_Introduction_ _17_
_I._ _The Room with the Little Door_ _19_
_II._ _The Little Dead Mouse_ _26_
_III._ _A Forbidden Song_ _30_
_IV._ _The Murderers’ Home Journal_ _34_
_V._ _Fads_ _54_
_VI._ _The Mayor of the Death-Chamber_ _62_
_VII._ _A Psychological Experiment_ _67_
_VIII._ _Me and Mike_ _79_
_IX._ _Old John_ _82_
_X._ _Her Friend_ _94_
_XI._ _Life_ _97_
_XII._ _My Friend the Major_ _99_
_XIII._ _A Dissertation on the Third Degree_ _108_
_XIV._ _It’s Just Like Her_ _145_
_XV._ _Shorty_ _158_
_XVI._ _An Opinion on Expert Opinion_ _180_
_XVII._ _Prologue to a Little Comedy_ _195_
_XVIII._ _Impressions: The Last Night and The _197_
Next Morning_
_XIX._ _Impressions: Dawn in the Death-Chamber_ _208_
_XX._ _Impressions: While the Jury is Out_ _211_
_XXI._ _Impressions: The Friendship of _234_
Imagination_
_XXII._ _The Last Story_ _241_
_XXIII._ _The Story of the Ring, by Vance _243_
Thompson_
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_Introduction_
Most of the following is true, or founded on truth. A few are
waifs—products of my imagination; little stories that came into my mind
from time to time. Some of them are from letters written home while I
was confined in the Tombs Prison in New York City, and in the
Death-Chamber at Sing Sing.
In them I have not inflicted myself to any great extent upon the reader.
Herein is chiefly what I saw when trying to look upon the bright side.
There are also glimpses of the side which cannot be made bright, look at
it as one may.
But if anything in these pages leads some one to think of what must be
endured in either place, let me say, that no suffering was ever
willingly caused by the officials with whom I came in contact during my
“banishment,” and I take this opportunity to thank them all, without
exception, for their consideration, sympathy, and unvarying kindness to
me and mine.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_The Room with the Little Door_
_CHAPTER I_
_The Room with the Little Door_
There are few who can describe life in the Death-Chamber at Sing Sing.
The officials can, but will not. Visitors there are few; and most of us
who know it so well, come and go like our predecessors, saying nothing
afterwards about our experiences, for an excellent reason.
The corridor in the Death-Chamber is not large. Ten cells for the
condemned men face it, most of them on one side. Their inmates are not
supposed to see much of each other. When one of our number walks in the
corridor for exercise, curtains are drawn down in front of all the
cells, and we see upon them what our fellow-inmate often resembles—a
shadow. A shadow, and a voice which calls to us, that is his identity.
There are no windows in these cells; three sides are solid wall; their
fronts face the corridor, and are barred like cages. In them one can
easily imagine himself a bear in a menagerie, even to the sore head that
animal is afflicted with more or less occasionally. In front of the bars
and curtains are wire nettings to keep our visitors from coming too near
us. There are no hand-clasps, no kisses. The corridor and cells
constitute the Death-Chamber. It has two doors; an entrance—few of the
condemned ever use that door for any other purpose; and an exit—a final
one—leading into the Execution Room and to the “Chair.”
It is very light indeed in the Death-Chamber. Glass skylights by day,
and gas and electric light by night, throw their beams into every corner
of our cages of steel and stone. There is no privacy. The guards pace up
and down night and day, always watching. There is no sound while they do
this, as their shoes, like ours, are soled with felt. It is like living,
eating, sleeping, and bathing in a search-light. It is like being alive,
yet buried in a glass coffin. We enter the front door; exist for a year
or so, and then go out through the “little door,” as we call it, some
morning to a very welcome release. From the moment we arrive the
monotony begins, and continues always, broken now and then by such
excitement as a half hour’s exercise in the corridor, the weekly bath
and shave, and, best of all, a visit, which must be from some member of
our immediate family. We see our guest through those miserable bars and
netting which divide us. A keeper must hear everything we say. These
things are all that ever happen in that chamber of death, except
greeting new arrivals, and saying good-by now and then to a fellow we
have suffered with. No newspapers come to us, but books from the
excellent library, as many as one wants, are supplied. We receive our
mail after it has been opened and read, provided it is thought proper
for us to have it. If the letter contains the news we are all
awaiting—the final news—it is improper. That information is kept from
one as long as possible. All the tobacco is provided. It is called
“State.” It puts you in a “state” when you first attempt to smoke it. No
clock ticks in that room, and none is needed, because the value of time
and its relation to affairs is eliminated. Enough for us in there that
it is either day or night. What do we care about the hour? To us time is
just an endless waiting without expectancy. Imagine it for yourself.
Each second seems an hour long—and we are kept in there for years.
This is the life we lead, and who would care to speak or write of such
an existence? Is there anything to tell about this living death—this
sort of noiseless purgatory in which, as the months go by, past
experiences, the hopes and fears and happinesses which were, grow
fainter and fainter, till, like the future, they inspire us with nothing
but indifference, leaving only the present to be endured?
Yet there is one thing here which interests us intensely; which is
before us all the time, and which some day will close behind us. On one
side is life—such as it is—on the other instant death.
To pass through will be an experience surely. It is seldom opened; I
have observed it so just seven times; but when it is ajar—things happen.
Whenever we look out of our cages we see it; we close our eyes—we still
see it. When exercising in the corridor one passes and repasses it;
though we walk away, we know we are going towards it. Thinking by day
and dreaming by night, it is always with us, and irresistible is its
fascination. All else here is insignificant; and to us the Death-Chamber
is but “The Room with the Little Door.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_CHAPTER II_
_“The Little Dead Mouse”_
It would seem impossible for any one to escape from the Death-Chamber.
But there is a story of one man who refused to stay, and who, under the
very eyes of his keepers, without any privacy or apparatus, manufactured
the poison with which he ended his life; for that is almost the only way
you can end your stay in the Death-Chamber.
The man’s crime, his history, does not affect this story, but his
personality does. He was the quietest man of all; and men who are
waiting death are usually quiet men. A German by nationality, very
gentle, almost affectionate one would think, from the fact that he
caught and tamed a small mouse to which he seemed devoted. Now a mouse
is a rare thing within the precinct of which I speak, for stone and
steel do not offer it the crevices it affects. But the German—he was
called “Professor” because he wore glasses—had asked when he arrived if
any mice had been tamed. “You can teach them tricks,” he said. He used
to sleep all day, and at night very patiently lay and watched the bread
crumbs he scattered on the floor. He did this for months; and at last
the great event occurred. Can you guess what he used for a trap? His
stocking. He did teach the mouse tricks. He taught it to eat meat out of
his hand, which was not difficult, and to come when he called, which
was. It slept with him. This took patience. Remember, he had no string
with which to tie it, and had to keep it under his drinking cup at first
to prevent its running away.
Time went by. Winter changed to summer, and with that season came a
letter to the “Professor” and a death warrant to the warden. This was
for the “Professor” also; that is, it was to be read to him, and—was it
sympathy, or what? Death came to the little mouse at that time. I
suppose that every man would confess that it is disturbing to receive
the news that he must go through the “little door” in the Death-Chamber
into the beyond, and so it affected the “Professor,” philosopher though
he undoubtedly was. Perhaps it was not the news, but the loss of his
little friend; perhaps it was both; at any rate the “Professor” took to
his bed. The prison doctor came, winked at the keeper, and said,
“Fright; let him alone.” So they let the “Professor” alone, and the
“Professor” died; but when they went into the cell, they found the cause
of his illness had not been fright at all. It was erysipelas. Over his
breast were long scratches, deep as little teeth could make them (we
have no pins in the Death-Chamber), and flattened down on them and
tightly bound lay the putrid remains of “the little dead mouse.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_CHAPTER III_
_A Forbidden Song_
Sometimes in the evenings, the Death-Chamber seemed quite a different
place, and we all forgot our _ennui_ because some one started a song. I
have heard good singing there, and some of us understood music. So when
“Eddy,” with his really good tenor, would start up something we all
knew, books would close and pipes go out, and we all would join in and
sing ourselves out of the blues.
What did we sing? Everything, from “America,” with special gusto at the
“Sweet land of liberty” part, to the last popular song whose strains had
been wafted to our “desert island.” How we sang! When we could not
remember or did not know the words we sang on just the same. Hours have
actually speeded that way, when we happened to be in the mood, and we
were all the better for it. Did I say we sang everything? No, not
everything. There were strong men there, determined men, who had done
and would do desperate things. But there was one song ever in our minds
and in our hearts that never came to our lips, and which not one of us
would have dared even to hum. Not a voice could have trembled through
had it started. Every one thought of it; no one ever suggested it. You
know the one I mean.
One night when we were through an especially good concert (I had sung a
solo) some one shouted out “Police!” Now, of course, not one of us
wanted to have anything further to do with that department. It was only
our way of calling for a “light.” We have no matches in the
Death-Chamber; there is phosphorus in them, and you might—. So when
George, our keeper, had come to my cage with the burning paper spill,
and when my pipe was going cheerfully, I said: “George, music certainly
does affect the emotions, but under some circumstances, I imagine, it
could make one quite blue. Did you ever notice that?”
“I should say so,” was the reply. “I remember once starting a song here
that was never finished for that same reason.”
“What was it?” said I, turning away, for I knew the answer before it
came.
“It was ---- ---- ----.”
“Damn this tobacco! the smoke gets into my eyes.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_CHAPTER IV_
_The Murderers’ Home Journal_
No newspapers were allowed in the Death-Chamber, therefore the longing
for them among its inmates may be imagined. But the law that supply
always follows demand, was operative even within the walls of the “dead
house,” and properly so; for had we not all become intimately acquainted
with Law? Therefore we had a newspaper of our own.
Let me tell you of the happy days (happily past) when I was
editor-in-chief and proprietor of “The Murderers’ Home Journal,”
sometimes lovingly referred to as “The Dead House Squealer.” The public
will never turn over a file of its pages, but they may read here some
extracts from its columns. As to the paper itself, it was as artistic as
black and blue pencils could make it. We all contributed what and when
we pleased. It appeared when convenient, and as nothing was charged for
advertisements or subscriptions, no wonder it prospered. Every one in
our community read it and read no other. It contained real poetry,
jokes—what jokes!—essays on our neighbors’ behavior, and news—_local_
news, together with advertisements which simply compelled attention. The
letters therein to the editor-in-chief left nothing to the imagination.
And the leaders—ah, I wrote them! How proudly I referred to myself as
“we”! Sometimes I used a pencil almost as blue as myself, never a pen—a
vein can be opened with a pen.
Every proprietor admires and praises his own publication, and I shall
proceed to “Munsey” mine. I can say without egotism, since it is but
imperfectly expressed justice, that there has never been another
newspaper “approaching” it. “Old Sol” does not affect the Death-Chamber;
no sun shone on it, so of course we could not “see it in the ‘Sun’”; but
we were as up to date in our own affairs as the “Times” permitted, as
sensational in local matters as all the “yellows” combined; nothing in
the “World” got ahead of our “Journal” in this respect. Having no “News”
we invented it, just as do the newspapers for which you pay, but we
never had to take anything back. The “Tribune” from which it issued was
my cage, and I, the editor-in-chief, remained as deaf as a “Post” to all
abuse (I am used to it). As for a “Press,” we had none. It was printed
by my tired fingers. The illustrations were alluring, and though we
received neither “Telegram” nor “Mail and Express,” yet we never forgot
a text to “Herald” our first column. It was always the same one—“Damn
the Jury.” Its politics were “sound.” (All politics are that.) We
opposed the government with a capital O, and that institution responded
with the only practical solution for restraining the license of modern
journalism—it killed the editors. I can truthfully say that it cost me a
great deal of money to escape even as far as the “Tombs.” Many of my
unfortunate associates have also “passed away” to similar places, and I
wish some reporters I know of could be assigned to interview them.
I pass over all the local news which appeared in the “Murderers’ Home
Journal.” Such announcements as “John, the Greek, has come back for
nineteen years—foolish John!” “Bill Newfeldt caught a mouse in his sock
last night—poor thing!” Such as the above, and the chronicled fact that
Doctor Sam’s office hours in the morning were from twelve A.M. to twelve
P.M., and in the afternoon from twelve P.M. to twelve A.M. (in spite of
this he had no “patients”), or a brilliantly worded “ad” advising the
reader to take “Molineux’s Bromo-Seltzer”; all these were replete with
absorbing interest to us, but not to you.
It was when the “divine afflatus” came upon us, as had the influenza the
month previous—we all had it—that you might be interested. Many and
varied were the verses that deluged the editorial sanctum; jingles,
triolets, lyrics, epigrams, and of course the very first offered
was—there, you have guessed it—“Spring.” I give it just as it came to
me, leaving it for you to decide whether it be humorous or pitiful.