenceless child culminated in the murderous blow from the hand of this
child grown to manhood. And back of the blow given the child stand the
saloon and the sweat-shop and the bitter poverty and want which can
change a human being into a brute. Saloons and sweat-shops flourish in
our midst, and cruel is the pressure of poverty, and terrible in their
results are the blows inflicted upon helpless children. When the State
vigorously sets to work to remove or ameliorate the social conditions
which cause crime there will be fewer lawless murderers to be legally
murdered.

Time and again men innocent of the crime have been executed for murder.
Everything is against a man accused of murder. The simple accusation
antagonizes the public against the accused man. The press, which loves
to be sensational, joins in the prosecution, sometimes also the pulpit.
The tortures of the sweat-box are resorted to, that the accused may be
driven to convict himself before being tried; and one who has no money
may find himself convicted simply because he cannot prove his
innocence--although the law professes to hold a man innocent until his
guilt is proven.

For years I was an advocate of the death penalty as a merciful
alternative to life imprisonment. Knowing that the certainty of
approaching death may effect spiritual awakening and bring to the
surface all that is best in a man; believing that death is the great
liberator and the gateway to higher things; knowing that a man
imprisoned for life may become mentally and spiritually deadened by the
hopelessness of his fate, or may become so intent on palliating,
excusing, or justifying his crime as to lose all sense of guilt, perhaps
eventually to believe himself a victim rather than a criminal; knowing
the unspeakable suffering of the man who abandons himself to remorse,
and knowing how often the "life man" becomes a prey to insanity, in
sheer pity for the prisoner I came to regard the death penalty as a
merciful means of escape from an incomparably worse fate.

So far my point of view was taken only in relation to the prisoner for
life. Later, when I had studied the subject more broadly, in considering
the effect of the death penalty upon the community at large and as a
measure for the protection of society, I could not escape the conviction
that in the civilized world of to-day capital punishment is
indefensible. Christianity, humanity, sociology, medical science,
psychology, and statistics stand solid against the injustice and the
unwisdom of capital punishment. Public sentiment, the last bulwark of
the death penalty, is slowly but surely becoming enlightened, and the
final victory of humanitarianism is already assured.

Throughout the United States the legal penalty for murder in the second
degree is imprisonment for life; then follows the crime called
manslaughter, when the act is committed in self-defence or under other
extenuating circumstances; the penalty for which is imprisonment for a
varying but limited term of years. Practically there is no definite line
dividing murder in the second degree from manslaughter. A clever expert
lawyer, whether on the side of prosecution or the defence, has little
difficulty in carrying his case over the border in the one direction or
the other. Money, and the social position of the accused, are important
factors in adjusting the delicate balance between murder in the second
degree and manslaughter.

Various are the pathways that lead to the illegal taking of life;
terrible often the pressure brought to bear upon the man before the deed
is done. Deadly fear, the fear common to humanity, has been the force
that drove the hand of many a man to strike, stab, or shoot with fatal
effect; while anger, righteous or unrighteous, the momentary impulse of
intense emotional excitement to which we are all more or less liable,
has gathered its host of victims and caused the tragic ruin of
unnumbered men now wearing life away in our penitentiaries.

And terribly true it is that some of the "life" men are among the best
in our prisons, the "life" men who are all indiscriminately called
murderers. That some of them were murderers at heart and a menace to the
community we cannot doubt; doubtless, also, some are innocent of any
crime; and there are others for whom it would be better for all
concerned if they were given liberty to-day.

It seems to be assumed that a man unjustly imprisoned suffers more than
the one who knows that he has only himself to blame. Much depends upon
the nature of the man. Given two men of equally sound moral nature,
while the one with a clear conscience may suffer intensely, from the
sense of outrage and injustice, from the tearing of the heart-strings
and the injury to business relations, his mental agony can hardly equal
that of the man whose heart is eaten out with remorse. The best company
any prisoner can have is his own self-respect, the best asset of a
bankrupt life. I have been amazed to see for how much that counts in the
peace and hope, and the great power of patience which makes for health
and gives strength for endurance.

I was deeply impressed with this fact in the case of one man. His name
was Gay Bowers, a name curiously inconsistent with his fate, and, "life
man" though he was, no one in that big prison ever associated him with
murder; no one who really looked into his face could have thought him a
criminal. It was the only face I ever saw, outside of a book, that
seemed chastened through sorrow; his gentle smile was like the faint
sunshine of an April day breaking through the mists; and there was about
the man an atmosphere of youth and springtime though he was near forty
when we first met; but it was the arrested youth of a man to whom life
seemed to have ended when he was but twenty-two.

Gay was country born and bred, loved and early married a country girl,
and was known throughout the neighborhood as a hard-working, steady
young fellow. He lived in a village near the Mississippi River, and one
summer he went down to St. Louis on some business and returned by boat.
On the steamboat a stranger, a young man of near his age, made advances
toward acquaintance, and hearing his name exclaimed:

"Gay Bowers! why my name is Ray Bowers, and I'm looking for work. I
guess I'll go to your town and we'll call each other cousins; perhaps we
are related."

The stranger seemed very friendly and kept with Bowers when they reached
the home town; there Ray found work and seemed all right for a while.

And here I must let Gay Bowers tell the rest of the story as he told it
to me, in his own words as nearly as I can remember them. I listened
intently to his low, quiet voice, but I seemed reading the story in his
eyes at the same time, for the absolutely convincing element was the way
in which Bowers was living it all over again as he unfolded the scene
with a certain thrill in his tones. I felt as if I was actually
witnessing the occurrence, so vividly was the picture in his mind
transferred to mine.

"My wife and I had just moved into a new home that very day, we and our
little year-old girl, and Ray had helped us in the moving and stayed to
supper with us. After supper Ray said he must go, and asked me to go a
piece with him as he had something to say to me.

"So I went along with him. Back of the house the road ran quite a way
through deep woods. We were in the middle of the woods when Ray stopped
and told me what he wanted of me. He told me that he had been a
horse-thief over in Missouri, that his picture was in 'the rogues'
gallery' in St. Louis over his own name, Jones; that it wasn't safe for
him to be in Missouri, where he was 'wanted' and that he had got on the
boat without any plans; but as soon as he saw me, a working, country
man, he thought he might as well hitch on to me and go to my place. But
he said he was tired of working; and farmer Smith had a fine pair of
horses which he could dispose of if I would take them out of the barn
into the next county. Ray wanted me to do this because of my good
reputation. Everybody knew me and I was safe from suspicion; and he said
we could make a lot of money for us both if I went into the business
with him.

"All of a sudden I knew then that for some time I'd been _feeling_ that
Ray wasn't quite square. There had been some little things--of course I
said I wouldn't go in with him; and I don't know what else I said for I
was pretty mad to find out what kind of a man he was and how he had
fooled me. Perhaps I threatened to tell the police; anyway Ray said he
would kill me before I had a chance to give him away if I didn't go into
the deal with him, for then I wouldn't dare 'peach.' Still I refused.

"And then"--here a look of absolute terror came into Bowers's
eyes--"then he suddenly struck me a terrible blow and I knew I was in a
fight for my life. He fought like the desperate man that he was. I
managed to reach down and pick up a stick and struck out: I never
thought of killing the man; it was just a blind fight to defend myself.

"But he let go and fell. When he did not move I bent over him and felt
for his heart. I could not find it beating; but I could not believe he
was dead. I waited for some sign of life but there was none. I was
horror-struck and dazed; but I knew I could not leave him in the road
where he had fallen, so I dragged him a little way into the woods. There
I left him.

"I hurried back home to tell my wife what had happened; but when I
opened the door my wife was sitting beside the cradle where the baby
was. Cynthy was tired and sleepy with her day's work, and everything
seemed so natural and peaceful I just couldn't tell her, and I couldn't
think, or anything. So I told her she'd better go to bed while I went
across the road to speak to her father.

"It wasn't more than nine o'clock then, and I found her father sitting
alone smoking his pipe. He began to talk about his farm work. He didn't
notice anything queer about me and I was so dazed-like that it all began
to seem unreal to me. I tried once or twice to break into his talk and
tell him, but I couldn't put the horror into words--_I couldn't_.

"Perhaps it wouldn't have made any difference if I had told him; anyway
I didn't. When the body was found next morning of course they came right
to our house with the story, for Ray had told folks that he was a
relation of mine. I told just what had happened but it didn't count for
anything--I was tried for murder and not given a chance to make any
statement. Because I was well thought of by my neighbors they didn't
give me the rope, but sent me here for life."

Bowers had been sixteen years in prison when I first met him. He had
accepted his fate as an overwhelming misfortune, like blindness or
paralysis, but never for a moment had he lost his self-respect, and he
clung to his religion as the isle of refuge in his wrecked existence.

"Mailed in the armor of a pure intent" which the degradations of convict
life could not penetrate, as the years passed he had achieved true
serenity of spirit, and that no doubt contributed to his apparently
unbroken health. His work was not on contract but in a shop where
prison supplies were made, canes for the officers, etc. One day Bowers
sent me a beautifully made cane, which I may be glad to use if I ever
live to have rheumatism.

Bowers, like all life men, early laid his plans for a pardon and had a
lawyer draw up a petition; but the difficulty in the case was that there
wasn't a particle of evidence against the dead man excepting Bowers's
own word. But Bowers's mind was set on establishing the truth of his
statement regarding the character of the other man, and he saw only one
way of doing this. Ray had said that his real name was Jones, and his
photograph was in the rogues' gallery in St. Louis under the name of
Jones. Now, if there was such a photograph in St. Louis Bowers
determined to get it, and at last, after ten years, he obtained
possession of the photograph, with the help of a lawyer, and again he
looked upon the face of Ray, named Jones, with the record "horse-thief."
The proven character of Jones did not alter the fact that he had been
killed by Bowers; nor in that part of the country did it serve as a
reason for release of Bowers; and the years went on the same as before.

Bowers's wife had not learned to write, but the baby, Carrie, grew into
a little girl and went to school, and she wrote regularly to her father,
who was very proud of her letters. When still a little girl she was
taken into a neighbor's family. After a time the neighbor's wife died
and Carrie not being equal to the work of the house her mother came to
help out--so said Carrie's letters. And Bowers, who still cherished the
home ties, was thankful that his wife and child were taken care of.
Every night he prayed for them and always he hoped for the day when he
could take them in his arms.

His letters to me were few as he wrote regularly to his daughter; but
after he had been in prison eighteen years he wrote me the joyful news
that he would be released in a few weeks, for his lawyer had proven a
faithful friend. The letter was a very happy one written in December,
and the warden had allowed Bowers to tinker up some little gifts to be
sent to the wife and daughter. "They stand in a row before me as I am
writing, _and I think they are as beautiful as butterflies_," his letter
said.

On his release Bowers, now a man past forty, had to begin life over
again. He had lost his place in his community, he had no money, but he
had hope and ambition, and as a good chance was offered him in the
penitentiary city he decided to take it and go right to work. He wrote
his daughter that he would arrange for her and her mother to come to
him, and there they would start a new home together.

Little did he dream of the shock awaiting him when the answer to that
letter came, telling him that for several years his wife had been
married to the man who had given Carrie a home. Both the man and the
woman had supposed that when Bowers was sent to prison for life the wife
was divorced and free to marry. She was hopeless as to her husband's
release, and tired and discouraged with her struggle with poverty. Her
brief married life had come to seem only a memory of her youth, and she
was glad of the chance to be taken care of like other women, but a
feeling of tenderness and pity for the prisoner had caused her to
protect him from the knowledge of her inconstancy.

The second husband felt that to Bowers must be left the decision as to
the adjustment of the tangled relationships, and Bowers wrote me that he
had decided that the second husband had the stronger claim, as he had
married the woman in good faith and made her happy; one thing he
insisted upon, however--that if the present arrangement were to
continue, his former wife must take her divorce from him and be legally
married to the other man. And this was done.

To find himself another Enoch Arden was a hard blow to Bowers, but the
years of work and poverty must have wrought such changes in the girl
wife of long ago that she was lost to him forever; while the man who
came out of that prison after eighteen years of patient endurance and
the spiritual development that long acquaintance with grief sometimes
brings was a different being from the light-hearted young farmer's boy
that the girl had married. They must inevitably have become as strangers
to each other.

With the daughter the situation was different. From childhood she had
faithfully written to an imaginary father whom she could not remember,
but with whom a real tie must have been formed through their letters;
and Carrie had now come to be near the age of the wife he had left. The
daughter was to come to him, and she must have found in the real father
something even finer than her imagination could have pictured.

Gay Bowers had been a prisoner for those eighteen years, with never a
criminal thought or intention. As human courts go he was not the victim
of injustice nor could "society" be held in any way responsible. There
was no apparent relation between his environment or his character and
his tragic experience. It was like a Greek drama where Fate rules
inexorable, but this fate was borne with the spirit of a Christian
saint. What the future years held for him I do not know, since through
carelessness on my part our correspondence was not kept up.




CHAPTER VIII


In another instance, with quite different threads, the hand of fate
seemed to have woven the destiny of the man, but I was slow in
perceiving that it was not merely the tragedy of the prison that was
unfolding before me but the wider drama of life itself.

Generally speaking, among my prison acquaintance there was some
correspondence between the personality of the man and his history. The
prisoner who said frankly to me, "I always cheat a man when I can,
because I know he would cheat me if he had the chance: 'tis diamond cut
diamond," this man curiously but logically resembled a fox. And any one
could see at a glance that Gay Bowers was a man in whom was no guile.

But no clew to the complex nature of Harry Hastings was to be found in
his appearance. We had exchanged a number of letters before we met. He
wrote intelligently with but an occasional slip in spelling, and seemed
to be a man of fair education. He was in prison for life on the charge
of having shot in the street a woman of the streets; the man claimed
innocence, but I never tried to unravel the case, as the principal
witness for the defence had left the city where the shooting occurred,
and there seemed to be no starting-point for an appeal for pardon. What
the boy wanted of me--he was but little past twenty--was a channel
through which he could reach the higher things of life. Passionate
aspiration ran through all his letters, aspiration toward the true, the
beautiful, and the good. He quoted Emerson and studied George
Eliot--Romola, the woman, he criticised for being blinded to Tito's
moral qualities by his superficial charms. He had a way of piercing to
the heart of things and finding beauty where many others would have
missed it. Music he loved above all else; and in music his memory was
haunted by "The Coulin"--a wild, despairing cry of downtrodden Ireland,
an air in which, some one has said, "Ireland gathered up her centuries
of oppression and flung it to the world in those heart-breaking
strains." It happened that I had never heard "The Coulin" except under
my own fingers, and it struck me as a curious bit of the boy's make-up
that this tragic music had become part of his mental endowment. He had
heard it but once, played by a German musician. Barring glimpses of the
world of music, the boy's life had been such as to exclude him from all
the finer associations of life.

He had written me, in his second letter, that he was "coloured"; and he
had given this information as if he were confessing a crime more serious
even than murder. He really felt that he might be uncovering an
impassable chasm between us. Race prejudices are against my principles,
but I was taken aback when the writer of those interesting letters was
materialized in the person of the blackest little negro I ever saw.
"Black as the ace of spades," was my first thought. He had no father at
that time but was devoted to his mother, who was an illiterate colored
woman. As a growing boy he had gone to a horse-race and, fired with the
ambition to become a horse-jockey, had hung around the racing-stables
until his aptitude for the business attracted the horsemen. Harry was
agile and fearless and of light weight, and when at last his ambition
was attained he told me it was the proudest day of his life; and he felt
that he had achieved glory enough to satisfy any one when the horse he
rode as jockey won the race.

The associations of the race-track formed the school of those plastic
years; and the thorn in the flesh was the nickname of "the little runt"
by which he was known among the men. The consciousness of his stunted
body and his black skin seemed seared upon his very heart, a living
horror from which there was no escape. This, far more than his fate as a
life prisoner, was the tragedy of his existence. Freedom he could hope
for; but only death could release him from his black body. He did not
despise the colored race; rather was he loyal to it; it was his
individual destiny, the fact that his life was incased in that stunted
black form that kept alive the sense of outrage. He hated to be known as
"the little runt." He hated his coal-black skin.

Doubtless when free to mingle with colored people on the outside his
other faculties came into play, for he had the darky love of fun and
sense of humor; but the prison life cut him off from all that, and, the
surface of his nature being stifled, what dormant strains of white
ancestry might not have been aroused to activity? His skin was black,
indeed; but his features told the story of the blending with another
race. I could but feel that it was the mind of the white man that
suffered so in the body of the black--that in this prisoner the
aristocrat was chained to the slave. The love of literature, the thirst
for the higher things of life, had no connection with "Little Runt," the
ignorant horse-jockey. Was the man dying of homesickness for the lost
plane of life?

The theosophist would tell us that Harry Hastings might have been a
reincarnation of some cruel slave-trader, merciless of the suffering he
inflicted upon his innocent victims; and possibilities of the stirring
of latent inherited memories are also suggested. Be that as it may, we
cannot solve the problem of that life in which two streams of being were
so clearly defined, where the blue blood was never merged in the black.

Harry's handwriting was firm, clear-cut, and uniform. I lent to a friend
the most striking and characteristic of his letters, and I can give no
direct quotations from them, as they were not returned; but writing was
his most cherished resource, and he tells me that when answering my
letters he almost forgot that he was a prisoner.

The terrible ordeal of life was mercifully short to Harry Hastings. When
I saw him last, in the prison hospital, a wasted bit of humanity fast
drifting toward the shores of the unknown, with dying breath he still
asserted his innocence; but he felt himself utterly vanquished by the
decree of an adverse fate. To the mystery of death was left the clearing
of the mystery of life.

It was Hiram Johnson who taught me what a smothering, ghastly thing
prison life in America may be. One of the guards had said to me, "Hiram
Johnson is a life man who has been here for years. No one ever comes to
see him, and I think a visit would do him lots of good." The man who
appeared in answer to the summons was a short, thick-set fellow of
thirty-five or more, with eyes reddened and disabled by marble-dust from
the shop in which he had worked for years. He smiled when I greeted him,
but had absolutely nothing to say. I found that visit hard work; the man
utterly unresponsive; answering in the fewest words my commonplace
inquiries as to his health, the shop he worked in, and how long he had
been there. Six months after I saw him again with exactly the same
experience. He had nothing to say and suggested nothing for me to say. I
knew only that he expected to see me when I came to the prison, and
after making his acquaintance I could never disappoint one of those
desolate creatures whose one point of contact with the world was the
half-hour spent with me twice a year.

When I had seen the man some half-dozen times, at the close of an
interview I said, in half-apology for my futile attempts to keep up
conversation: "I'm sorry that I haven't been more interesting to-day; I
wanted to give you something pleasant to think of."

"It has meant a great deal to me," he answered. "You can't know what it
means to a man just to know that some one remembers he is alive. That
gives me something pleasant to think about when I get back to my cell."

We had begun correspondence at the opening of our acquaintance, but
rarely was there a line in his earlier letters to which I could make
reply or comment. Mainly made up of quotations from the Old Testament,
scriptural imprecations upon enemies seemed to be his chief mental
resource. The man considered himself "religious," and had read very
little outside his Bible, which was little more intelligible to him than
the original Greek would have been; excepting where it dealt with
denunciations.

In my replies to these letters I simply aimed to give the prisoner
glimpses of something outside, sometimes incidents of our own family
life, and always the assurance that I counted him among my prison
friends, that "there was some one who remembered that he was alive." It
was five or six years before I succeeded in extracting the short story
of his life, knowing only that he had killed some one. The moral fibre
of a man, and the sequence of events which resulted in the commission of
a crime have always interested me more than the one criminal act. One
day, in an unusually communicative mood, Johnson told me that as a child
he had lost both parents, that he grew up in western Missouri without
even learning to read, serving as chore-boy and farm-hand until he was
sixteen, when he joined the Southern forces in 1863, drifting into the
guerilla warfare. It was not through conviction but merely by chance
that he was fighting for rather than against the South; it was merely
the best job that offered itself and the killing of men was only a
matter of business. Afterward he thought a good deal about this guerilla
warfare as it related itself to his own fate, and he said to me:

"I was paid for killing men, for shooting on sight men who had never
done me any harm. The more men I killed the better soldier they called
me. When the war was over I killed one more man. I had reason this time,
good reason. The man was my enemy and had threatened to kill me, and
that's why I shot him. But then they called me a murderer, and shut me
up for the rest of my life. I was just eighteen years old."

Such was the brief story of Johnson's life; such the teaching of war. In
prison the man was taught to read; in chapel he was taught that prison
was not the worst fate for the murderer; that an avenging God had
prepared endless confinement in hell-fire for sinners like him unless
they repented and propitiated the wrath of the Ruler of the Universe.
And so, against the logic of his own mind, while religion apparently
justified war, he tried to discriminate between war and murder and to
repent of taking the one life which he really felt justified in taking;
he found a certain outlet for his warlike spirit or his elemental human
desire to fight, in arraying himself on God's side and against the
enemies of the Almighty. And no doubt he found a certain kind of
consolation in denouncing in scriptural language the enemies of the
Lord.

But all this while in the depths of Johnson's nature something else was
working; a living heart was beating and the sluggish mind was seeking an
outlet. A gradual change took place in his letters; the handwriting grew
more legible, now and again gleams of the buried life broke through the
surface, revealing unexpected tenderness toward nature, the birds, and
the flowers. Genuine poetic feeling was expressed in his efforts to
respond to my friendship, as where he writes:

"How happy would I be could I plant some thotte in the harte of my
friend that would give her pleasure for many a long day." And when
referring to some evidence of my remembrance of my prisoners, he said:
"We always love those littel for-gett-me-nottes that bloom in the harte
of our friends all the year round. Remember that we can love that which
is lovely."

Dwelling on the loneliness of prison life and the value of even an
occasional letter, he writes: "The kind word cheares my lonely hours
with the feelings that some one thinks of me. _Human nature seems to
have been made that way._ There are many who would soon brake down and
die without this simpathy."

Always was there the same incongruity between the spelling and a certain
dignity of diction, which I attributed to his familiarity with the
Psalms. His affinity with the more denunciatory Psalms is still
occasionally evident, as when he closes one letter with these sentences:
"One more of my enemies is dead. The hande of God is over them all. May
he gather them all to that country where the climate is warm and the
worm dieth not!"

To me this was but the echo of fragments of Old Testament teaching. At
last came one letter in which the prisoner voiced his fate in sentences
firm and clear as a piece of sculpture. This is the letter exactly as it
was written:


     "MY DEAR FRIEND:

     "I hope this may find you well. It has bin some time since I heard
     from you and I feel that I should not trespass on you too offten.
     You know that whether I write or not I shall in my thottes wander
     to you and shall think I heare you saying some sweet chearing word
     to incourage me, and it is such a pleasant thing, too. But you know
     theas stripes are like bands of steel to keep one's mouth shut, and
     the eye may not tell what the heart would say were the bondes
     broken that keep the lippes shut. If one could hope and believe
     that what the harte desired was true, then to think would be a
     pleasure beyond anything else the world could give. But to be
     contented here the soul in us must die. We must become stone
     images.

     "Yourse truly,
     "HIRAM JOHNSON."


Not for himself alone did this man speak. "To be contented here the soul
in us must die." "We must become stone images." From the deepest depths
of his own experience it was given to this unlettered convict to say for
all time the final word as to the fate of the "life man," up to the
present day.

After this single outburst, if anything so restrained can be called an
outburst, Hiram Johnson subsided into much of his former immobility.
Like all "life men" he had begun his term in prison with the feeling
that it _must_ come to an end sometime. What little money he had was
given to a lawyer who drew up an application for shortening of the
sentence, the petition had been sent to the governor, and the papers,
duly filed, had long lain undisturbed in the governor's office. When I
first met Johnson he still cherished expectations that "something would
be done" in his case, but as years rolled by and nothing was done the
tides of hope ran low. Other men sentenced during the sixties received
pardons or commutations or had died, until at last "old Hiram Johnson"
arrived at the distinction of being the only man in that prison who had
served a fifty-year sentence.

Now, a fifty-year sentence does not mean fifty years of actual time. In
different States the "good time" allowed a convict differs, this good
time meaning that by good behavior the length of imprisonment is
reduced. In the prison of which I am writing long sentences could be
shortened by nearly one-half: thus by twenty-nine years of good conduct
Johnson had served a legal sentence of fifty years. No other convict in
that prison had lived and kept his reason for twenty-nine years. Johnson
had become a figure familiar to every one in and about the place. Other
convicts came and went, but he remained; plodding along, never
complaining, never giving trouble, doing his full duty within its
circumscribed limits. Altogether he had a good record and the
authorities were friendly to him.

Hitherto I had never asked executive clemency except in cases where it
was clear that the sentence had been unjust; and I had been careful to
keep my own record high in this respect, knowing that if I had the
reputation of being ready to intercede for any one who touched my
sympathies, I should lower my standing with the governors. But it seemed
to me that Johnson, by more than half his lifetime of good conduct in
prison had established a claim upon mercy, and earned the right to be
given another chance in freedom.

I found the governor in a favorable state of mind, as in one of his late
visits to the penitentiary Johnson had been pointed out to him as the
only man who had ever served a fifty-year sentence. After looking over
the petition for pardon then on file and ascertaining that Johnson had
relatives to whom he could go, the governor decided to grant his
release. But as an unlooked-for pardon was likely to prove too much of a
shock to the prisoner the sentence was commuted to a period which would
release him in six weeks, and to me was intrusted the breaking of the
news to Johnson and the papers giving him freedom. We knew that it was
necessary for Johnson to be given time to enable his mind to grasp the
fact of coming release and to make very definite plans to be met at the
prison-gates by some one on whom he could depend, for the man of
forty-seven would find a different world from the one he left when a boy
of eighteen. It gives one a thrill to hold in one's hands the papers
that are to open the doors of liberty to a man imprisoned for life, and
it was with a glad heart that I took the next train for the
penitentiary.

My interview with Johnson was undisturbed by any other presence, and he
greeted me with no premonition of the meaning of the roll of white paper
that I held. Very quietly our visit began; but when Johnson was quite at
his ease, I asked: "Has anything been done about your case since I saw
you last?" "Oh, no, nothing ever will be done for me! I've given up all
hope."

"I had a talk with the governor about you yesterday, and he was willing
to help you. He gave me this paper which you and I will look over
together." I watched in vain for any look of interest in his face as I
said this.

Slowly, aloud, I read the official words, Johnson's eyes following as I
read; but his realization of the meaning of the words came with
difficulty. When I had read the date of his release we both paused; as
the light broke into his mind, he said:

"Then in January I shall be free"; another pause, while he tried to
grasp just what this would mean to him; and then, "I shall be free. Now
I can work and earn money to send you to help other poor fellows." That
was his uppermost thought during the rest of the interview.

In the evening the Catholic chaplain, Father Cyriac, of beloved memory,
came to me with the request that I have another interview with Johnson,
saying: "The man is so distressed because in his overwhelming surprise
he forgot to thank you to-day."

"He thanked me better than he knew," I replied.

But of course I saw Johnson again the next day; and in this, our last
interview, he made a final desperate effort to tell me what his prison
life had been. "Behind me were stone walls, on each side of me were
stone walls, nothing before me but stone walls. And then you came and
brought hope into my life, and now you have brought freedom, and _I
cannot find words to thank you_." And dropping his head on his folded
arms the man burst into tears, his whole body shaken with sobs. I hope
that I made him realize that there was no need of words, that when deep
calleth unto deep the heart understands in silence.

Only yesterday, turning to my writing-desk in search of something else,
I chanced across a copy of the letter I wrote to the governor after my
interview with Johnson, and as it is still warm with the feelings of
that never-to-be-forgotten experience, I insert it here:

"I cannot complete my Thanksgiving Day until I have given you the
message of thanks entrusted to me by Hiram Johnson. At first he could
not realize that the long years of prison life were actually to be
ended. It was too bewildering, like a flood of light breaking upon one
who has long been blind. And when he began to grasp the meaning of your
gift the first thing he said to me was, 'Now I can work and earn money
to send you for some other poor fellow.'

"Not one thought of self, only of the value of liberty as a means, at
last, to do something for others. How _hard_ he tried to find words to
express his gratitude. It made my heart ache for the long, long years of
repression that had made direct expression almost impossible; and in
that thankfulness, so far too deep for words, I read, too, the measure
of how terrible the imprisoned life had been. Thank heaven and a good
governor, it will soon be over! Hiram Johnson has a generous heart and
true, and he will be a good man. And it is beautiful to know that
spiritual life can grow and unfold even under the hardest conditions."

What life meant to Johnson afterward I do not know; but I do know that
he found home and protection with relatives on a farm, and the letters
that he wrote me indicated that he took his place among them not as an
ex-convict so much as a man ready to work for his living and entitled to
respect. Being friendly he no doubt found friends; and though he was a
man near fifty, perhaps the long-buried spirit of youth came to life
again in the light of freedom. At all events, once more the blue skies
were above him and he drew again the blessed breath of liberty. Although
he never realized his dream of helping me to help others, I never
doubted the sincerity of his desire to do so.




CHAPTER IX


Mr. William Ordway Partridge, in "Art for America," says to us: "Let us
learn to look upon every child face that comes before us as a possible
Shakespeare or Michael Angelo or Beethoven. The artistic world is
rejoicing over the discovery in Greece of some beautiful fragments of
sculpture hidden far beneath the _débris_ of centuries; shall we not
rejoice more richly when we are able to dig down beneath the surface of
the commonest child that comes to us from our great cities, and discover
and develop that faculty in him which is to make him fit to live in
usefulness with his fellow men? Seeking for these qualities in the child
we shall best conserve, as is done in physical nature, the highest type,
until we have raised all human life to a higher level."

I hope that some day Mr. Partridge will write a plea for elementary art
classes in our prisons. For in every prison there are gifted men and
boys whose special talents might be so trained and developed as to
change the channel of their lives. What chances our prisons have with
these wards of the state, to discover and develop the individual powers
that might make their owners self-respecting and self-supporting men!

We are doing this in our institutions for the feeble-minded and with
interesting results, but in our prisons the genius of a Michael Angelo
might be stifled--the musical gift of a Chopin doomed to eternal
silence.

Mr. Partridge's belief in the latent possibilities in our common
children went to my heart, because I had known Anton Zabrinski; and yet
I can never think of Anton Zabrinski as a common child.

The story of his life is brief; but his few years enclosed the circle of
childhood, youth, aspiration, hope, horror, tragedy, pain, and death;
and all the beautiful possibilities of his outward life were blighted.

Anton's home was in the west side of Chicago, in that region where
successive unpronounceable names above doors and across windows assure
one that Poland is not lost but scattered.

In back rooms in the third story of the house lived the Zabrinski
family, the father and mother with Anton and his sister two years
younger. The mother was terribly crippled from an accident in childhood,
and was practically a prisoner in her home. Anton, her only son, was the
idol of her heart.

When scarcely more than a child Anton began work tailoring. He learned
rapidly, and when sixteen years old was so skilful a worker that he
earned twelve dollars a week. This energy and skill, accuracy of
perception and sureness of touch, gave evidence of a fine organization.
His was an elastic, joyous nature, but his growth was stunted, his whole
physique frail; sensitive and shy, he shrank with nervous timidity from
contact with the stronger, rougher, coarser-fibred boys of the
neighborhood. Naturally this served only to make Anton a more tempting
target for their jokes.

Two of these boys in particular played upon his fears until they became
an actual terror in his existence; though the boys doubtless never
imagined the torture they were inflicting, nor dreamed that he really
believed they intended to injure him. It happened one evening that Anton
was going home alone from an entertainment, when these two boys suddenly
jumped out from some hiding-place and seized him, probably intending
only to frighten him. Frighten him they did, out of all bounds and
reason. In his frantic efforts to get away from them Anton opened his
pocket-knife and struck out blindly. But in this act of self-defence he
mortally wounded one of the boys.

Anton Zabrinski did not go back to his mother that night; this gentle,
industrious boy, doing the work and earning the wages of a man, had
become, in the eye of the law, a murderer. I have written "in the eye of
the law"; a more accurate statement would be "in the eye of the court,"
for under fair construction of the law this could only have been a case
of manslaughter; but----

I once asked one of Chicago's most eminent judges why in clear cases of
manslaughter so many times men were charged with murder and tried for
murder. The judge replied: "Because it is customary in bringing an
indictment to make the largest possible net in which to catch the
criminal."

Anton Zabrinski had struck out with his knife in the mere animal
instinct of self-defence. The real moving force of evil in the tragedy
was the love of cruel sport actuating the larger boys--a passion leading
to innumerable crimes. Were the moral origin of many of our crimes laid
bare we should clearly see that the final act of violence was but a
result--the rebound of an evil force set in motion from an opposite
direction. It sometimes happens that it is the slayer who is the victim
of the slain. But to the dead, who have passed beyond the need of our
mercy, we are always merciful.

Had an able lawyer defended Anton he never would have been convicted on
the charge of murder; but the family was poor, and, having had no
experience with the courts, ignorantly expected fairness and justice.
Anton was advised to plead guilty to the charge of murder, and was given
to understand that if he did so the sentence would be light. Throwing
himself upon "the mercy of the court," the boy pleaded "guilty." He was
informed that "the mercy of the court" would inflict the sentence of
imprisonment for life. It chanced that in the court-room another judge
was present whose sense of justice, as well as of mercy, was outraged by
this severity. Moved with compassion for the undefended victim he
protested against the impending sentence and induced the presiding judge
to reduce it to thirty years. Thirty years! A lifetime indeed to the
imagination of a boy of seventeen. The crippled mother, with her heart
torn asunder, was left in the little back room where she lived, while
Anton was taken to Joliet penitentiary.

It did not seem so dreadful when first it came in sight--that great
gray-stone building, with its broad, hospitable entrance through the
warden house; but when the grated doors closed behind him with
relentless metallic clang, in that sound Anton realized the death-knell
of freedom and happiness. And later when, for the first night, the boy
found himself alone in a silent, "solitary"[8] cell, then came the
agonizing homesickness of a loving young heart torn from every natural
tie. Actually but two hours distant was home, the little back room
transfigured to a heaven through love and the yearning cry of his heart;
but the actual two hours had become thirty years of prison in the
future. The prison life itself was but a dumb, unshapen dread in his
imagination. And the unmeaning mystery and cruelty and horror of his
fate! Why, his whole life covered but seventeen years, of which memory
could recall not more than twelve; he knew they were years of
innocence, and then years of faithful work and honest aims until that
one night of horror, when frightened out of his senses he struck wildly
for dear life. And then he had become that awful thing, a murderer, and
yet without one thought of murder in his heart. If God knew or cared,
how could he have let it all happen? And now he must repent or he never
could be forgiven. And yet how could he repent, when he had meant to do
no wrong; when his own quivering agony was surging through heart and
mind and soul; when he was overwhelmed with the black irrevocableness of
it all, and the sense of the dark, untrodden future? One night like
that, it holds the sufferings of an ordinary lifetime.

We who have reached our meridian know that life means trial and
disappointment, but to youth the bubble glows with prismatic color; and
to Anton it had all been blotted into blackness through one moment of
deadly fear.

When young convicts are received at Joliet penitentiary it is customary
for the warden to give them some chance for life and for development
physically and mentally. They are usually given light work, either as
runners for the shops or helpers in the kitchens or dining-rooms, where
they have exercise, fresh air, and some variety in employment. Anton
came to the prison when there was a temporary change of wardens, and it
happened when he was taken from the "solitary" cell where he passed the
first night that he was put to work in the marble-shop, a hard place for
a full-grown man. He was given also a companion in his cell when
working-hours were over.

As he became fully adjusted to prison life he learned a curious thing:
on the outside crime had been the exception, a criminal was looked upon
as one apart from the community; but in this strange, unnatural prison
world it was crime which formed the common basis of equality, the tie of
brotherhood.

And again, the tragedy of his own fate, which had seemed to him to fill
the universe, lost its horrible immensity in his imagination as he came
to realize that every man wearing that convict suit bore in his heart
the wound or the scar of tragedy or of wrong inflicted or experienced.
He had believed that nothing could be so terrible as to be separated
from home and loved ones; but learned to wonder if it were not more
terrible never to have known loved ones or home.

When his cell-mate estimated the "good time" allowance on a sentence of
thirty years, Anton found that by good behavior he could reduce this
sentence to seventeen years. That really meant something to live for. He
thought he should be almost an old man if he lived to be
thirty-three--something like poor old Peter Zowar who had been in prison
twenty-five years; but no prisoner had ever lived there thirty years;
and this reduction to seventeen years meant to Anton the difference
between life and death. Even the seventeen years' distance from home
began to be bridged when his sister Nina came to see him, bringing him
the oranges and bananas indelibly associated with the streets of
Chicago, or cakes made by his own mother's hands and baked in the oven
at home.

Life in prison became more endurable, too, when he learned that
individual skill in every department of work was recognized, and that
sincerity and faithfulness counted for something even in a community of
criminals. Praise was rare, communication in words was limited to the
necessities of work; but in some indefinable way character was
recognized and a friendly attitude made itself felt and warmed the
heart; and the nature so sensitive to harshness was quick to perceive
and to respond to kindness.

It is hard to be in prison when a boy, but the older convicts regard
these boys with compassion, touched by something in them akin to their
own lost youth, or perhaps to children of their own. Little Anton looked
no older and was no larger than the average boy of fourteen; and to the
older men he seemed a child.

Human nature is human nature, and youth is youth in spite of bolts and
bars. The springtime of life was repressed in Anton, but it was working
silently within him, and silently there was unfolding a power not given
to all of us. His work in the marble-shop was readily learned, for the
apprenticeship at tailoring had trained his eye and hand, and steadfast
application had become habitual. As his ability was recognized
ornamental work on marble was assigned him. At first he followed the
patterns as did the ordinary workmen; these designs suggested to him
others; then he obtained permission to work out the beautiful lines that
seemed always waiting to form themselves under his hand, and the
patterns were finally set aside altogether. The art impulse within him
was astir and finding expression, and as time passed he was frankly
recognized as the best workman in the shop.

He was homesick still, always homesick, but fresh interest had come
into his existence, for unawares the spirit of beauty had come to be the
companion of his working-hours. He did not recognize her. He had never
heard of art impulses. But he found solid human pleasure and took simple
boyish pride in the individuality and excellence of his work.

The first year and the second year of his imprisonment passed: the days
dawning, darkening, and melting away, as like to one another as beads
upon a string, each one counted into the past at night as meaning one
day less of imprisonment. But toward the end of the second year the
hours began to drag interminably, and Anton's interest in his work
flagged. He became restless, the marble dust irritated his lungs, and a
cough, at first unnoticed, increased until it constantly annoyed him.
Then his rest at night was broken by pain in his side, and at last the
doctor ordered him to be removed from the marble-shop. It was a frail
body at best, and the confinement, the unremitting work, the total lack
of air and exercise had done their worst; and all resisting physical
power was undermined.

No longer able to work, Anton was relegated to the "idle room." Under
the wise rule of recent wardens the idle room has happily become a thing
of the past, but for years it was a feature of the institution, owing
partly to limited hospital accommodations. By the prisoners generally
this idle room, called by them the "dreary room," was looked upon as the
half-way station between the shops and the grave. Most cheerless and
melancholy was this place where men too far gone in disease to work, men
worn out in body and broken in spirit, waited together day after day
until their maladies developed sufficiently for them to be considered
fit subjects for hospital care. Usually no reading-matter was allowed,
and free social intercourse was of course forbidden, although the
inmates occasionally indulged in the luxury of comparing diseases. Under
the strain of that deadening monotony courage failed, and to many a man
indifferent to his own fate the sight of the hopelessness of others was
heart-breaking. The influence of the idle room was not quite so
depressing when Anton came within its circle, for a light industry had
just been introduced there, and some of the inmates were employed.

And at this time Anton was beginning to live in a day-dream. His
cell-mate, a young man serving a twenty years' sentence, was confidently
expecting a pardon; pardons became the constant theme of talk between
the two when the day was over, and Anton's faith in his own possible
release kindled and glowed with the brightening prospects of his friend.
Hope, that strange characteristic of tuberculosis, flamed the higher as
disease progressed; with the hectic flush there came into his eyes a
more brilliant light, and a stronger power to look beyond the prison to
dear liberty and home. Even the shadow of the idle room could not dim
the light of his imagination. No longer able to carve his fancies on
stone, he wove them into beautiful patterns for life in freedom. The
hope of a pardon is in the air in every prison. Anton wrote to his
family and talked with his sister about it, and though he made no
definite beginning every day his faith grew stronger.

It was at this time that I met Anton. I was visiting at the
penitentiary, and during a conversation with a young English convict, a
semi-protégé of Mary Anderson, the actress, this young man said to me:
"I wish you knew my cell-mate." I replied that I already knew too many
men in that prison. "But if you would only see little Anton I know _you
would be mashed in a minute_," the Englishman confidently asserted. As
to that probability I was sceptical, but I was impressed by the
earnestness of the young man as he sketched the outline of Anton's story
and urged me to see him. I remember that he made a point of this: "The
boy is so happy thinking that he will get a pardon sometime, but he will
die here if somebody doesn't help him soon." To gratify the Englishman I
consented to see the happy boy who was in danger of dying.

An attractive or interesting face is rare among the inmates of our
prisons. The striped convict suit, which our so-called Christian
civilization so long inflicted upon fellow men, in itself gave an air of
degradation,[9] and the repression of all animation tends to produce an
expression of almost uniform dulness. Notwithstanding his cell-mate's
enthusiasm I was thrilled with surprise, and something deeper than
surprise, when I saw Anton Zabrinski. The beauty of that young Polish
prisoner shone like a star above the degrading convict suit. It was the
face of a Raphael, with the broad brow and the large, luminous,
far-apart eyes of darkest blue, suggesting in their depths all the
beautiful repressed possibilities--eyes radiant with hope and with
childlike innocence and trust. My heart was instantly vibrant with
sympathy, and we were friends with the first hand-clasp. The artistic
temperament was as evident in the slender, highly developed hands as in
his face.

At a glance I saw that his fate was sealed; but his spirit of hope was
irresistible and carried me on in its own current for the hour. Anton
was like a happy child, frankly and joyfully opening his heart to a
friend whom he seemed always to have known. That bright hour was
unclouded by any dark forebodings in regard to illness or an obdurate
governor. We talked of pardon and freedom and home and happiness. I did
not speak to him of repentance or preparation for death. I felt that
when the summons came to that guileless spirit it could only be a
summons to a fuller life.

During our interview the son of the new warden came in, and I called his
attention to Anton. It was charming to see the cordial, friendly fashion
in which this young man[10] talked to the prisoner, asking where he
could be found and promising to do what he could for him, while Anton
felt that at last he was touching the hand of Providence. The new
authorities had not been there long enough to know many of the convicts
individually, but at dinner that day the warden's son interested his
father in Anton by recounting their conversation that morning. The
warden's always ready sympathy was touched. "Take the boy out of that
idle room," he said, "take him around the yard with you to see the dogs
and horses." This may not have been discipline, but it was delightfully
human--and humanizing.

When I left the prison I was assured that I could depend upon the
warden's influence in furthering my purpose of realizing Anton's dream,
his faith and hope of pardon. The following Sunday in Chicago I found
the Zabrinski family, father, mother, and the young sister, in their
third-story back rooms. On the wall hung a framed photograph of Anton as
a little child. The mother did not speak very clear English, but she
managed to repeat, over and over again: "Anton was so good; always he
was such a good boy." The young sister, a tailoress, very trim in her
dark-blue Sunday gown, discussed intelligently ways and means of
obtaining her brother's release.

Our plans worked smoothly, and a few weeks later, when all Chicago was
given over to the World's Fair, the desire of Anton's heart came true
and he was restored to home and freedom. Or, as the newspapers would
have put it: "Our anarchist governor let loose another murderer to prey
upon society." Poor little murderer! In all that great city there was no
child more helpless or harmless than he.

The image of little Anton Zabrinski, as of the prison itself, grew faint
in my heart for the time, under the spell of the long enchanting summer
days and magical evenings at the White City.

The interest and the beauty of that fusion of all times and all
countries was so absorbing and irresistible that I had stayed on and on
until one day in July when I braced myself for the wrench of departure
next morning. But the evening mail brought me letters from home and
among them one forwarded from Anton, entreating me to come and see him.
I had not counted on being remembered by Anton except as a milestone on
his path toward freedom--I might have counted on it, however, after my
many experiences of the gratitude of prisoners--but his longing to see
me was unmistakable; and as I had broken my word so many times about
going home that my reputation for unreliability in that direction could
not be lowered, I sent a final telegram of delay.--Oh, luxury of having
no character to lose!

The next morning I took an early start for the home of the Zabrinskis.
In a little back yard--a mere patch of bare ground without the
possibility of a blade of grass, with no chance of even looking at the
sky unless one lay on one's back, with uniform surroundings of back
doors and back stairs--what a contrast to that dream of beauty at
Jackson Park!--here it was that I found Anton, listlessly sitting on a
bench with a little dog as companion. All hope and animation seemed to
have died out within him; even the lights in his deep-blue eyes had
given way to shadows; strength and courage had ebbed away, and he had
yielded at last to weariness and depression. He had left the prison,
indeed, but only to face death; he had come back to his home, only to be
carried away from it forever. Even his mother's loving care could not
stop that racking cough nor free him from pain. And how limited the
longed-for freedom proved! It had reached out from his home only to the
hospital dispensary. Weakness and poverty formed impassable barriers
beyond which he could not go.

As I realized all this I resolved to give him the most lovely vision in
the world to think of and to dream of. "Anton," I said, "how would you
like to take a steamer and go on the lake with me to see the World's
Fair from the water?"--for him to attempt going on the grounds was not
to be thought of.

For a moment he shrank from the effort of getting to the steamer, but
after considering it for a while in silence he announced: "When I make
up my mind that I will do a thing, I do it; I will go with you." Then we
unfolded our plan for adventure to the mother. Rather wild she thought
it, but our persuasive eloquence won the day and she consented,
insisting only that we should partake of refreshments before starting on
our expedition. With the connivance of a neighbor on the next floor Mrs.
Zabrinski obtained a delicious green-apple pie from a bakery near by and
served it for our delectation.

I find that already the noble lines, with their beautiful lights and
shadows, in the Court of Honor of the White City are blending into an
indistinct memory; but the picture of Anton Zabrinski as he leaned back
in his chair on the steamer, breathing the delicious pure, fresh air,
sweeping his glance across the boundless plain of undulating blue, will
be with me forever. Here at last was freedom! And how eagerly the boy's
perishing being drank it in!

There was everything going on around us to divert and amuse: crowds of
people, of course, and a noisy band of musicians; but it all made no
impression upon Anton. We two were practically alone with the infinite
sky and the far-stretching water. It was easy then for Anton to tell me
of his deeper thoughts, and to speak of the change that he knew was
coming soon. Life had been so hard, only fruitless effort and a losing
battle, and now he longed only for rest. He had felt the desire to give
expression to beautiful form, he had felt the stirring of undeveloped
creative power. We spoke of the future not as death but as the coming of
new life and as the opportunity for the fair unfolding of all the higher
possibilities of his nature--as freedom from all fetters. His faith,
simple but serious, rested upon his consciousness of having, in his
inmost soul, loved and sought the good. His outward life was hopelessly
wrecked; but he was going away from that, and it was his soul, his true
inner life, that would appear before God. It was all a mystery and he
was helpless, but he was not afraid. _He had forgiven life._

As we talked together the steamer neared the pier at Jackson Park. "And
now, Anton, you must go to the other side of the boat and see the
beautiful White City," I said. It was like alabaster in its clear
loveliness that radiant morning, and all alive with the lilting colors
of innumerable flags. It was Swedish day, and a most gorgeous procession
in national costume thronged the dock as our steamer approached, for we
had on board some important delegation. A dozen bands were playing and
the grand crash of sound and the brilliant massing of color thrilled me
to my fingertips. But Anton only looked at it for a moment with unseeing
eyes: it was too limited; it was the stir and sound and crowd of the
city. He turned again eagerly to the great sweep of sky and water; "You
don't know what this lake and this fresh air are to me," he said
quietly, and he looked no more toward the land until we had returned to
Van Buren Street.

After we left the steamer Anton threw off the spell of the water. He
insisted on my taking a glass of soda with him from one of the fountains
on the dock; it was his turn to be entertainer now. I drank the soda and
live to tell the tale. By that time we had caught the bohemian spirit of
the World's Fair, Anton was revived and excited by the hour on the
water, and as we crossed over to Michigan Avenue the brilliant life of
the street attracted and charmed him, and I proposed walking slowly down
to the Auditorium Hotel. Every step of the way was a delight to Anton,
and when we reached the great hotel I waited in the ladies'
reception-room while Anton strolled through the entrances and office,
looking at the richly blended tones of the marbles and the decoration in
white and gold. I knew that it would be one more fresh and lovely memory
for him to carry back to the little rooms where the brief remnant of his
life was to be spent.

At an adjoining flower-stand we found sweet peas for his mother. I saw
him safely on board the car that would take him to his home; then, with
a parting wave of his hand and a bright, happy smile of farewell, little
Anton Zabrinski passed out of my sight.

Through the kindness of a friend I had the very great happiness of
sending Anton a pass, "For bearer and one," that gave him, with an
escort, the freedom of the World's Fair steamers for the summer--the
greatest possible boon to the boy, for even when too weak to go to the
steamer he could still cherish the expectation of that delight.

Anton's strength failed rapidly. He wrote me one letter saying: "I can
die happy now that I am with my mother. I thank you a thousand times
over and over for your kind feeling towards me and the kind words in
your letters, and the charming rose you sent. I cannot write a long
letter on account of my pains through my whole chest. I can't turn
during the night from one side to another. Dear Friend, I don't like to
tell my misery and sorrows to persons, but I can't help telling you."

Another letter soon followed, but not from Anton. It was the sister who
wrote:


     "DEAR FRIEND:

     "With deep sorrow I inform you of my dear brother's death. He died
     at four o'clock in the morning. He had a great desire to see you
     before he died. We should be glad to see you at the funeral if
     convenient Wednesday morning.

     "Pardon this poor letter
     "from your loving friend
     "MISS NINA ZABRINSKI."


FOOTNOTES:

[8] These "solitary" cells in which a prisoner passed his first night
were in a detached building in which the punishment cells were located.
The solitude was absolute and terrible.

[9] The striped convict suit was practically abolished at Joliet the
following year.

[10] This young man, Edmund M. Allen, is now warden of this same prison,
and has so developed the humanizing methods of his father as to bring
Joliet penitentiary into the front rank of progressive prison reform.




CHAPTER X


On a lovely evening some thirty years ago there was a jolly wedding at
the home of a young Irish girl in a Western city. Tom Evans, the groom,
a big-hearted, jovial fellow, was deeply in love with the girl of his
choice. He was earning good wages and he intended to take good care of
his wife.

It was midnight, and the streets were flooded with brilliant moonlight
when Evans started to take his bride from her home to his, accompanied
on the way by Jim Maguire, Larry Flannigan, and Ned Foster, three of the
wedding guests. They were not carriage folks and were walking to the
street-car when Jim Maguire, who had not been averse to the exhilarating
liquids in hospitable circulation at the wedding feast, became unduly
hilarious and disported himself with song and dance along the
sidewalk--a diversion in which the others took no part. This hilarity
was summarily interrupted by a policeman, who attempted to arrest the
young man for disorderly conduct, a proceeding vigorously resisted by
Maguire.

This was the beginning of an affray in which the policeman was killed,
and the whole party were arrested and taken into custody. As the
policeman was well known, one of the most popular men on the force,
naturally public indignation ran high and the feeling against his
slayers was bitter and violent.

Tom Evans and Jim Maguire were held for murder, while Larry Flannigan, a
boy of seventeen, and Ned Foster, as participants in the affair, were
charged with manslaughter. The men were given fair trials--separate
trials, I believe--in different courts, but it was impossible to get at
the facts of the case, as there were no actual witnesses outside of
those directly affected by the outcome; while each lawyer for the
defence did his best to clear his own client from direct responsibility
for the death of the policeman, regardless of the deserts of the others
under accusation.

And so it came to pass that Jim Maguire and Tom Evans were "sent up" for
life, while the bride of an hour returned to her father's house and in
the course of time became the bride of another. Larry Flannigan was
sentenced to fourteen years' imprisonment. Ned Foster, having served a
shorter sentence, was released previous to my acquaintance with the
others.

Some five years later one of the prison officers interested in Jim
Maguire asked me to interview the man. Maguire was a tall, muscular
fellow, restive under confinement as a hound in leash; nervous, too, and
with abounding vitality ready at a moment's notice again to break out in
song and dance if only the chance were given. This very overcharge of
high animal spirits, excited by the wedding festivities, was the
starting-point of all the tragedy. No doubt, too, in his make-up there
were corresponding elements of recklessness and defiance.

Our first interview was the beginning of an acquaintance resulting in an
interchange of letters; but it was not until a year afterward that in a
long conversation Maguire gave me an account of his part in the midnight
street encounter. Admitting disorderly conduct and resistance against
the officer, he claimed that it was resistance only and not a counter
attack; stating that the struggle between the two continued until the
officer had the upper hand and then continued beating him into
subjection so vigorously that Maguire called for help and was rescued
from the hands of the officer by "one of the other boys." He did not say
which one nor further implicate any one.

"Ask the other boys," he said. "Larry didn't have anything to do with
the killing, but he saw the whole thing. Get Larry to tell the story,"
he urged.

And so I was introduced to Larry. He was altogether of another type from
Maguire. I hardly knew whether he wore the convict stripes or broadcloth
when I was looking into that face, so sunny, so kindly, so frank. After
all these years I can never think of Larry without a glow in my heart.
He alone, of all my prisoners, appeared to have no consciousness of
degradation, of being a convict; but met me simply and naturally as if
we had been introduced at a picnic.

I told him of my interview with Jim Maguire and his immediate comment
was: "Jim ought not to be here; he resisted arrest but he did not kill
the officer; he's here for life and it's wrong, it's terrible. I hope
you will do something for Jim."

"But what of yourself?" I asked; "you seem to have been outside of the
affair altogether. I think I'd better do something for you."

"Oh, no!" he protested, "you can get one man out easier than two. I
want to see Jim out, and I don't want to stand in his way. You know I am
innocent, and all my friends believe me innocent, and I'm young and well
and can stand my sentence; it will be less than ten years with good time
off. My record is perfect and I shall get along all right. But Jim is
here for life."

I felt as if I were dreaming. I knew it would be a simple matter to
obtain release for Larry, who had already been there six years, but no,
the boy would not consider that, would not even discuss it. His thought
was all for Jim, and he was unconscious of self-sacrifice. He simply set
aside what seemed to him the lesser good in order to secure the greater.

"Did you ever make a full statement in court?" I asked.

"No. We were only allowed to answer direct questions in the
examinations. None of us were given a chance to tell the straight
story."

"So the straight story never came out at any of the trials?"

"No."

Thinking it high time that the facts of a case in which two men were
suffering imprisonment for life should be ascertained and put on record
somewhere, it then remained for me to interview Evans, and to see how
nearly the statements of the three men agreed, each given to me in
private six years after the occurrence of the event.

Tom Evans--I see him now clearly as if it were but yesterday--a
thick-set, burly figure with an intelligent face of good lines and
strong character; a man of force who from his beginning as brakesman
might have worked his way up to superintending a railroad, had the plan
of his destiny been different.

I told him frankly that I had asked to see him in the interest of the
other two, and that what I wanted first of all was to get the facts of
the case, for the tragedy was still a "case" to me.

"And you want me to tell the story?" I felt the vibration of restrained
emotion in the man from the first as he pictured the drama enacted in
that midnight moonlight.

"I had just been married and we were going to my home. The streets were
light as day. Jim was singing and dancing, when the policeman seized
him. I saw there was going to be a fight and I made up my mind to keep
out of it; for when I let my temper go it gets away with me. So I stood
back with my girl. Jim called for help but I stood back till I really
believed Jim might be killed. I couldn't stand by and see a friend
beaten to death, or take any chance of that. And so I broke into the
fight. I got hold of the policeman's club and began to beat the
policeman. I am a strong man and I can strike a powerful blow."

Here Evans paused, and there was silence between us until he said with a
change of tone and expression:

"It was Larry who came to the help of the policeman and got the club
away from me. It's Larry that ought to be out. Jim made the trouble and
I killed the policeman, but Larry is wholly innocent. He is the one I
want to see out."

At last we were down to bed-rock; there was no doubt now of the facts
which the clumsy machinery of the courts had failed to reach.

I assured Evans that I would gladly do what I could for Larry, and then
and there Evans and I joined hands to help "the other boys." I realized
something of the sacrifice involved when I asked Evans if he was willing
to make a sworn statement in the presence of the warden of the facts he
had given me. What a touchstone of the man's nature! But he was
following the lead of truth and justice and there was no turning back.

We all felt that it was a serious transaction in the warden's office
next day when Evans came in and, after a little quiet conversation with
the warden, made and signed a statement to the effect that he, and he
only, struck the blows that killed the policeman, and with hand on the
Bible made oath to the truth of the statement, which was then signed, as
witnesses, by the warden and a notary.

As Evans left the office the warden said to me: "Something ought to be
done for that man also when the other boys are out."

I knew that in securing this confession I had committed myself to all
the necessary steps involved before the prison doors could be opened to
Maguire and Larry. And in my heart I was already pledged to befriend the
man who, with unflinching courage, had imperilled his own chances of
liberation in favor of the others; for I was now beginning to regard
Evans as the central figure in the tragedy.

It is no brief nor simple matter to obtain the release of a man
convicted of murder by the court and sentenced to life imprisonment
unless one has political influence strong enough to override all
obstacles. Almost endless are the delays likely to occur and the details
to be worked out before one has in hand all the threads necessary to be
woven into the fabric of a petition for executive clemency.

In order to come directly in touch with the families of Larry and
Maguire, and with the competent lawyer already enlisted in their service
and now in possession of the statement of Evans, I went to the city
where the crime was committed. The very saddest face that I had seen in
connection with this affair was the face of Maguire's widowed mother.
She was such a little woman, with spirit too crushed and broken by
poverty and the fate of her son to revive even at the hope of his
release. It was only the ghost of a smile with which she greeted me; but
when we parted her gratitude called down the blessings of all the saints
in the calendar to follow me all my days.

Larry's people I found much the same sort as he, cheerful, generous,
bravely meeting their share of the hard luck that had befallen him,
apparently cherishing the treasure of his innocence more than resenting
the injustice, but most grateful for any assistance toward his
liberation. The lawyer who had interviewed Larry and Maguire at the
penitentiary expressed amazement at what he called "the unbelievable
unselfishness" of Larry. "I did not suppose it possible to find that
spirit anywhere, last of all in a prison," he said. Larry had consented
to be included on the petition drawn up for Maguire only when convinced
that it would not impair Maguire's chances.

When I left the place the lines appeared to be well laid for the smooth
running of our plans. I do not now remember what prevented the
presentation of the petition for commutation of both sentences to
twelve[11] years; but more than a year passed before the opportune time
seemed to be at hand.

During this interval Evans was by no means living always in
disinterested plans for the benefit of the others. The burden of his own
fate hung heavily over him and no one in the prison was more athirst for
freedom than he. In books from the prison library he found some
diversion, and when tired of fiction he turned to philosophy, seeking to
apply its reasoning to his own hard lot; again, he sought in the poets
some expression and interpretation of his own feelings. It was in the
ever welcome letters that he found most actual pleasure, but he
encountered difficulties in writing replies satisfactory to himself. In
a letter now before me he says:

"I only wish that I could write as I feel, then indeed would you receive
a gem; but I can't, more's the pity. But I can peruse and cherish your
letters, and if I dare I would ask you to write oftener. Just think, the
idea strikes me that I am writing to an _authorous_, me that never could
spell a little bit. But the authorous is my friend, is she not, and will
overlook this my defect. I have done the best I could to write a nice
letter and I hope it will please you, but, in the words of Byron,


                             "'What is writ is writ:
     Would it were worthier. But I am not now
     That which I have been, and my visions flit
     Less palpably before me, and the glow
     Which in my spirit dwelt is fluttering faint and low.'


"With the last line of your letter I close, 'write soon, will you not?'"

Evans's letters to me were infrequent, as he kept in correspondence with
his lawyers, who encouraged him to hope that he would not spend all his
life behind the bars. Others, too, claimed his letters. He writes me:

"I have a poor old mother who expects and always gets my Christmas
letters, but I resolved that you should have my first New Years letter,
so here it is, wishing you a happy new year and many of them. No doubt
you had many Christmas letters from here telling you of the time we had,
and a _jolly good time_ it was. It is awfully dark here in the cells to
day and I can hardly see the lines to write on. I hope you won't have as
much trouble in reading it." The handwriting in Evans's letters is
vigorous, clear, and open; a straightforward, manly hand, without frills
or flourishes.

Just as I was leaving home for one of my semi-annual visits to the
penitentiary, I had information from their lawyer that the petition for
Maguire and Larry would be presented to the governor the following
month. Very much elated with the good news I was bringing I asked first
for an interview with Evans. He came in, evidently in very good spirits,
but as I proceeded to relate with enthusiasm what we had accomplished I
felt an increasing lack of response on the part of Evans and saw the
light fading from his face.

"O Miss Taylor," he said at last, with such a note of pain in his voice,
"you know my lawyers have been working for me all this time. Of course I
told them of the statement I made in the warden's office, and then left
the case in their hands. One of them was here yesterday and has a
petition now ready asking that my sentence be reduced to fifteen years.
Now if the other petition goes in first----"

There was no need to finish the sentence for the conflict of interests
was clear; and Evans was visibly unnerved. We talked together for a long
time. While unwilling to influence his decision I realized that, if his
petition should have first consideration and be granted, the value of
that confession, so important to the others, would be impaired, and the
chances of Maguire's release lessened; for the governors are wary in
accepting as evidence the confession of a man who has nothing to lose.
On the other hand, I had not the heart to quench the hopes that Evans's
lawyers had kindled. And in answer to his question, "What shall I do?" I
could only say: "That is for you to decide."

At last Evans pulled himself together enough to say: "Well, I'm not
going back on the boys now. I didn't realize just how my lawyers'
efforts were going to affect them. I'm going to leave the matter in your
hands, for I know you will do what is right." And this he insisted on.

"Whatever course may seem best to take now, Tom, after this I shall
never rest till I see you, too, out of prison," was my earnest
assurance.

There had been such a spirit of fair play among these men that I next
laid the case before Maguire and Larry, and we three held a consultation
as to the best line of action. They, too, appreciated the generosity of
Evans and realized, far more than I could, what it might cost him.
Doubtless each one of the three felt the strong pull of self-interest;
but there was no faltering in their unanimous choice of a square deal
all around. One thing was clear, the necessity of bringing about an
understanding and concerted action between the lawyers whose present
intentions so seriously conflicted. The advice and moral support of the
warden had been invaluable to me, and he and I both felt, if the lawyers
could be induced to meet at the prison and consult not only with each
other but with their three clients, if they could only come in direct
touch with these convicts and realize that they were men who wanted to
do the right thing and the fair thing, that a petition could be drawn
placing Evans and Maguire on the same footing, and asking the same
reduction of sentence for both; while Larry in justice was entitled to a
full pardon. I still believe that if this course had been taken both
petitions would have been granted. But lawyers in general seem to have a
constitutional aversion to short cuts and simple measures, and Evans's
lawyers made no response to any overtures toward co-operation.

At about this time occurred a change in the State administration, with
the consequent inevitable delay in the consideration of petitions for
executive clemency; as it was considered impolitic for the newly elected
governor to begin his career by hasty interference with the decision of
the courts, or too lenient an attitude toward convicts.

Then ensued that period of suspense which seems fairly to corrode the
heart and nerves of the long-time convict. The spirit alternates between
the fever of hope and the chill of despair. Men pray then who never
prayed before. The days drag as they never dragged before; and when
evening comes the mind cannot occupy itself with books while across the
printed page the same questions are ever writing themselves: "Shall I
hear to-morrow?" "Will the governor grant or refuse my petition?" One
closes the book only to enter the restless and wearisome night,
breathing the dead air of the prison cell, listening to the tread of the
guard in the corridor. Small wonder would it be if in those midnight
hours Evans cursed the day in which he declared that he alone killed the
policeman; but neither in his letters to me nor in his conversation was
there ever an indication of regret for that action. The Catholic
chaplain of the prison was truly a good shepherd and comforter to his
flock, and it was real spiritual help and support that he gave to the
men. His advice at the confessional may have been the seed from which
sprung Evans's resolve to clear his own conscience and exonerate the
others when the opportunity came.

Maguire never fluctuated in his confidence that freedom was on the way,
but he was consumed with impatience; Larry alone, who never sought
release, bided his time in serene cheerfulness.

And the powers that be accepted Larry's sacrifice; for so long was the
delay in the governor's office that Maguire was released on the day on
which Larry's sentence expired. The world looked very bright to Jim
Maguire and Larry Flannigan as they passed out of the prison doors into
liberty together. Maguire took up life again in his old environment, not
very successfully, I have reason to think. But Larry made a fresh start
in a distant city, unhampered by the fact that he was an ex-convict.

It was then that the deadly blight of prison life began to throw its
pall over Evans, and the long nervous strain to undermine his health. He
wrote me:

"I am still working at the old job, and I can say with truth that my
antipathy to it increases each day. I am sick and tired of writing to
lawyers for the last two years, and it amounted to nothing. I will
gladly turn the case over to you if you can do anything with it."

The event proved that these lawyers were interested in their case, but
politically they were in opposition to the governor and had no
influence; nor did I succeed better in making the matter crystallize.

I had always found Evans animated and interested in whatever we were
talking about until one interview when he had been in prison about
thirteen years, all that time on prison contract work. The change in his
appearance was evident when he came into the room. He seated himself
listlessly, and my heart sank, for too well I knew that dull apathy to
which the long-time men succumb. Now, knowing with what glad
anticipation he had formerly looked forward to our interviews, I was
determined that the hour should not pass without leaving some pleasant
memory; but it was twenty minutes or more before the cloud in his eyes
lifted and the smile with which he had always greeted me appeared. His
whole manner changed as he said: "Why, Miss Taylor, I am just waking up,
beginning to realize that you are here. My mind is getting so dull that
nothing seems to make any impression any more." He was all animation for
the rest of the time, eagerly drinking in the joy of sympathetic
companionship.--What greater joy does life give?

But I had taken the alarm, for clearly the man was breaking down, and I
urged the warden to give him a change of work. The warden said he had
tried to arrange that; but Evans was on contract work, one of the best
men in the shop, and the contractors were unwilling to give up so
profitable a workman--the evils of the contract system have much to
answer for. So Evans continued to work on the contract, and the prison
blight progressed and the man's vitality was steadily drained. When the
next winter came and _la grippe_ invaded the prison, the resisting power
of Evans was sapped; and when attacked by the disease he was relegated
to the prison hospital to recuperate. He did not recuperate; on the
contrary, various symptoms of general physical deterioration appeared
and it was evident that his working days on the prison contract were
over.

A renewed attempt was now made to procure the release of Evans, as his
broken health furnished a reason for urgency toward immediate action on
the part of the governor, and this last attempt was successful. The good
news was sent to Evans that in a month he would be a free man, and I was
at the prison soon after the petition was granted. I knew that Evans was
in the hospital, but had not been informed of his critical condition
until the hospital physician told me that serious heart trouble had
developed, intensified by excitement over the certainty of release.

No shadow of death was visible or was felt in this my last visit with
Evans, who was dressed and sitting up when I went in to see him. Never,
never have I seen any one so happy as was Evans that morning. With heart
overflowing with joy and with gratitude, his face was radiant with
delight. All the old animation was kindled again, and the voice, no
longer lifeless, was colored and warm with feeling.

"I want to thank everybody," he said, "the governor, my lawyers, the
warden, and you. Everybody has been so good to me these last weeks. And
I shall be home for next Sunday. My sister is coming to take me to her
home, and she and my mother will take care of me until I'm able to work.
Sister writes me that mother can't sit still, but walks up and down the
room in her impatience to see me."

We two friends, who had clasped hands in the darkness of his fate, were
together now when the dawn of his freedom was breaking, neither of us
realizing that it was to be the greater freedom of the Life Invisible.

To us both, however, this hour was the beautiful culmination of our
years of friendship. I read the man's heart as if it were an open book
and it held only good will toward all the world.

Something moved me to speak to him as I had never spoken to one of my
prisoners, to try and make him feel my appreciation of his courage, his
unselfishness, his faithfulness. I told him that I realized how he had
_lived out_ the qualities of the most heroic soldier. To give one's life
for one's country when the very air is charged with the spirit of
patriotism is a fine thing and worthy of the thrill of admiration which
it always excites. But liberty is dearer than life, and the prison
atmosphere gives little inspiration to knightly deeds. This man had
risen above himself into that higher region of moral victory. And so I
said what was in my heart, while something deeper than happiness came
into Evans's face.

And then we said good-by, smiling into each other's eyes. This happened,
I think, on the last day but one of Evans's life.

Afterward it was told in the prison that Evans died of joy at the
prospect of release. For him to be carried into the new life on this
high tide of happiness seemed to me a gift from heaven. For in the
thought of the prisoner freedom includes everything to be desired in
life. The joy of that anticipation had blinded Evans to the fact that
his health was ruined beyond repair. He was spared the realization that
the life of freedom, so fair to his imagination, could never truly be
his; for the prison-house of disease has bolts and bars which no human
hand can withdraw.

But that mother! If she could have read only once again the light of his
love for her in the eyes of her son! But the sorrows of life fall alike
upon the just and the unjust.

FOOTNOTE:

[11] The good time allowed on a twelve years' sentence reduces it to
seven years and three months.




CHAPTER XI


The psychological side of convict life is intensely interesting, but in
studying brain processes, supposed to be mechanical, one's theories and
one's logical conclusions are likely to be baffled by a factor that will
not be harnessed to any set of theories; namely, that _something which
we call conscience_. We forget that the criminal is only a human being
who has committed a crime, and that back of the crime is the same human
nature common to us all.

During the first years when I was in touch with prison life I had only
occasional glimpses of remorse for crimes committed. The minds of most
of the convicts seemed to dwell on the "extenuating circumstances" more
than on the criminal act, and the hardships of prison life were almost
ever present in their thoughts. I had nearly come to consider the
remorse pictured in literature and the drama as an unreal thing, when I
made the acquaintance of Ellis Shannon and found it: a monster that
gripped the human heart and held it as in a vise. Nemesis never
completed a work of retribution more fully than it was completed in the
life of Ellis Shannon.

Shannon was born in an Eastern city, was a boy of more than average
ability, and there seemed no reason why he should have gone wrong; but
he early lost his father, his mother failed to control him, and when
about sixteen years of age he fell into bad company and was soon
launched in his criminal career. He broke off all connection with his
family, went West, and for ten years was successful in his line of
business--regular burglary. He was widely known among men of his calling
as "The Greek," and his "professional standing" was of the highest. The
first I ever heard of him was from one of my other prison friends, who
wrote me: "If you want to know about life in ---- prison, write to Ellis
Shannon, who is there now. You can depend absolutely on what he
says--and when one professional says that of another you know it means
something." I did not, however, avail myself of this introduction.

Shannon's reputation for cool nerve was undisputed, and it was said that
he did not know what fear was. In order to keep a clear head and steady
hand he refrained from dissipation; he prided himself upon never
endangering the lives of those whose houses he entered, and despised the
bunglers who did not know their business well enough to avoid personal
encounter in their midnight raids. Unlike most men of his calling he
always used a candle on entering a building, and his associates often
told him that sometime that candle would get him into trouble.

One night the house of a prominent and popular citizen was entered.
While the burglar was pursuing his nefarious work the citizen suddenly
seized him by the shoulders, pulling him backward. The burglar managed
to fire backward over his own head, the citizen's hold was relaxed, and
the burglar fled. The shot proved fatal; the only trace left by the
assailant was a candle dropped on the floor.

A reward was offered for the capture and conviction of the murderer.
Circumstantial evidence connected with the candle led to the arrest of
George Brett, a young man of the same town, not of the criminal class.
The verdict in the case turned upon the identification of the piece of
candle found in the house with one procured by the accused the previous
day; and in the opinion of the court this identification was proven.
Brett admitted having obtained a piece of candle from that grocer on
that afternoon, but claimed that he had used it in a jack-o'-lantern
made for a child in the family.[12] Proof was insufficient to convict
the man of the actual crime, but this bit of evidence, with some other
less direct, was deemed sufficiently incriminating to warrant sending
Brett to prison for a term of years--seventeen, I think; and though the
convicted man always asserted his innocence his guilt was taken for
granted while six years slipped by.

Ellis Shannon, in the meantime, had been arrested for burglary in
another State and had served a sentence in another penitentiary. He
seemed to have lost his nerve, and luck had turned against him. On his
release still another burglary resulted in a ten years' sentence, this
time to the same prison where Brett was paying the penalty of the crime
in which the candle had played so important a part.

The two convicts happened to have cells in the same part of the prison,
and for the first time Ellis Shannon came face to face with George
Brett. A few days later Shannon requested an interview with the warden.
In the warden's office he announced that he was the man guilty of the
crime for which Brett was suffering, and that Brett had no part in it.
He drew a sketch of the house burglarized--not altogether correct--gave
a succinct account of the whole affair, and declared his readiness to go
into court, plead guilty to murder, and accept the sentence, even to the
death penalty. Action on this confession was promptly taken. Shannon was
sent into court and on his confession alone was sentenced to
imprisonment for life.

Brett was overjoyed by this vindication and the expectation of immediate
release. But, no; the prosecuting parties were unconvinced by Shannon's
confession, which, in their opinion, did not dispose of the evidence
against Brett.

It was a curious state of affairs, and one perhaps never paralleled,
that, while a man's unsupported statement was considered sufficient to
justify the imposing of a sentence to life imprisonment, this statement
counted for nothing as affecting the fate of the other man involved. And
there was never a trace of collusion between the two men, either at the
time of the crime or afterward.

Shannon's story of the crime I shall give in his own terse language,
quoted from his confession published in the newspapers:

"Up to the time of killing Mr. ---- I had never even wounded anybody. I
had very little regard for the rights of property, but to shoot a man
dead at night in his own house was a climax of villainy I had not
counted on. A professional thief is not so blood-thirsty a wretch as he
is thought to be.... I am setting up no defense for the crime of murder
or burglary--it is all horrible enough. It was a miserable combination
of circumstances that caused the shooting that night. I was not feeling
well and so went into the house with my overcoat on--something I had
never done before. It was buttoned to the throat. I had looked at Mr.
---- a moment before and he was asleep. I had then turned and taken down
his clothes. I had a candle in one hand and the clothes in the other. I
would have left in a second of time when suddenly, before I could turn,
Mr. ---- spoke. As quick as the word he had his arms thrown around me;
the candle went out and we were in the dark.

"Now I could hardly remember afterwards how it all occurred. There was
no time to think. I was helpless as a baby in the position in which I
was held. There is no time for reflection in a struggle like this. He
was holding me and I was struggling to get away. I told him several
times to let go or I'd shoot. I was nearly crazy with excitement and it
was simply the animal instinct of self-preservation that caused me to
fire the shots.

"I was so weak when I got outside that in running I fell down two or
three times. That night in Chicago I was in hopes the man was only
wounded, and in that case I had determined to quit the business. When I
read the account in the papers next morning all I can say is that,
although I was in the city and perfectly safe, with as little chance of
being discovered as if I were in another planet, I would have taken my
chances--whether it would have been five or twenty years for the
burglary--if it were only in my power to do the thing over again. I did
not much care what I did after this. I thought I could be no worse than
I was.

"In a few months I was arrested and got five years for a burglary in
----. I read what I could of the trial from what papers I could get; and
for the first time I saw what a deadly web circumstances and the
conceit of human shrewdness can weave around an innocent man.

"The trial went on. I did not open my mouth. I knew that if I said a
word and went into court fresh from the penitentiary I would certainly
be hanged, and I had not reached a point when I was ready to sacrifice
my life for a stranger.

"In the feverish life I led in the short time out of prison I forgot all
about this, until I found myself here for ten years and then I thought:
there is a man in this prison doing hard work, eating coarse food,
deprived of everything that makes life worth having, and suffering for a
crime of which he knows as little as the dust that is yet to be created
to fill these miserable cells. I thought what a hell the place must be
to him.

"No one has worked this confession out of me. I wish to implicate no
one, but myself. If you will not believe what I say now, and ---- stays
in prison, it is likely the truth will never be known. But if in the
future the man who was with me that night will come to the front,
whether I am alive or dead, you will find that what I have told you is
as true as the law of gravitation. I was never in the town of ----
before that time or since. I did not know whom I had killed until I
read of it. I do not know ---- (Brett) or any of his friends. But I do
know that he is perfectly innocent of the crime he is in prison for. I
know it better than any one in the world because I committed the crime
myself."

The position of Brett was not affected in the least by this confession,
though his family were doing all in their power to secure his release.
The case was considered most difficult of solution. The theory of
delusion on Shannon's part was advanced and was accepted by those who
believed Brett guilty, but received no credence among the convicts who
knew Shannon and the burglar associated with him at the time the crime
was committed.

I had never sought the acquaintance of a "noted criminal" before, but
this case interested me and I asked to see Shannon. For the first time I
felt myself at a disadvantage in an interview with a convict. A sort of
aloofness seemed to form the very atmosphere of his personality, and
though he sat near me it was with face averted and downcast eyes; the
face seemed cut in marble, it was so pale and cold, with clear-cut,
regular features, suggesting a singular appropriateness in his being
known as "The Greek."

I opened conversation with some reference to the newspaper reports;
Shannon listened courteously but with face averted and eyes downcast,
and then in low, level tones, but with a certain incisiveness, he
entered upon the motive which led to his confession, revealing to me
also his own point of view of the situation. Six years had passed since
the crime was committed, and all that time, he said, he had believed
that, if he could bring himself to confess, Brett would be cleared--that
during these six years the murder had become a thing of the past,
partially extenuated in his mind, on the ground of self-defence; but
when he found himself in the same prison with Brett, here was a result
of his crime, living, suffering; and in the depths of Shannon's own
conscience pleading for vindication and liberty. As a burden on his own
soul the murder might have been borne in silence between himself and his
Creator, but as a living curse on another it demanded confession. And
the desire to right that wrong swept through his being with
overmastering force.

"I had always believed," he said, "that 'truth crushed to earth would
rise again,' and I was willing to give my life for truth; but I learned
that the word of a convict is nothing--truth in a convict counts for
nothing."

The man had scarcely moved when he told me all this, and he sat like a
statue of despair when he relapsed into silence--still with downcast
eyes; I was absolutely convinced of the truth of what he had told me, of
the central truth of the whole affair, his guilt and his consciousness
of the innocence of the other man. That his impressions of some of the
details of the case might not square with known facts was of secondary
importance; to me the _internal evidence_ was convincing. Isn't there
something in the Bible to the effect that "spirit beareth witness unto
spirit"? At all events, _sometimes a woman knows_.

I told Shannon that I believed in his truth, and I offered to send him
magazines and letters if he wished. Then he gave me one swift glance of
scrutiny, with eyes accustomed to reading people, thanked me, and added
as we parted: "If there were more people like you in this world there
wouldn't be so many like me."

My belief in the truth of Shannon's statement was purely intuitive, but
in order to make it clear to my understanding as well I studied every
objection to its acceptance by those who believed Shannon to be the
victim of a delusion. His sincerity no one doubted. It was claimed that
Shannon had manifested no interest in the case previous to his arrival
in the prison where Brett was. On the way to this prison Shannon, in
attempting to escape from the sheriff, had received a blow on the back
of his head, which it was assumed might have affected his mind. Among my
convict acquaintances was a man who had worked in the shop beside
Shannon in another prison, at the time of Brett's trial for the crime,
and this man could have had no possible motive for incriminating
Shannon. He told me that during all the time of the trial, five years
previous to the blow on his head, Shannon was greatly disturbed,
impatient to get hold of newspapers which he had to borrow, and
apparently absorbed in studying the evidence against Brett, but saying
always, "They can't convict him." This convict went on to tell me that
after the case was decided against Brett Shannon seemed to lose his
nerve and all interest in life. This account tallies exactly with
Shannon's printed confession, in which he says: "I read what I could of
the trial in what papers I could get. I had not yet reached the point
where I was willing to sacrifice my life for a stranger."

In his confession Shannon had spoken of his accomplice in that terrible
night's work as one who could come forward and substantiate his
statements. Four different convicts of my acquaintance knew who this man
was, but not one of them was able to put me in communication with him.
The man had utterly disappeared. But this bit of evidence as to his
knowledge of the crime I did collect--his whereabouts was known to at
least one other of my convict acquaintances till the day after Shannon's
confession was made public. That day my acquaintance received from
Shannon's accomplice _a paper with the confession marked_ and from that
day had lost all trace of him. The convict made this comment in defence
of the silence of the accomplice:

"He wouldn't be such a fool as to come forward and incriminate himself
after Shannon's experience."

Convicts in several States were aware of Shannon's fruitless effort to
right a wrong, and knew of the punishment brought upon himself by his
attempt. The outcome of the occurrence must have been regarded as a
warning to other convicts who might be prompted to honest confession in
behalf of another.

At that time I had never seen George Brett, and not until later was I in
communication with his lawyers. But I was convinced that only from
convicts could evidence verifying Shannon's confession be gleaned.

As far as I know, nothing more connected with that crime has ever come
to light. And even to-day there is doubtless a division of opinion among
those best informed. Finding there was nothing I could do in the matter,
my interest became centred in the study of the man Shannon. He was an
interesting study from the purely psychological side, still more so in
the gradual revelation of his real inner life.

It is difficult to reconcile Shannon's life of action with his life of
thought, for he was a man of intellect, a student and a thinker. His use
of English was always correct. The range of his reading was wide,
including the best fiction, philosophy, science, and, more unusual, the
English essayists--Addison, Steele, and other contributors to _The
Spectator_. The true philosopher is shown in the following extract from
one of his letters to me:

"I beg you not to think that I consider myself a martyr to the cause of
truth. That my statement was rejected takes nothing from the naked fact,
but simply proves the failure of conditions by which it was to be
established as such. It did not come within the rules of acceptance in
these things, consequently it was not accepted. This is a world of
method. Things should be in their place. People do not go to a
fish-monger for diamonds, nor to a prison for truth. I recognize the
incongruity of my position and submit to the inevitable."

In explanation of his reception of my first call he writes:

"I don't think that at first I quite understood the nature of your
call--it was so unexpected. If my meaning in what I said was obscure it
was because in thinking and brooding too much one becomes unable to talk
and gradually falls into a state where words seem unnatural. _And these
prison thoughts are terrible._ In their uselessness they are like
spiders building cobwebs in the brain, clouding it and clogging it
beyond repair. I try to use imagination as a drug to fill my mind with a
fanciful contentment that I can know in no other way. When I was a child
I used to dream and speculate in anticipation of the world that was
coming. Now I do the same, but for a different reason--to make me forget
the detestable period of fact that has intervened.

"So when I am not reading or sleeping, and when my work may be
performed mechanically and with least mental exertion, I live away from
myself and surroundings as much as possible. I was in a condition
something like this at the time of your call. A dreamer dislikes at best
to be awakened and in a situation like mine it is especially trying.
While talking in this way I must beg pardon, for I did really appreciate
your visit and felt more human after it. I would not have you infer from
this that the slightest imagination entered into my story of that
unfortunate affair. I would it were so; but if it is a fact that I
exist, all that I related is just as true."

His choice of Schopenhauer as a friend illustrates the homoeopathic
principle of like curing like.

"Schopenhauer is an old friend and favorite of mine. Very often when I
am getting wretchedly blue and when everything as seen through my eyes
is wearing a most rascally tinge, I derive an immense amount of comfort
and consolation by thinking how much worse they have appeared to
Schopenhauer." In other words, the great pessimist served to produce a
healthy reaction.

But this reaction was but for the hour. All through Shannon's letters
there runs a vein of the bitterest pessimism. He distrusted all forms of
religion and arraigns the prison chaplains in these words:

"I have never met a class of men who appear to know less of the
spiritual nature or the wants of their flocks. It is strange to me that
men, who might so easily gather material for the finest practical
lessons, surrounded as they are by real life experiences and
illustrations by which they might well teach that _crime does not pay_
either in coin or happiness, that they will ignore all this and rack
their brains to produce elaborate theological discourses founded upon
some sentence of a fisherman who existed two thousand years ago, to
paralyze and mystify a lot of poor plain horse thieves and burglars.
What prisoners are in need of is a man able to preach natural, every-day
common sense, with occasionally a little humor or an agreeable story or
incident to illustrate a moral. It seems to me if I were to turn
preacher I would try and study the simple character of the great master
as it is handed down to us."

It strikes me that prison chaplains would do well to heed this convict
point of view of their preaching.

I do not recall that Shannon ever made a criticism upon the
administration of the prison of which he was then an inmate, but he
gives free expression to his opinion of our general system of
imprisonment. He had been studying the reports of a prison congress
recently in session where various "reformatory measures" had been
discussed, or, to use his expression, "expatiated upon," and writes:

"I wish to make a few remarks from personal observation upon this
subject of prison reform. I will admit, to begin with, that upon the
ground of protection to society, the next best thing to hanging a
criminal is to put him in prison, providing you keep him there; but if
you seek his reformation it is the worst thing you can do with him.
Convicts generally are not philosophers, neither are they men of pure
thought or deep religious feelings. They are not all sufficient to
themselves, and for this reason confinement never did, never can and
never will have a good effect upon them.

"I have known hundreds of men, young and old, who have served time in
prison. I have known many of them to grow crafty in prison and upon
release to employ their peculiar talents in some other line of
business, safer but not less degrading to themselves; but I never knew
one to have been made a better man by _prison discipline_;--those who
reformed did so through other influences.

"It may be a good prison or a bad one, with discipline lax or rigorous,
but the effect, though different, is never good: it never can be. Crime
is older than prisons. According to best accounts it began in the Garden
of Eden, but God--who knew human nature--instead of shutting up Adam and
Eve separately, drove them out into the world where they could exercise
their minds hustling for themselves. Since then there has been but one
system that reformed a man without killing him, namely, transportation.

"This system, instead of leaving a bad man in prison, _to saturate
himself with his own poison_, sent him to a distant country, where under
new conditions, and with something to work and hope for, he could
harmlessly dissipate that poison among the wilds of nature. It may be no
other system is possible; that the world is getting too densely
populated to admit of transportation; or that society owes nothing to
one who has broken her laws. I write this, not as 'an Echo from a
Living Tomb,' but as plain common sense."[13]

Personal pride, one of the very elements of the man's nature, kept him
from ever uttering a complaint of individual hardships; but the mere
fact of confinement, the lack of air, space, freedom of movement and
action, oppressed him as if the iron bars were actually pressing against
his spirit. His one aim was to find some Lethe in which he could drown
memory and consciousness of self. In all the years of his manhood there
seemed to have been no sunny spot in which memory could find a
resting-place.

From first to last his misdirection of life had been such a frightful
blunder; even in its own line such a dismal failure. His boasted "fine
art" of burglary had landed him in the ranks of murderers. He had
despised cowardice and yet at the critical hour in the destiny of
another he had proven himself a coward. And when by complete
self-sacrifice he had sought to right the wrong the sacrifice had been
in vain.

Understanding something of the world in which he lived, I suggested the
study of a new language as a mental occupation requiring concentration
on a line entirely disconnected from his past. He gladly adopted my
suggestion and began the study of German; but it was all in vain--he
could not escape from himself.

He had managed to keep so brave a front in his letters that I was
unaware that the man was completely breaking down until the spring
morning when we had our last interview.

There was in his face the unmistakable look of the man who is doomed--so
many of my prisoners died. His remorse was like a living thing that had
eaten into his life--a very wolf within his breast. He was no longer
impassive, but fairly writhing in mental agony. He did not seem to know
that he was dying; he certainly did not care. His one thought was for
Brett and the far-reaching, irreparable wrong that Brett had suffered
through him. When I said that I thought the fate of the innocent man in
prison was not so dreadful as that of the guilty man Shannon exclaimed:
"You are mistaken. I don't see how it is possible for a man unjustly
imprisoned to believe in any justice, human or divine, or in any God
above," and he continued with an impassioned appeal on behalf of
innocent prisoners which left a deep impression with me. In his own
being he seemed to be actually experiencing at once the fate of the
innocent victim of injustice and of the guilty man suffering just
punishment. He spoke of his intense spiritual loneliness, which human
sympathy was powerless to reach, and of how thankful he should be if he
could find light or hope in any religion; but he could not believe in
any God of truth or justice while Brett was left in prison. A soul more
completely desolate it is impossible to imagine.

My next letter from Shannon was written from the hospital, and expresses
the expectation of being "all right again in a few days"; farther on in
the letter come these words:

"I do believe in a future life. Without this hope and its consoling
influence life would scarcely be worth living. I believe that all the
men who have ever died, Atheists or whatever they professed to be, did
so with the hope more or less sustaining them, of awakening to a future
life. This hope is implanted by nature universally in the human breast
and it is not unlikely to suppose that it has some meaning."

A few weeks later I received a line from the warden telling me of the
death of Ellis Shannon, and from the prison hospital was sent me a
little volume of translations from Socrates which had been Shannon's
companion in his last days. A slip of paper between the leaves marked
Socrates's reflections on death and immortality. The report of one of
the hospital nurses to me was:

"Shannon had consumption, but he died of grief." It is not often that
one dies of a broken heart outside the pages of fiction and romance, but
medical authority assures us that it sometimes happens.

Up to this time I had never seen George Brett, but after the death of
Shannon we had one long interview. What first struck me was the
remarkable similarity between the voices of Brett and Shannon, as
supposed identification of the voice of Brett with that of the burglar
had been accepted as evidence at the trial. My general impression of the
man was wholly favorable. He was depressed and discouraged, but
responsive, frank, and unstudied in all that he said. When he mentioned
the man shot in the burglary I watched him closely; his whole manner
brightened as he said:

"Why, he was one of the best men in the world, a man that little
children loved. He was good to every one."

"And you could never speak of that man as you are speaking now if you
had taken his life," was my inward comment.

Brett's attitude toward Shannon was free from any shade of resentment,
but what most impressed me was that Shannon's belief that the unjust
conviction of Brett and his own fruitless effort to right the wrong must
make it impossible for Brett ever to believe in a just God--in other
words, that the most cruel injury to Brett was the spiritual injury.
This belief proved to be without foundation. George Brett had not been a
religious man, but in Shannon he saw that truth and honor were more than
life, stronger than the instinct of self-preservation; and he could
hardly escape from the belief that divine justice itself was the
impelling power back of the impulse prompting Shannon to confession. In
the strange action and interaction of one life upon another, in the
final summing up of the relation of these two men, it seemed to have
been given to Shannon to touch the deeper springs of spiritual life in
Brett, to reveal to him something of the eternal verities of existence.

And truth crushed to earth did rise again; for not long after the death
of Shannon, in the eighth year of his imprisonment, George Brett was
pardoned, with the public statement that he had been convicted on
doubtful evidence and that the confession of Shannon had been accepted
in proof of his innocence.

No adequate compensation can ever be made to one who has suffered unjust
imprisonment, but there are already indications of the dawn of a
to-morrow when the state, in common honesty, will feel bound to make at
least financial restitution to those who have been the victims of such
injustice.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] The crime was committed after the midnight of Hallowe'en.

[13] This letter was written twenty-five years ago. The logic of
Shannon's argument is unquestionably sound. The futility of imprisonment
as a reformatory agent is now widely recognized. But better than
transportation is the system of conditional liberation of men after
conviction now receiving favorable consideration--even tentative
adoption--in many States.




CHAPTER XII


There is another chapter to my experience with prisoners; it is the
story of what they have done for me, for they have kept the balance of
give and take very even between us. I have an odd collection of
souvenirs and keepsakes, but, incongruous as the different articles are,
one thread connects them all; from the coarse, stubby pair of little
mittens suggesting the hand of a six-year-old country boy to the flask
of rare Venetian glass in the dull Oriental tones dear to the æsthetic
soul; from the hammock that swings under the maple-trees to the
diminutive heart in delicately veined onyx, designed to be worn as a
pendant.

The mittens came from Jackson Currant, a friendly soul who unravelled
the one pair of mittens allowed him for the winter, contrived to possess
himself of a piece of wire from which he fashioned a hook, and evenings
in his cell crocheted for me a pair of mittens. Funny little things they
were, but a real gift, for this prisoner took from himself and gave to
me the one thing he had to give.

Another gift which touched me came from an old Rocky Mountain
trapper--then a prisoner for life. His one most cherished possession was
a copy of "A Day in Athens with Socrates," sent him by the translator.
After keeping the precious book for three years and learning its
contents by heart, he sent it to me as a birthday gift and I found it
among other birthday presents one February morning. Then there is the
cherry box that holds my stationery, with E. A.'s initials carved in the
cover; E. A., who is reclaiming his future from all shadow of his past.
It was E. A. who introduced me to my Welsh boy, Alfred Allen, and it was
Alfred who opened my heart to all the street waifs in the universe.

In many ways my life has been enriched by my prisoners. Most delightful
social affiliations, most stimulating intellectual influences, and some
of the warmest friendships of my life, by odd chains of circumstances
have developed from my prison interests.

Almost any friend can give us material gifts--the gift of things--the
friend who widens our social relations or broadens our interests does
us far better service; but it is the rare friend who opens our
spiritual perception to whom we are most indebted. For through the ages
has been pursued the quest of some proof that man is a spiritual being,
some evidence that what we call the soul has its origin beyond the realm
of the material; the learning of all time has failed to satisfy this
quest; and the wealth of the world cannot purchase one fragment of such
proof.

And yet it is to one of my prisoners that I owe the gift of an hour in
which the spirit of man seemed the one vital fact of his existence, the
one thing beyond the reach of death; and time has given priceless value
to that hour.

I met James Wilson in the first years of my prison acquaintance, and it
was long before it occurred to me that under later legislation he would
have been classed as an habitual criminal. I have often wondered at the
power of his personality; it must have been purely the result of innate
qualities. He was brave, he was generous, he was loyalty itself; and his
sympathies were responsive as those of a woman. He would have been an
intrepid soldier, a venturesome explorer, a chivalrous knight; but in
the confusion of human life the boy was shoved to the wrong track and
having the momentum of youth and strong vitality he rushed recklessly
onward into the course of a Robin Hood; living in an age when those who
come into collision with the social forces of law and order are called
criminals, his career in that direction fortunately was of short
duration.

Had Wilson not been arrested in his downward course he might never have
come into possession of the self whom I knew so well, that true self at
last so clearly victorious over adverse circumstances. In this sketch I
have not used Wilson's letters; they were so purely personal, so wholly
of his inner life, that to give them to the public seemed desecration.

I can give but one glimpse of his childhood. When he was a very little
boy he sat on his father's knee and looked up into kind and loving gray
eyes. The father died, and the son remembered him always as kind and
loving.

The loss of his father changed the course of Wilson's life. The mother
formed other ties; the boy was one too many, and left home altogether as
soon as he was old enough to shift for himself. He went honestly to
work, where so many boys along the Mississippi Valley are morally
ruined--on a river-boat.

After a time things began to go wrong with him. I don't know whether
the injury was real or fancied, but the boy believed himself maliciously
injured; and in the blind passion following he left the river, taking
with him money that belonged to the man who had angered him. Wilson had
meant to square the score, to balance wrong with wrong; but his revenge
recoiled upon himself and at sixteen he was a thief and a fugitive.
Before the impetus of that moral movement was exhausted he was in the
penitentiary--"one of the most vigorous and fine-looking men in the
prison, tall and splendidly built," so said another prisoner who knew
him at that time.

At the expiration of his three years' sentence Wilson began work in a
Saint Louis printing-office, opening, so he believed, a new chapter in
life. He was then twenty years of age.

During that year all through the West--if the Mississippi region can
still be called West--there were serious labor troubles. Men were
discharged from every branch of employment where they could be spared;
and the day came when all the "new hands" in the printing-office where
Wilson worked were turned off.

Wilson had saved something from his earnings, and while his money
lasted he lived honestly, seeking employment, but the money was gone
before he found employment. Outside the cities the country was overrun
with tramps; temptations to lawlessness were multiplied; starvation,
stealing, or begging seemed the only pathway open to many. None starved;
there was little choice between the other alternatives. Jails and
prisons were crowded with inmates, some of whom felt themselves
fortunate in being provided with food and shelter even at the cost of
liberty. "I have gone hungry so many days and slept on the ground so
many nights that the thought of a prison seems something like home," was
a remark made to me. "The world owes me a living" was a thought that
came in the form of temptation to many a man who could get no honest
work.

After Wilson had been out of employment for two or three months there
occurred a great commotion near a small town within fifty miles of Saint
Louis. Stores had been broken into and property carried off, and a
desperate attempt was made to capture the burglars, who were supposed to
be in that vicinity. A man who had gone to a stream of water was
arrested and identified as belonging to the gang. He was ordered to
betray his accomplices; he refused absolutely. The reckless courage in
his nature once aroused, the "honor" observed among thieves was his
inevitable course. A rope was brought, and Wilson was taken to a tree
where the story of his life would doubtless have ended had not a shout
from others, who were still searching, proclaimed the discovery of the
retreat of his companions. Wilson and Davis, the two leaders, were
sentenced each to four years in the penitentiary.

Defeated, dishonored, penniless, and friendless, Wilson found himself
again in prison; this time under the more than double disgrace of being
a "second-term" man, with consciousness of having deliberately made a
choice of crime. He was an avowed infidel, and his impetuous, unsubdued
nature was at war with life and the world. For two years he lived on in
this way; then his health began to fail under the strain of work and
confinement.

With the loss of strength his heart grew harder and more desperate. One
day his old recklessness broke out in open revolt against prison
authority. He was punished by being sent to the "solitary," where the
temperature in summer is much lower than that of the shops where the
men work; he took cold, a hemorrhage of the lungs resulted, and he was
sent to the prison hospital.

There, on a Sunday morning two months later, I first met Wilson. I think
it was the glance of the dark-gray eyes under long, sweeping black
lashes that first attracted me. But it was the expression of the face,
the quiet, dignified courtesy of manner, and the candid statement of his
history that made the deeper impression. Simply and briefly he gave me
the outlines of his past; and he spoke with deep, concentrated
bitterness of the crushing, terrible life in prison. His unspoken
loneliness--he had lost all trace of his mother--and his illness, almost
ignored but evident, appealed to my sympathy and prompted me to offer to
write to him. He thought it would be a pleasure to receive letters, but
assured me that he could write nothing worth reading in return.

Long afterward I asked what induced him to reply to my questions so
frankly and sincerely. His answer was: "Because I knew if I lied to you,
it would make it harder for you to believe the next man you talked with,
who might tell you the truth." During all that Sunday afternoon and
evening Wilson remained in my thoughts, and the next
afternoon--Hallowe'en, as it happened--found me again at the hospital. I
stopped for a few moments at the bedside of a young prisoner who was
flushed with hectic fever and wildly rebellious over the thought of
dying in prison--he lived to die an honest man in freedom, in the dress
of a civilized being and not in the barbarous, zebra-like suit then worn
in the prison. I remained for a longer time beside the bed of a man who
was serving a sentence of imprisonment for life for a crime of which he
was innocent. After twelve years his innocence was proved; he was
released a crippled invalid, with no means of support except by hands
robbed of their power to work. The State makes no reparation for an
unspeakable wrong like this, far more cruel than death.

When I turned to look for Wilson he was sitting apart from the other
men, with a vacant chair beside him. Joining him beside that west
window, flooded with the golden light of an autumn sunset, I took the
vacant seat intended for me; and the hour that followed so influenced
Wilson's future that he adopted that day--Hallowe'en--as his birthday.
He knew the year but not the month in which he was born.

I have not the slightest recollection of what I said while we sat beside
the window. But even now I can see Wilson's face as he listened with
silent attention, not meeting my eyes. I think I spoke of his personal
responsibility for the life he had lived. I am certain that I said
nothing about swearing and that I asked no promises.

But thoughts not in my mind were suggested to him. For when I ceased
speaking he raised his eyes, and looking at me intently he said: "I
can't promise to be a Christian; my life has been too bad for that; but
I want to promise you that I will give up swearing and try to have pure
thoughts. I can promise you that, because these things lie in my own
power; but there's too much wickedness between me and God for me ever to
be a Christian."

His only possession was the kingdom of his thoughts; without reservation
it was offered to his friend, and with the sure understanding that she
would value it.

It was a surprise when I received Wilson's first letter to see the
unformed writing and the uncertain spelling; but the spirit of the man
could be traced, even through the inadequate medium. In earnestness and
simplicity he was seeking to fulfil his promise, finding, as he
inevitably must, that he had committed himself to more than his promise.
It was not long before he wrote that he had begun a new life altogether
"for your sake and for my own." His "thoughts" gave him great trouble,
for the old channels were still open, and his cell-mate's mind was
steeped in wickedness. But he made the best of the situation, and
instead of seeking to ward off evil he took the higher course of sharing
his own better thoughts with his cell-mate, over whom he acquired a
strong influence. Steadfastly he sought to overcome evil with good. Very
slowly grew his confidence in himself; and his great anxiety seemed to
be lest I should think him better than he was.

Like all persons with tuberculosis Wilson was sanguine of recovery; and
as he went back to work in one of the shops the day after I left, and
always wrote hopefully, I took it for granted that his health was
improving.

Six months only passed before we met again, and I was wholly unprepared
for the startling change in Wilson's appearance. His cough and the
shortness of his breath were distressing. But the poor fellow was so
delighted to see me that he tried to set his own condition entirely
aside.

We had a long talk in the twilight of that lovely May evening, and again
we were seated beside a window, through which the light and sounds of
spring came in. I learned then how hard life was for that dying man. He
was still subject to the strict discipline of the most strictly
disciplined prison in the country: compelled to rise at five in the
morning and go through the hurried but exact preparations for the day
required of well men. He was kept on the coarse prison fare, forced to
march breathlessly in the rapid lock-step of the gang of strong men with
whom he worked, and kept at work in the shop all through the long days.
The strain on nerve and will and physical strength was never relaxed.

These things he told me, and they were all true; but he told me also
better things, not so hard for me to know. He gave me the history of his
moral struggles and victories. He told me of the "comfort" my letters
had been to him; his whole heart was opened to me in the faith that I
would understand and believe him. It was then that he told me he was
trying to live by some verses he had learned; and in answer to my
request, hesitatingly, and with breath shortened still more by
embarrassment, he repeated the lines:


     "I stand upon the Mount of God,
       With gladness in my soul,
     I hear the storms in vale beneath--
       I hear the thunder roll.

     "But I am calm with Thee, my God,
       Beneath these glorious skies,
     And to the height on which I stand
       No storm nor cloud can rise."


He was wholly unconscious that there was anything unusual in his
reaching up from the depths of sin, misery, and degradation to the
spiritual heights of eternal light. He rather reproached himself for
having left the valley of repentance, seeming to feel that he had
escaped mental suffering that was deserved; although he admitted: "The
night after you left me in October, when I went back to my cell, the
tears were just running down my face--if that could be called
repentance."

At the close of our interview, as Wilson was going out, he passed
another prisoner on the way in to see me.

"Do you know Wilson?" was Newton's greeting as he approached me.

"Do _you_ know Wilson?" was my question in reply.

Newton had taken offence at something in one of my letters and it was to
make peace with him that I had planned the interview, but all
misunderstanding evaporated completely in our common regret and anxiety
about Wilson; for my feeling was fully shared by this man who--well, he
_was_ pretty thoroughly hardened on all other subjects. But here the
chord of tenderness was touched; and all his hardness and resentment
melted in the relief of finding some one who felt as he did on the
subject nearest his heart.

"I have worked beside Wilson in the shop for two years, and I have never
loved any man as I have grown to love him," he said. "And it has been so
terrible to see him dying by inches, and kept at work when he could
scarcely stand." The man spoke with strong emotion; the very depths of
his nature were stirred. He told me all about this friendship, which had
developed notwithstanding the fact that conversation between convicts
was supposed to be confined to necessary communication in relation to
work. Side by side they had worked in the shop, and as Wilson's
strength failed Newton managed to help him. Newton's praise and
affection really counted for something, as he was an embittered man with
small faith in human nature. He said that in all his life nothing had
been so hard as to see his friend sinking under his fate, while _he_ was
powerless to interfere. Newton and I had one comfort, however, in the
fact that Wilson's sentence was near the end. In justice to the
authorities of the prison where these men were confined I wish to state
that dying prisoners were usually sent to the hospital. Wilson's was an
exceptional case of hardship.

Early in July Wilson was released from prison. When he reached Chicago
his evident weakness arrested the attention of a passer-by, who hired a
boy to carry his bundle and see him to his destination. He had
determined to try to support himself, believing that freedom would bring
increased strength; but he was too ill to work. The doctor whom he
consulted spoke encouragingly, but urged the necessity of rest and
Minnesota air. I therefore sent him a pass to Minneapolis, and the route
was by way of my own home.

Life was hard on Wilson, but it gave him one day of happiness apart
from poverty or crime, when he felt himself a welcome guest in the home
of a friend. When his train arrived from Chicago I was at the station to
meet him, and before driving home we called on my physician that I might
know what to anticipate. The doctor commended the plan for the climate
of Minnesota, and spoke encouragingly to Wilson, but to me privately he
gave the fiat, "No hope."

Wilson spent the rest of that day in the library of my home, and all the
afternoon he was smiling. My face reflected his smiles, but I could not
forget the shadow of death in the background. We talked of many things
that afternoon; the breadth and fairness of his opinions on prison
matters, the impersonal way in which he was able to consider the
subject, surprised me, for his individual experience had been
exceptionally severe.

When weariness came into his eyes and his voice I suggested a little
music. The gayer music did not so much appeal to him, but I shall never
forget the man's delight in the sweet and restful cadences of
Mendelssohn. After a simple tea served Wilson in the library we took a
drive into the country, where the invalid enjoyed the lovely view of
hills and valleys wrapped in the glow of the summer sunset; and then I
left him for the night at a comfortable hotel.

The next morning Wilson was radiantly happy, notwithstanding "a hard
night"; and it happened to be one of the days when summer does her best
to keep us in love with life. All the forenoon we spent under a great
maple-tree, with birds in the branches and blue sky overhead, Wilson
abandoning himself to the simple joy of living and resting. Wilson was a
fine-looking man in citizen's dress, his regular features refined and
spiritualized by illness.

There were preparations to be made for Minnesota and the suit-case to be
repacked, and what value Wilson placed upon the various articles I
contributed! I think it was the cake of scented soap--clearly a
luxury--that pleased him most, but he was interested in every single
thing, and his heart was warmed by the cordial friendliness of my
mother, who added her own contribution to his future comfort. His one
regret was that he had nothing to give us in return.

But time was on the wing, and the morning slipped by all too rapidly, as
the hours of red-letter days always do, and the afternoon brought the
parting at the train for Minneapolis. Wilson lingered beside me while
there was time, then looking gravely into my eyes, he said: "Good-by; I
hope that we shall meet again--_on this side_." A moment later the
moving train carried him away toward the north, which to him meant the
hope of health.

Exhausted by the journey to Minneapolis, he at once applied for
admission to a Catholic hospital, and here I will let him speak for
himself, through the first letter that I received after he left me.


     "DEAR FRIEND:

     "I am now in the hospital, and I am so sleepy when I try to write
     that I asked one of the sisters to write for me.

     "I felt quite weak when I first came here, but now I take beef-tea,
     and I feel so much stronger, I think I will be very much better by
     the end of this month.

     "The Mother Superior is most kind and calls me her boy and thinks
     she will soon have me quite well again. I have a fine room to
     myself, and I feel most happy as I enjoy the beautiful fresh air
     from the Mississippi River, which runs quite near me.

     "Dear friend, I wish you were here to enjoy a few days and see how
     happy I am."


And scrawled below, in a feeble but familiar handwriting, were the
words:

"I tried to write, but failed."

Under the influence of the sisters Wilson was led back to the church
into which he had been baptized, and although he did not accept its
limitations he found great comfort in the sense of protection that it
gave him. Rest and nursing and the magical air of Minnesota effected
such an improvement in his health that before many weeks Wilson was
discharged from the hospital.

After a short period of outdoor work, in which he tested his strength,
he went into a printing-office, where, for a month, he felt himself a
man among men. But it was an overambitious and unwise step--confinement
and close air of the office were more than he could endure, and with
great regret he gave up the situation.

Winter was setting in and he found no work that he could do, and yet
thought himself too well to again seek admission to a hospital. The
outlook of life darkened, for there seemed to be no place for him
anywhere. He did not write to me during that time of uncertainty, and
one day, after having spent three nights in a railroad station, as a
last resort he asked to be sent to the county home and was received
there; after that he could not easily obtain admission to a hospital.

Western county homes were at that time hard places; in some respects
existence there was harder than in the prison, where restraint and
discipline are in a measure a protection, securing a man undisturbed
possession of his inner life and thoughts, during working hours at
least. The ceaselessly intrusive life of the home, with the lack of
discipline and the unrestrained intercourse of inmates, with the
idleness and the dirt, is far more demoralizing; crime itself does not
sap self-respect like being an idle pauper among paupers. All this could
be read between the lines of Wilson's letters.

And now a new dread was taking hold of him. All his hope and ambition
had centred in the desire to be good for this life. He had persistently
shut out the thought of death as the one thing that would prevent his
realizing this desire. Nature and youth clung passionately to life, and
all the strength of his will was nerved to resist the advance of
disease. But day by day the realization that life was slipping from him
forced itself deeper into his consciousness; even for the time
discouraging him morally. His high resolves seemed of no avail. It was
all of no use. He must die a pauper with no chance to regain his lost
manhood; life seemed indeed a hopeless failure. I had supplied Wilson
with paper and envelopes, stamped and addressed, that I might never fail
of hearing from him directly or through others; but there came an
interval of several weeks when I heard nothing, although writing
regularly. Perplexed, as well as anxious, in my determination to break
the silence at all hazards, I wrote a somewhat peremptory letter. The
answer came by return mail, but it was the keeper of the county home who
wrote that Wilson had written regularly and that he was very unhappy
over my last letter, adding:

"He says that if this room was filled with money it would not tempt him
to neglect his best friend; and when I told him that this room was
pretty big and would hold a lot of money he said that didn't make any
difference."

I could not be reconciled to Wilson's dying in that place, and when the
spring days came he was sent to Chicago, where his entrance to a
hospital had been arranged. It was an April afternoon when I found him
in one of the main wards of the hospital, a large room flooded with
sunshine and fresh air. Young women, charming in their nurses' uniform,
with skilled and gentle hands, were the ministering spirits there; the
presiding genius a beautiful Philadelphian whose gracious tranquillity
was in itself a heavenly benediction to the sick and suffering among
whom she lived. On a table beside Wilson's bed trailing arbutus was
filling the air with fragrance and telling the story of spring.

Wilson was greatly altered; but his face was radiant in the gladness of
our meeting. For weeks previous he had not been able to write me of his
thoughts or feelings, and I do not know when the change came. But it was
clearly evident that, as death approached, he had turned to meet it; and
had found, as so many others have found, that death no longer seemed an
enemy and the end of all things, but a friend who was leading the way to
fuller life; he assumed that I understood all this; he would have found
it difficult to express it in words; but he had much to tell me of all
those around him, and wished to share with me the friendships he had
formed in the hospital; and I was interested in the way the _quality of
the man's nature_ had made itself felt among nurses and patients alike.

One of the patients who had just been discharged came to the bedside to
bid him good-by; Wilson grasped his hand and in a few earnest words
reminded him of promises given in a previous conversation. With broken
voice the man renewed his promises, and left with his eyes full of
tears. He was unable to utter the good-by he had come to give.

At the close of my visit Wilson insisted upon giving me the loveliest
cluster of his arbutus; while Miss Alden, the Philadelphian, sanctioned
with a smile his sharing of her gift with another.

As Miss Alden went with me to the door she told me of her deep interest
in Wilson, and of the respect and affection he had won from all who had
come in contact with him. "The nurses consider it a pleasure to do
anything for one who asks so little and is so grateful," she said.
Though knowing that he had been in prison, Miss Alden was surprised to
learn that Wilson was not a man of education. His use of English, the
general tone of his thoughts and conversation, had classed him as a man
familiar with good literature and refined associations. She, too, had
felt in him a certain spiritual strength, and was touched by his loyalty
to me, which seemed never obscured by his gratitude to others. She
believed that only the strength of his desire to see me once again had
kept him in this world for the previous week.

The next morning Wilson was visibly weaker; the animation caused by the
excitement of seeing me the day before was gone; but the spiritual peace
and strength which had come to him were the more evident.

At his dictation I wrote a last message to Newton, and directions as to
the disposal of his clothing, to be given to patients whose needs he had
discovered. He expressed a wish to leave some little remembrances for
each of the nurses; there were six to whom he felt particularly
indebted. There was Miss Stevens, "who has been so very kind at night";
every one had her special claim, and I promised that each should receive
some token of his gratitude.

Afterward he spoke of the new life before him as naturally and easily as
he spoke of the hospital. He seemed already to have crossed the border
of the new life. His heart had found its home in God; there he could
give himself without reserve. Life and eternity were gladly offered to
the One in whom he had perfect trust.

"Tell me," I said, "what is your thought of heaven, now that it is so
near? What do you expect?"

How full of courage and trust and honesty was his answer! "I do not
expect happiness; at least not at once. God is too just for that, after
the life I have lived." Imprisonment, sickness, poverty, all the evils
that we most dread, had been endured for years, but counted for nothing
to him when weighed against his ruined life. But the thought of
suffering brought no fear. The justice of God was dearer to him than
personal happiness. I left that feeling undisturbed. He was nearer than
I to the light of the perfect day, and I could see that, unconsciously,
he had ceased to look to any one "on this side" for light.

Wilson was sleeping when I saw him again, but the rapid change which had
taken place was apparent at a glance. When he opened his eyes and saw me
standing beside him he looked at me silently for a moment. With an
effort he gathered strength for what he evidently wished to say; and all
the gratitude and affection that he had never before attempted to
express to me directly were revealed in a few simple words. He would
have no good-by; the loss of the supreme friendship of his life formed
no part of his idea of death. Then he spoke of the larger life of
humanity for which he had learned to feel so deeply, and his final words
to me were: "Be to others what you have been to me. We are all brothers
and sisters." The last thought between us was not to be of an exclusive,
individual friendship, but of that universal tie which binds each to
all.

Before midnight the earthly life had ended, peacefully and without fear.
The stem of Easter lilies that I carried to the hospital next day was
placed in the hands folded in the last sleep, and Wilson clasped in
death the symbol of new life and heavenly purity.

Wilson was one of the men behind the bars; but it is as man among men
that I think of him; and his last words to me, "We are all brothers and
sisters," sum up the truth that inspires every effort the round world
over to answer the call of those who are desolate or oppressed--whether
the cry comes from little children in the mine, the workshop, or the
tenement, or from those who are in slavery, in hospital, or in prison.




CHAPTER XIII


It was during the eighties and the nineties of the last century that I
was most closely in touch with prison life; and it was at that time that
the men whose stories I have told and from whose letters I have quoted
were behind the bars. For forty years or more there was no radical
change in methods of discipline in this prison, but material conditions
were somewhat improved, the stripes and the lock-step were abandoned,
and sanitation was bettered.

This institution stood as one of the best in the country, and doubtless
it was above the average in most respects. While the convicts were under
rigid repressive regulations, the guards were under rules scarcely less
strict, no favoritism was allowed, no bribery tolerated, and the
successive administrations were thoroughly honorable. While the
different wardens conformed to accepted standards of discipline there
were many instances of individual kindness from members of the
administration, and no favor that I asked for a prisoner was ever
refused.

But the twentieth century has brought a complete revolution in methods
of dealing with convicts. This radical revolution is overthrowing
century-old customs, and theories both ancient and modern. It has been
sprung upon us so suddenly that we have not yet grasped its full
meaning, but the causes leading up to it have been silently working
these many years.

For ages the individuality of the human being has been merged in the
term criminal; the criminal had practically ceased to be a man, and was
classified only according to his offence; as murderer, thief, forger,
pickpocket, etc. During the nineteenth century there was a gradual
mitigation of the fate of the convict: laws became more flexible,
efforts were made to secure more uniformity in the length of sentence
imposed, many States discarded the lock-step and the striped clothing,
and the contract system was giving place to other employment of
convicts. While the older prisons were growing unspeakably worse through
decaying walls and increasing vermin, as new penitentiaries were built
more light, better ventilation, larger cells, and altogether better
sanitation were adopted. However, the Lombroso theory of a distinct
criminal type, stamped with pronounced physical characteristics, was
taught in all our universities and so generally accepted by the public
that the criminal was believed to be _a different kind of man_.

The courts did a thriving business collecting all their fees and keeping
our prisons well filled, while the discipline of the convicts was left
to the prison officials, with practically no interference. Prison
congresses were held and there was much talk around and about the
criminal, but he was not regarded as a man with human feelings and human
rights; methods of management were discussed, but the inhuman
punishments sanctioned by some of these very wardens were never
mentioned in these discussions. "We are in charge; all's right in the
convict world," was the impression given the outsider who listened to
their addresses.

Unquestionably many of these prison wardens were at heart humanitarians,
and gave to their prisons a distinctive atmosphere as the result of
their personal characteristics, but they were all the victims of
tradition as to dealing with convicts--tradition and precedent, the
established order of prison management. The inexperienced warden taking
charge naturally followed the beaten tracks; he studied the situation
from the point of view of his predecessor, and the position at best was
a difficult one; radical innovations could be made only with the
sanction of the prison commissioners, who seemed to be mainly interested
in the prison as a paying proposition; and pay it did under the
abominable contract system.

And so the years went on with the main lines of prison discipline--the
daily lives of the convicts--practically unchanged. The convict was
merely a human machine to be worked a certain number of hours with no
incentive to good work beyond the fear of punishment. No thought was
given to fitting him for future citizenship. Every prison had its
punishment cells, some of them underground, most of them dark, where men
were confined for days on bread and water, usually shackled standing to
the iron door of the cell during working hours, and at night sleeping on
the stone floor unless a board was provided--the food a scant allowance
of bread and water. Punishment of this kind was inflicted for even
slight infractions of rules, while floggings, "water cures," and other
devilish methods were sometimes resorted to. In prisons of the better
grade the most rigidly repressive measures were enforced and all
natural human impulses were repressed. This was considered "excellent
discipline."

Now, as to the results of those severe punishments and rigid repressive
methods: were the criminals reformed? Was society protected? What were
the fruits of our prisons and reformatories? I have before me reliable,
up-to-date statistics from a neighboring State as to the number of men
convicted of a second offence after serving one term in prison. The
general average shows that forty, out of every hundred men sent to
prison for the first time, on being released commit a second crime. This
percentage represents a fair average of the results of non-progressive
prison methods to-day. But while our prisons were practically at a
standstill and crime was on the increase the world was moving, new ideas
were in the very air, destined to be of no less importance in human
development than the mastery of electricity is proving in the material
world.

There is an old proverb that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Some fifteen years ago the vital truth contained in this old saying
suddenly crystallized into the playground movement. More chance for
recreation, more variety in mental occupation, more fresh air and
sunshine, were strenuously demanded. Not only have playgrounds broken
out even in the midst of our crowded cities, but open-air schools have
sprung into existence in Europe and are gaining in favor in this country
where climate permits. Athletics in all forms have steadily gained in
popularity. Freedom for the body, exercise for every muscle, is not only
advocated by physicians but has become the fashion, until golf is now
the great American pastime, and the benefit of physical recreation is no
longer questioned.

Even more far-reaching in eventual influence is the modern recognition
of the rights and claims of the individual. This awakening is so
widespread that it cannot be centralized in any personal leadership. It
is like the dawning of a great light upon the life of the twentieth
century in all civilized countries, and already it is affecting
existence in countless directions.

In the army the common soldier is no longer regarded as merely a
shooting-machine, he is drilled and trained and schooled into
development as a man as well as a soldier. In the treatment of the
insane, physical restraint is gradually being relegated to the past;
the patient is regarded first of all as a human being, not merely as a
case. More and more the individual needs are studied and individual
talents brought into activity. In schools for the mentally defective the
very foundation of the methods and aims is to promote the development of
the individual, to draw out to the utmost whatever rudiments of ability
the child may possess and to keep the light turned steadily on the
normal rather than the abnormal in his nature. Physicians,
psychologists, and educators alike are realizing the importance of
adapting methods to the needs of the individual.

Child-study--unfortunately, in many cases the study of text-books rather
than of the living child in the family, but child-study in some
form--prevails among the mothers of to-day. The gifted Madame
Montessori, from both the scientific and the humanitarian standpoint, is
emphasizing the importance of giving the child freedom for
self-expression. In the suffrage movement we have another evidence of
the same impulse toward recognition of individual rights. It comes to us
from every direction, even from the battle-field where the Red Cross
nurse sees neither friend nor foe, only a suffering man needing her
care.

Here we have two great forces: nature's imperative demand for more
freedom for the body, more of God's sunshine and fresh air; and the
still more imperative demand from the spirit in man for recognition and
release. The two forces unite in the one demand, _Pro sanitate totius
hominis_--for the health of the whole man.

Some thirty years ago Richard Dugdale, a large-hearted, large-brained
student of sociology, had the courage to state that the great blunder of
society in dealing with criminals began with shutting up so many of them
within our prisons, practically enslaving them to the state, depriving
them of all rewards for their labor and often throwing their families
upon public taxation for support; even in many cases making the
punishment fall more heavily upon innocent relatives than upon the
offenders themselves. He believed, however, that there would be a
residue of practically irreclaimable criminals whose permanent removal
from society was necessary, but that life for this class should be made
as nearly normal as possible. Richard Dugdale was a man of prophetic
insight, with a clear vision of the whole question of social
economics--social duties as well. Unfortunately, his death soon followed
the publication of his articles. But time is making his dreams come
true, and vindicating the soundness of his theories. Even during the
lifetime of this man spasmodic efforts were made in placing men on
probation after a first offence instead of sending them to prison.

With the introduction of the juvenile courts early in the present
century this idea assumed practical form; and Judge Lindsey, of Denver,
gave such impetus to the movement to save young offenders from the
demoralizing influence of jails and miscalled reformatories that this
example has been followed in all directions, and thousands of boys have
been rescued from criminal life. "Save the boys and girls" appealed
directly to the masses, and this ounce of prevention was indorsed with
little opposition.

But when the extension of the probation privilege to include adult
offenders--still further to reduce the prison population--was advocated
the public held back, fearing danger to society in allowing these older
lawbreakers to escape the legal penalties of their offences. However,
the current of progress was not to be stemmed, and adult probation has
been legalized in many States. The results have been satisfactory beyond
expectation, showing an average of less than five per cent of men
released on probation reverting to crime, against forty per cent of
reversions after a term in a non-progressive penitentiary.

This adult probation law confers upon the judge not mandatory but
discretionary power, and the character of the judge plays a part not
less important than the character of the offender; the application of
the law is primarily a relation of man to man; the unjust judge will be
unjust still, the timid judge will avoid taking risks; in the very human
side in which lies the strength of this course lie also its limitations.

Now the very foundation of the probation idea is the recognition of the
individual character of the offender and the circumstances leading to
the crime. But no sooner was the adult probation law in force than the
claim of the individual from another direction began to be recognized.
Curiously enough, in legal proceedings against criminals the injured
party had been entirely ignored--according to the old English precedent.
It was not the crime of man against man but the crime of man against the
state, the violation of a state law, that was punished. To the mind of
the criminal a crime against the state was but a vague and indefinite
abstraction, except in case of murder unlikely to cause remorse, or any
feeling of responsibility toward the person injured. If the injured
party were revengeful he had the satisfaction of knowing that the
criminal was punished; but the sending of the delinquent to prison
deprived him of all opportunity for reparation.

An interesting thing begins to happen when the judge is given power to
put a man on probation. At last the injury to the individual is taken
into consideration. Here is an actual instance in point.

"Five thousand dollars was embezzled from a Los Angeles theatre and
dissipated in high living by a man twenty-one years old. He confessed
and received this sentence from the judge:

"'You shall stay at home nights. You shall remain within the limits of
this county. You shall not play billiards or pool, frequent cafés or
drink intoxicating liquors, and you shall go immediately to work and
keep at it till you pay back every dollar that you stole. Violate these
terms and you go to prison.'"[14]

This practice of making restitution one of the conditions of probation
is spreading rapidly. Here we have a method hitherto unapproached of
securing all-round, common-sense justice, directly in line also with
sound social economics. Mr. Morrison Swift has well said of a term in
prison that "it breaks the current between the man and life, so that
when he emerges it is hard to form connections again. He has lost his
job, and too often health, nerve, and self-respect are impaired. These
obstacles to reformation are swept away when a man retains his
connection with the community by working in it like anybody else."

Another factor in the scheme of probation is that it brings the
delinquent directly in touch with a friendly, guiding, and helping hand,
placing him at once under good influences; for it is the duty of the
probation officer to secure for his charge environment calculated to
foster reformation: he becomes indeed his brother's keeper.

While modern ideas have thus been applied in the rescue of the
individual before he has become identified with criminal life, even more
marked has been the invasion of recent movements into the very
stronghold of the penitentiary itself.

The twentieth century marks the beginning of the crusade against
tuberculosis. Physicians, philanthropists, and legislators combined
against the fearful ravages of this enemy to the very life of the
people. Generous appropriations were given by the state for the cure of
the disease and every effort was made to trace the sources of the evil.
And then it transpired that, while the state with her left hand was
establishing out-of-door colonies for the treatment of tuberculosis,
with her right hand she was maintaining laboratories for the culture of
the fatal germs, and industriously scattering the seeds in localities
where they would be most fruitful. In other words, the very walls of our
prisons had become beds of infection. Doctor J. B. Ransome, of New York
State, finds that from forty to sixty per cent of the deaths in all
prisons are from tuberculosis; at times the mortality has run as high as
eighty per cent. He tells us also that in the United States to-day there
are twenty thousand tubercular prisoners, most of whom will return to
the congested districts and stuffy tenements where the disease is most
rapidly and virulently spread.[15]

He urges as of the utmost importance _that infected prisons be
destroyed_, and that convicts be given work in the open air when
possible; and that light, air, exercise, more nourishing food, and more
healthful conditions generally be substituted for the disease-breeding
conditions under which prisons have always existed. Thus, apart from all
humanitarian considerations, public health demands radical changes in
prisons and in the lives of the prisoners.

The automobile, the autocrat of the present day, has little of the
missionary spirit; but it has made its imperious demand for good roads
all over the country, and legislation now authorizing convict labor on
State roads is not only responding to this demand but is partly solving
the vexed problem of the employment of convicts.

How far the men responsible for the revolution in the management of
prisoners have studied these trends of the times I do not know. Most of
these men have doubtless builded better than they knew. All the winds of
progress, moving from every direction, seem to be concentrating in one
blast destined to crumble the walls of our prisons as the walls of
Jericho are said to have crumbled under the blast of the trumpets of the
hosts of the Lord. It may even be that the hosts of the Lord are back
of these winds of progress.

The introduction of this reform movement required men of exceptional
force and ability, and in answer to this demand just such men are coming
to the front. The United States has already developed a remarkable line
of captains of industry, but not less remarkable men are taking this
humanitarian field to-day.

The pioneer in revolutionizing prison-management was neither penologist
nor philanthropist. The first step was taken for purely practical ends.
It happened, when the twentieth century had just begun, that Mr. John
Cleghorne, a newly appointed warden of a Colorado penitentiary, found
that the State had provided neither cells nor workshops within the
prison for the number of convicts sentenced to hard labor. To meet this
exigency this warden decided to put a number of men to work outside the
walls, organizing a camp and putting the men, then in striped clothing,
on their honor not to escape. The experiment was altogether successful;
but so quietly carried on that it received little attention outside the
borders of its own State until the appointment of the next warden,
Thomas J. Tynan, who recognized the beginning of true reform in the
treatment of convicts and openly advocated the changes from humanitarian
motives.

While to Colorado is given the precedence in this movement, a notable
feature is the nearly simultaneous expression of feeling and ideas
practically the same in widely separated localities, from the Pacific
coast to the Atlantic, and even on the shores of Panama. Naturally the
movement started in the West, in newer States less trammelled by
precedent than the older States, where traditions of prison discipline
had been handed down for two centuries; but the time was ripe for the
change and it has been brought about through men, some of them trained
penologists, others practical men of affairs, but all united in faith in
human nature and in the one aim of fitting the men under their
jurisdiction for self-supporting, law-abiding citizenship.

Sceptics as to the effect on the prisoner of this liberalizing tendency
are silenced by the amazing response on the part of the convicts in
every prison where the honor system has been applied. This response is
unquestionable: a spirit of mutual confidence is displacing one of
suspicion and discouragement, and in supplanting the old antagonism to
prison authorities by a hearty sense of co-operation with them an
inestimable point in prison discipline is gained. We hear much these
days of the power of suggestion, and the suggestion, conscious and
unconscious, permeating the very atmosphere of these progressive prisons
is hopeful and helpful.

Never before in the tragic history of prisons has a spiritual force been
applied to the control of prisoners; and yet with one consent the first
step taken by these progressive wardens is to place convicts on their
honor: not chains and shackles, not bolts and bars, no form of physical
restraint; but a force indefinable, impalpable, invisible, applied to
the spirit of these men. In bringing this force to bear on their charges
these wardens have indeed "hitched their wagon to a star."

FOOTNOTES:

[14] Morrison I. Swift, _Atlantic Monthly_, August, 1911.

[15] _Atlantic Monthly_, August, 1911.




CHAPTER XIV


And the time came, in 1913, when the wave of revolution in prison
methods struck the penitentiary which formed the background of the lives
pictured within these pages. Back of all my friendships with these men
had loomed the prison under the old methods, casting its dark shadow
across their lives. Many of them died within the walls; others came out
only to die in charity hospitals, or to take up the battle of life with
enfeebled health and enfeebled powers of resistance and endurance.
Almost as one man they had protected me from the realization of what
they endured in the punishment cells--from what the physical conditions
of prison life really were; but I knew far more than they thought I
did--as much as I could endure to know--and in our interviews we
understood that it was useless to discuss evils which I was powerless to
help; and then, too, I always tried to make those interviews oases in
the desert of their lives. But across my own heart also the shadow of
the prison lay all those years. Into the bright melody of a June
morning the sudden thought of the prison would crash with cruel discord;
at times everything most bright and beautiful would but the more sharply
accent the tragedy of prison life. Deep below the surface of my thought
there was always the consciousness of the prison; but, on the other
hand, this abiding consciousness made the ordinary trials and annoyances
inseparable from human life seem of little moment, passing clouds across
the sunlight of a more fortunate existence; and I was thankful that from
my own happy hours I could glean some ray of brightness to pour into
lives utterly desolate. So absolutely did I enter into the prison life
that even to-day it forms one of the most vivid chapters of my personal
experience. Accordingly, my point of view of the change in the prison
situation cannot be altogether that of the outsider. _I know_ what this
change means to the men within the walls; for in feeling, I too have
been a prisoner.

A little paper lies before me, the first number of a new monthly
publication from behind the bars of the prison I know so well. In its
pages is mirrored a new dispensation--the new dispensation sweeping with
irresistible force from State to State. Too deep for words was the
thankfulness that filled my heart as I tried to realize that at last the
day had come when _prisoners were recognized as men_, and that this
blessed change had come to my own State. I knew it was on the way; I
knew that things were working in the right direction; I had even talked
with the new warden about some of these very changes; but here it was in
black and white, over the signatures of the warden, his deputy, two
chaplains, the prison doctor, and several representatives of the
prisoners themselves: all bearing witness to the new order of things; to
the facts already accomplished and to plans for the betterment of
existing conditions. Of the fifteen hundred convicts fifty have been for
several months employed on State roads under the supervision of two
unarmed guards. The fifty men were honor men and none have broken faith.
Two hundred more honor men will be sent out in the same way during the
summer of 1914. Another three hundred will work on the prison farm of
one thousand acres, erecting farm buildings and raising garden and farm
products for the prison and the stock, and gaining health for themselves
in a life practically free during working hours.

To the men inside the prison walls the routine of daily life is wholly
altered. No longer do they eat in silence with downcast eyes; the table
is a meeting-place of human beings where talk flows naturally. No longer
is life one dull round from prison cell to shop, where talk and
movements of relaxation are forbidden; and back in silent march to
prison cell, with never a breath of fresh air except on the march to and
from the shops. This monotony is now broken by a recreation hour in the
open air every day, given in turn to companies of the men taken from the
workshops in which exchange of remarks is now allowed. In pleasant
weather this recreation is taken in games or other diversions involving
exercise. "Everything goes but fighting" is the liberal permission, and
recreation in cold weather takes the form of marching.

From October to May, for five hours in the day, six days in the week,
school is in session in four separate rooms, the highest classes
covering the eighth grade of our public schools. Any prisoner may absent
himself from work one hour a day if desiring to attend the school, and
can pursue his studies in his cell evenings. Competent teachers are
found among the prisoners, and no guard is present during instruction
hours. Arrangements are now on foot for educational correspondence
connected with the State university.

The time given to recreation and to education has not lessened the
output of the shops; on the contrary, the new spirit pervading the
prison has so energized the men, so awakened their ambition, that more
and better work is done in the shops than before. The grade of
"industrial efficiency" recently introduced serves as a further
incentive to skill and industry and will secure special recommendation
for efficiency when the men are free to take their own places in the
world.

Nor is this all; for each prisoner as far as is practicable is assigned
work for which he is individually fitted. Men educated as physicians are
transferred from the shops to the staff of hospital assistants; honor
men qualified for positions where paid attendants have hitherto been
employed are transferred to these positions, thus reducing expenses.
Honor men having mechanical faculty are permitted during the evenings in
their cells to make articles, the sale of which gives them a little
money independently earned. Also in some of the prison shops the workers
are allowed a share in the profits. It is the warden's aim to utilize as
far as possible individual talent among his wards, to give every man
every possible chance to earn an honest living on his release; to make
the prison, as he puts it, "a school of citizenship." To every cell is
furnished a copy of the Constitution of the United States and of the
State in which the prison is located, with the laws affecting criminals.
Further instructions relating to American citizenship are given, and are
especially valuable to foreigners.

But helpful as are all these changes in method, the real heart of the
change, the vital transforming quality is in the personal relation of
the warden to his wards. In conferences held in the prison chapel the
warden makes known his views and aims, speaking freely of prison
matters, endeavoring to inspire the men with high ideals of conduct and
to secure their intelligent and hearty co-operation for their present
and their future. Here it is also that the men are free to make known
their prison troubles, sure of the warden's sympathetic consideration of
means of adjustment. Heart and soul the warden is devoted to his work,
never losing sight of his ultimate aim of restoring to society
law-abiding citizens, but also feeling the daily need of these prisoners
for encouragement and for warm human sympathy.

Mr. Fielding-Hall, after many years of practical experience with
criminals, reached the conclusion that humanity and compassion are
essential requisites in all attempts "to cure the disease of crime," and
the curative power of sympathy is old as the hills; it began with the
mother who first kissed the place to make it well; and from that day to
this the limit to the power of sympathy has never been compassed, when
sympathy is not allowed to evaporate as an emotion, but, hardened into a
motive, becomes a lever to raise the fallen.

It is largely owing to the sympathy of the present warden that light and
air have come into the moral and mental atmosphere of this prison. In
the natures of the men qualities hitherto dormant and undiscovered have
come to the surface and are in the ascendant, aroused by the warden's
appeal to their manhood; and the warden's enthusiasm is the spark that
has touched the spirit of the subordinate officials and has fused into
unison the whole administration. And the warden is fortunate in the
combination of men working with him. His deputy, the disciplinarian of
the place, served for twenty-five years on the police force of Chicago,
a position directly antagonized to crime and yet affording exceptional
opportunity for the study of criminals. True to his colors as a
protector of society, he now feels that society is best protected
through the reclamation of those who have broken its laws; he believes
that the true disciplinarian is not the one who punishes most severely
but the one who trains his charges to join hands with him in the
maintenance of law and order within their little community; and he has
already reduced the punishment record for violation of rules to scarcely
more than one-tenth of former averages; and the shackling of men in the
punishment cells is abolished.

The prison physician is an up-to-date man, fully in accord with the
views of the warden, and with admirable hospital equipment where
excellent surgical work is done when required. The two chaplains have a
missionary field of the highest opportunities, where a sympathetic
friendship for the prisoner during six days in the week becomes the
highway to their hearts on the seventh.

The faces of the prisoners bear witness to the life-giving influences at
work among them; the downcast apathy has given place to an expression
of cheerful interest, and the prison pallor to a healthful color. And
the old prison buildings--the living tomb of hundreds of men--are
themselves now doomed. On the adjacent farm the prisoners will
eventually build new quarters, either one modern prison into which God's
sunlight and the free air of heaven will have access, or, better still,
a prison village, a community in detached buildings, after the plan
which has proven so satisfactory in other State institutions.

And what of the women sent to prison in this State? For fifteen years
and more they have been housed in a separate institution. This has never
been a place of degradation. Every inmate has a light, well-ventilated,
outside room, supplied with simple furnishings and toilet conveniences;
white spreads cover the beds, and the home touch is evident in the
photographs and fancy-work so dear to the heart of woman. The prisoners
in their dress of blue-and-white check are neat and trim in appearance
as maids from Holland. They number but sixty-five, and conversation is
allowed.

The women have a recreation playground for open-air exercise and an
assembly-room for evening entertainments. They are given industrial
training and elementary education; and though the discipline is firm the
life is kept normal as possible; and wilful violation of rules seldom
occurs. The present superintendent is a woman of exceptional
qualifications for the position--a woman of quick, responsive
sympathies, and wide experience, with fine executive ability. A
_thorough_ course in domestic science is fitting the women for domestic
service or future home-making, and some of them are skilled in fine
needle-work and embroidery.

The lines in the old picture of prison life so deeply etched into my
consciousness are already fading; for while I know that in too many
States the awakening has not come, and the fate of the prisoner is still
a blot on our civilization, _the light has broken and the way is clear_.
Not only in my own State but to every State in the Union the death-knell
of the old penitentiary, with its noisome cells and dark dungeons, has
struck. The bloodless revolution of the reform movement is irresistible
simply because it is in line with human progress.

Not until the present generation of criminals has passed away can
adequate results of the widespreading change in prison management be
expected; for a large percentage of our convicts to-day are the product
of crime-breeding jails, reformatories, and prisons. The "incorrigibles"
are all men who have been subjected to demoralizing and brutalizing
influences. In the blood-curdling outbreaks of gunmen and train-holdups
society is but reaping the harvest of evils it has allowed. Not until
police stations, jails, workhouses, reformatories, and prisons _are all
radically changed_ can any fair estimate be made of the value of the
recent humane methods.




CHAPTER XV


The basic principle of reform in those who prey upon society is the
changing of energies destructive into energies constructive. It is the
opening of fresh channels for human forces. Change of environment, the
breaking of every association connected with criminal pursuits, life in
the open in contrast with the tainted atmosphere of crowded tenements
and dance halls--all this has a healthful, liberating influence on the
mind; abnormal obsessions are relaxed, different brain-cells become
active, and the moral fibre of the man as well as his physical being
absorbs vital elements. That the laborer is entitled to a share in the
fruits of his labor is true the world over, and industry and efficiency
are stimulated by recognition of the relation of achievement to reward.

Strict repressive discipline applied to organized enslavement of labor
is in direct violation of all these principles. The penal colony seems a
rational method of dealing with those whose permanent removal from our
midst is deemed necessary. Time and again have penal colonies given
satisfactory solution to the criminal problem. Virginia and Maryland
absorbed the human exports from English courts, and their descendants
joined in the building of a great nation; while the penal colony in
Australia resulted in a civilization of the first rank. While the
deportation of our criminals to-day may be neither practicable nor
desirable, the establishment of industrial penal communities in every
State, on a profit-sharing basis, is both practicable and desirable, and
would unquestionably result in the permanent reform of many who are now
a menace to public safety.

Notwithstanding that progressive wardens are accomplishing all-important
changes in their domains, permanent reform work for convicts demands a
number of concessions in legislation. Until the contract system is
wholly and finally abolished in favor of the state-use system the power
of even the best warden will be limited. With the state-use system and
the prison farm the prisoners have a variety in opportunity of
industrial training almost as great as that offered on the outside.

That the earnings of prisoners, beyond the cost of their maintenance,
should either be credited to the man himself or sent to the family
dependent upon him is but fair to the prisoner, and would relieve the
county from which he is sent from taxation toward the support of the
man's family. This is so obvious that it is now widely advocated for
both economic and humanitarian reasons, and in several States has
already been adopted.

Another concession is of still greater importance, since its neglect has
been in direct violation not only of every principle of justice but of
common every-day honesty. This concession is the recognition of the duty
of the state to make what reparation is possible to the man who has
suffered imprisonment for a crime of which he was innocent.

Years ago, during one of my visits to our penitentiary, a lawyer of wide
experience made the remark: "From what I know of court proceedings I
suppose twenty per cent of these convicts are innocent of the charge for
which they are here." I did not credit that statement, and afterward
repeated it to another lawyer, who said: "I should estimate the
percentage even higher." I did not believe that estimate either; nor do
I now believe it. But having worked up the cases and secured the pardons
of two innocent men, and having personally known two other men
imprisoned for crimes in which they took no part, I _know_ that innocent
men are sent to prison. Lawyers are prone to dispose of such instances
with the offhand remark, "Well, they might not have been guilty of that
particular act, but no doubt they had committed crimes for which they
escaped punishment." I have positive knowledge of only those four cases,
but in none of them was the convicted man from the criminal class.
Another remark which I have met is this: "Doubtless there are innocent
men in prison, but there are more guilty ones who escape," which reminds
one of Charles Lamb's admission: "Yes, I am often late to business in
the morning, but then I always go home early in the afternoon."
Plausible as the excuse sounds, it but aggravates the admission.

It happened some years ago in my own State that a working man was
convicted of killing another. Henry Briggs asserted his innocence, but a
network of plausible evidence was drawn about him and he was sent to
prison for life. His widowed mother had faith in his innocence and paid
two thousand dollars to lawyers, who promised to secure her son's pardon
but accomplished nothing in that direction. Briggs had been in prison
some ten years when he told his story to me and I believed that he told
the truth. His home town was across the State from me, but I wrote the
ex-sheriff, who was supposed to know all about the case, that the
prisoner's mother would give another thousand dollars to him if he could
secure evidence of Henry's innocence and obtain his pardon. A long and
interesting correspondence followed, and at the end of two years
evidence of the man's innocence was secured and Henry Briggs was a free
man. In his last letter the sheriff wrote me: "To think that all these
twelve years that convicted man had been telling the absolute truth _and
it never occurred to any one to believe him_ until you heard his story."
But that ex-sheriff, who had collected his sheriff's fees and mileage
for taking an innocent man to prison--he was really indebted to the
prisoner for a neat little sum paid by the county--yet that sheriff had
no scruples in taking the thousand dollars from Mrs. Briggs for righting
a wrong which, he frankly admitted to me, he had taken part in
perpetrating. Now, in common honesty, in dollars and cents, the county
from which Henry was sent owed the Briggs mother and son at least ten
thousand dollars; instead of which the mother was left an impoverished
widow, while the son, with youth and health gone, had to begin life over
again.

When men are maimed for life in a railroad accident the owners of the
road are obliged to pay a good round sum in compensation. The employer
is liable for damages when an employee is injured by defective
machinery; but to the victims of our penal machinery no compensation is
made by the state, at whose hands the outrage was committed. It is true
that the injured party is at liberty to bring suit against the
individual who charged him with the crime, but as the burned child
dreads the fire so the innocent man convicted of a crime dreads the
courts.

But we are waking up to a sense of this most cruel robbery; the robbery
of a man's liberty, his earnings, his reputation, and too often his
health; and we are coming to see that compensation from the state, on
receiving convincing evidence of the man's innocence, is only the man's
just due--is even far less than fair play.

To Wisconsin belongs the honor of taking the lead in this most
important reform, since in 1913 Wisconsin passed a law insuring
compensation in money from the State in every case where proof could be
furnished that one was not guilty of the crime for which he had suffered
imprisonment. A more just and righteous law was never passed. Money
alone can never compensate for unjust imprisonment, but the only
atonement possible is financial compensation and public vindication.

The measures so far considered are all remedial; but while we have
recently made rapid progress in measures applied after men have been
sent to prison we have thought little of preventive measures. And just
here we face again the spirit of the times.

All along the latter half of the nineteenth century men of
science--chemists, biologists, physicians--were studying preventive
measures to stem the tide of evil in the form of disease. Previously
medical science had been directed chiefly to battling with diseased
conditions already developed; but under the leadership of Pasteur and
Lord Lister the medical world was aroused to the fact that it was
possible to avert the terrible ravages of many of the diseases which
fifty years earlier had been accepted as visitations from Providence.
Henceforth "preventive measures" became watchwords among men devoting
themselves to the physical welfare of the race; and "preventive
measures" have also a most important relation to the moral welfare of
the community, and the way is opening for their application.

For instance, the imprisonment of innocent men would be largely
prevented by the abolition of all fees in connection with arrests and
convictions. The system of rewards for arrests and convictions is
absolutely demoralizing to justice; for as long as the whole battalion
of men employed to protect the public have a direct financial interest
in the increase of crime it is unreasonable to expect decrease in the
number of men confined in our jails and prisons. An official inspector
of jails and police stations in my own State reports that she has
frequently had police officers admit to her that it was a great
temptation to arrest some poor devil, since the city paid fees for such
arrests; and she further states that in Chicago the entire basis of the
city penal administration is fees, and she adds: "What better inducement
could be offered to officials to penalize some unoffending stranger
looking for work?" All the evils arising from this abominable and
indefensible arrangement would be in a measure decreased by the simple
process of abolishing fees and increasing salaries. This has already
been done in some localities; and doubtless the coming generation will
wonder how the feeing system could ever have been adopted or tolerated.

The most impregnable stronghold of inhumanity in dealing with persons
suspected of connection with crime is our police stations; especially is
this so in our larger cities. The police station and the feeing system
are the parent of one most barbarous custom; an evil most elusive, its
roots, like the roots of the vicious bindweed, so far underground, with
such complicated entanglement of relationships, as to be almost
ineradicable, involving in some instances State attorneys of good
standing, detectives, policemen, sheriffs--in fact, more or less
involving the whole force of agents supposed to be protectors of the
public. This abuse is called _the third degree_, or _the sweat-box_.

A man is arrested, accused of a crime or of knowledge of a crime. Before
he is given any trial in any court unscrupulous means are resorted to
in order to extort an admission of crime or complicity in crime--or even
of knowledge connected with a crime.

A physician who knew all the circumstances recently called my attention
to the case of a woman supposed to have some knowledge that might
implicate her husband in a burglary. The woman was an invalid. After
being kept for forty-eight hours without food or water, forced to walk
when she seemed likely to fall asleep from exhaustion, she was told that
her husband had deserted her, taken her child, and gone off with another
woman. She was by this time in a frantic condition, and when told that
her torture would cease with her admission of her husband's guilt, too
distracted to question his desertion of her, she gave false evidence
against her husband and was set free.

The husband was in no way implicated in the crime, but the consequences
of the affair were disastrous to his business. He had never thought of
deserting his wife, but it was part of the scheme of the _third degree_
to keep the husband and the lawyer whom he had engaged from seeing the
woman until the end sought was accomplished.

A young lawyer told me of a most revolting _third degree_ scene
witnessed by him, and he told me the story as an instance of the
cleverness which devised a terrible nervous shock in order to throw a
supposedly guilty woman off her guard; the shock was enough to have
driven the woman raving insane.

Whenever I have spoken of this subject to those familiar with
_sweat-box_ methods, the evil has been frankly admitted and
unhesitatingly condemned, but I hear always the same thing: "Yes, we
know that it is a terrible abuse, but we have not been able to prevent
it." It is simply a public crime that such a system should be tolerated
for one day. Mr. W. D. Howells has well said: "The law and order which
defy justice and humanity are merely organized anarchy."

I have not hesitated to brand my own State with this _third-degree_
evil, but I understand it is practised also in other States on the
pretext that the end justifies the means--but what if the end is the
life imprisonment of an innocent man? I have in mind a young man who was
subjected to four days of _sweat-box_ torture. At the end of that time,
when even death by hanging offered at least a respite from his
tormentors, he signed a statement, drawn up by those tormentors, to the
effect that he was guilty of murder. The boy was only eighteen, but was
sent to prison for life, though it now seems likely that he had nothing
to do with the crime. However, it is difficult to secure pardon for a
man sent to prison on his own confession; and there is just where the
injustice is blackest: it cuts from under a man's feet all substance in
a subsequent declaration of innocence, _for it stands on the records of
the case that he confessed his guilt_.

There are of course many cases where the _third degree_ is not resorted
to; indeed, its use seems to be mainly confined to the cities where
police stations are a ring within a ring. In smaller towns after the
arrest is made the case usually comes to trial with no previous
unauthorized attempt to induce the prisoner to convict himself, and, if
the accused is a man of means who can employ an able lawyer, the trial
becomes a game between the opposing lawyers, and both sides have at
least a fair chance. Not so when the court appoints a lawyer for the
poor man. The prosecution then plays the game with loaded dice; for it
is the custom for the court to appoint the least experienced fledgling
in the profession. Los Angeles, Cal., has recently introduced an
admirable measure to secure a nearer approach to justice in the courts
for the poor man, by the appointment of a regular district attorney for
the defence of accused persons who are unable to pay for a competent
lawyer. This appointment of a public defender has been made solely with
the aim of securing justice for the poor and for the ignorant foreigner;
it is a most encouraging step in the right direction, and seems a
hopeful means of exterminating the _sweat-box_ system.

We cannot hope to accomplish much with preventive measures until we
frankly face the causes of the evils we would reduce. That the saloon is
a prolific source of crime the records of all the courts unquestionably
prove; it is also one of the causes of the poverty which in its turn
becomes a cause of crime. The saloon is wholly in the hands of the
public, to be modified, controlled, or abolished according to the
dictates of the majority. This is not so easy as it sounds, but when we
realize that while the saloon-keeper reaps all the profits of his
business it is the taxpayer who is obliged to pay the expense of the
crimes resulting from that business, the question becomes one of public
economy as well as of public morals. The force which makes for social
evolution is bound to win in the long run, and the gradual elimination
of the saloon as it stands to-day is inevitable; and certain it is that
with the control of the saloon evil there will be a marked reduction in
the number of crimes committed.

The criminal ranks receive annual reinforcement from a number of sources
now tolerated by a long-suffering public. We still have our army of
tramps, caused in part by defective management of county jails where men
are supported in enforced idleness at the expense of the working
community; the result also of unstable industrial conditions and far
greater competition, since women, by cutting wages, have so largely
taken possession of industrial fields. Constitutional restlessness and
aversion to steady work also cause men and boys to try the easy if
precarious tramp life; and in hard-luck times the slip into crime comes
almost as a matter of course.

The trail of the banishment of the tramp evil has already been blazed
through Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland by the development of the farm
colony to which every tramp is rigidly sent. There he is subjected to an
industrial training involving recognition of individual ability, and
development along the lines to which he is best adapted. These farm
colonies are schools of industry where every man is obliged to work for
his living while there, and is fitted to earn a living when he leaves.
The results of these measures have been altogether satisfactory, and we
have but to adapt their methods to conditions in this country to
accomplish similar results. The elimination of the tramp is a necessary
safeguard to the community; and to the tramp himself it is rescue from
cumulative degradation.

Mr. Fielding-Hall, an Englishman, at one time magistrate, later warden
of the largest prison in the world, and the most radical of
humanitarians, after years of exhaustive study of the causes of crime,
declares that society alone is responsible. He adds: "It is no use
saying that criminals are born, not made; they are made and they are
made by society." And it is true that in every community where human
beings are herded in foul tenements, herded in crowded, unsanitary
factories, or live their days underground in mines, we shall continue to
breed a class mentally, morally, and physically defective, some of whom
will inevitably be subject to criminal outbreaks. Poverty causes ill
health, and malnutrition saps the power of self-control.

Medical science is even now telling us that there is probably no form of
criminal tendency unrelated to physiological defects: brain-cells
poisoned by disease; brain-cells defective either through heredity--as
in the offspring of the feeble-minded--or enfeebled through malnutrition
in childhood, the offspring of want; brains slightly out of balance;
and, more rarely, the criminal impulse developed as the result of direct
injury to the brain caused by a blow. Crimes are also committed under
temporary abnormal conditions such as "dual personality" or double
consciousness. In this diagnosis of crime we find ourselves next door to
a hospital; and this class of criminals does closely parallel what
alienists call "borderland cases," while the unscientific penologist has
carelessly classified them as "degenerates." Physicians tell us that
when Lombroso was studying "types," if he had invaded the charity
hospitals of large cities he would have found the same stunted,
undernourished, physically defective specimens of humanity that he
stigmatized as the "criminal type."

Of two prisoners whom I knew well one was subject to slight attacks of
catalepsy, the other to epilepsy; each of these men had committed a
murder, and each said to me the same thing: "I had no reason to kill
that person and _I don't know why I did it_." Both these men were
religious and extremely conscientious; but when the "spells" came on
them they were irresponsible as a leaf blown by the wind; and while
passionately regretting their deeds of horror they seemed always to
regard the act as _something outside themselves_.

None of us yet understand the interaction between the mental and
physical in the nature of man, but the fact of this interdependence is
clear; and while progressive prison wardens are sifting the human
material thrown into their hands, giving comparative freedom to "honor
men," and industrial training and elementary education to those within
the walls, they do not ignore the fact that there is a residue--they are
in all our prisons--a residue of men who cannot stand alone morally;
handicapped by causes for which they may not be responsible they cannot
hope to be "honor men" for they are moral invalids--often mental
invalids as well. That they should be kept under restraint goes without
saying. They need the control of a firm yet flexible hand, and they
should be under direct medical supervision; for back of their crimes may
be causes other than bad blood.[16]

Improved factory laws, better housing of the poor, the enforcement of
regulations for public hygiene, the application of some of the saner
theories of eugenics, the work of district nurses, all these are on the
way to reduce the number of diseased or abnormal individuals who fall so
readily into crime. Already we have several recorded instances when a
blow on the head had caused uncontrollable criminal impulses, where
skilful brain surgery removed the pressure, and with the restoration of
the normal brain the nature of the individual recovered its moral
balance. Every large city should have its psychopathic detention
hospital in connection with its courts, to be resorted to in all cases
where there is doubt of the responsibility of any person accused of
crime, and every large penitentiary should have its psychopathic
department for men sent to prison from smaller towns.

But when all is said and done, when the main sources of crime are
recognized and controlled, when sound sociology unites with Christianity
as the basis of management in every prison, when the "criminal type" of
Lombroso has been finally consigned to the limbo of exploded theories,
crime will still be with us, simply because human nature is human
nature; and whatever else human nature may be it _is_ a violent
explosive, whether we agree with Saint Paul as to "the old Adam" or
believe with the evolutionist that we are slowly emerging from the brute
and that the beast of prey still sleeps within us--not sleeping but
rampant in men and women allied in white-slave traffic and in those
responsible for the wholesale slaughter of mankind and the destruction
of property caused by war. Nothing short of the complete regeneration of
human nature can banish crime; and after we who call ourselves "society"
have done our best human nature will continue to break out in lawless
acts. As long as we have poverty in our midst desperate want will revolt
in desperate deeds, and poverty we shall have until the race has
reached a higher average of thrift and efficiency, and industrial
conditions are developed on a basis of fairness to all; and where there
is a weak link in the moral nature of a man undue pressure of
temptation, brought to bear on that link, will cause it to break, even
while in his heart the man may be hungering and thirsting for
righteousness. When the science of eugenics has given its helping hand
it will still be baffled by the appearance of the proverbial black sheep
in folds where heredity and environment logically should have produced
snowy fleece; and who among us dare assert that no infusion of bad blood
discolors his own tangled ancestry?

All the evils of poverty, vice, and crime are but expressions of
imperfection of the human nature common to us all. The warp of the
fabric is the same, various as are the colors and tones, and the
strength of the threads of which the individual lives are woven. Whether
or not we realize it, all our efforts toward social reform indicate a
growing consciousness of the oneness of humanity.

With all our imperfections, is not human nature sound at heart? Do we
not love that which seems to us good and hate the apparent evil? We do
not realize the insidious working of evil in ourselves; but when it is
revealed to us objectively, when it is thrown into relief by an outbreak
of evil deeds in others, our healthy instinctive impulse is to crush it.
Surely back of the religious and the legal persecutions has been the
desire to exterminate apparent evil; that desire is still with us but we
are learning better methods of handling it than to unleash the
bloodhounds of cruelty. We are beginning to understand that evil can be
conquered only by good.

As the words of the Founder of Christianity first led me into my prison
experience, after all these years of study of the subject I find myself
coming out at the same door wherein I went, and believing that every
theory of social reform, including all the 'ologies, resolves itself in
the last analysis to a wise conformity to the Golden Rule. On the
fly-leaf of a little note-book which I carried when visiting the
penitentiary were pencilled these words: "The Christian religion is the
ministry of love and common sense," and I have lived to see the teaching
of Christianity forming the basis of prison reform, and science clasping
the hand of religion in this relation of man to man. Henceforth I shall
believe that _nothing is too good to be true_, not even the coming of
universal peace.

FOOTNOTE:

[16] The relation of the criminal to the defective and the insane had
been clear to me for many years, and I could not understand the
disregard of the courts to any fact so obvious to the student of the
three classes. But most valuable work in this line is now being done by
Dr. J. M. Hickson, of the psychological laboratory operated in
connection with the Chicago municipal court, and the results of his
tests of the mentality of young criminals are now commanding attention.
Dr. Hickson unhesitatingly declares the need of reform in our laws and
our courts. The existence of this psychopathic laboratory is largely due
to Judge Olson, of Chicago, a man of most advanced views on penology,
and a practical humanitarian.





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