“This our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.”
If to be behind prison bars is to be “exempt from public haunt,” then
for the past six months I may claim such exemption, with all the rapture
to be found in listening to the tongues of trees, to the charming
lessons taught by the books of the running brooks and to the profound
sermons of the stones. There is not a tree on the Woodstock prison
campus, or near by, to whose tongued melodies or maledictions I have not
in fancy listened when liberty, despotism or justice was the theme.
The bard of Avon, the one Shakespeare of all the ages, was up to
high-water mark of divine inspiration when he said there were those who
could find tongues in trees, and never since trees were planted in the
garden of Eden has the tongue of a tree voiced a sentiment hostile to
liberty.
Thus, when in prison and exempt from judicial persecution, the tongues
of trees as well as the tongues of friends taught me that sweets could
be extracted from adversity.
Nor was I less fortunate when I permitted my fancy to see a book in a
running brook as it laughed and sang and danced its way to the sea, and
find that on every page was written a diviner song to liberty and love
and sympathy than was ever sung by human voice.
And as for the stones in Woodstock prison, they were forever preaching
sermons and their themes were all things good and evil among men.
In prison my life was a busy one, and the time for meditation and to
give the imagination free rein was when the daily task was over and
night’s sable curtains enveloped the world in darkness, relieved only by
the sentinel stars and the earth’s silver satellite “walking in lovely
beauty to her midnight throne.”
It was at such times that the “Reverend Stones” preached their sermons,
sometimes rising in grandeur to the Sermon on the Mount.
It might be a question in the minds of some if this occasion warrants
the indulgence of the fancy. It will be remembered that Aesop taught the
world by fables and Christ by parables, but my recollection is that the
old “stone preachers” were as epigrammatic as an unabridged dictionary.
I remember one old divine who, one night, selected for his text George
M. Pullman, and said: “George is a bad egg—handle him with care. Should
you crack his shell the odor would depopulate Chicago in an hour.” All
said “Amen” and the services closed. Another old sermonizer who said he
had been preaching since man was a molecule, declared he had of late
years studied corporations, and that they were warts on the nose of our
national industries,—that they were vultures whose beaks and claws were
tearing and mangling the vitals of labor and transforming workingmen’s
homes into caves. Another old stone said he knew more about strikes than
Carroll D. Wright, and that he was present when the slaves built the
pyramids; that God Himself had taught His lightning, thunderbolts,
winds, waves and earthquakes to strike, and that strikes would proceed,
with bullets or ballots, until workingmen, no longer deceived and
cajoled by their enemies, would unify, proclaim their sovereignty and
walk the earth free men.
O, yes, Shakespeare was right when he said there were sermons in stones.
I recall one rugged-visaged old stone preacher who claimed to have been
a pavement bowlder in a street of heaven before the gold standard was
adopted, and who discussed courts. He said they had been antagonizing
the decrees of heaven since the day when Lucifer was cast into the
bottomless pit. Referring to our Supreme Court he said it was a nest of
rodents forever gnawing at the stately pillars supporting the temple of
our liberties. I recall how his eyes, as he lifted their stony lids,
flashed indignation like orbs of fire, and how his stony lips quivered
as he uttered his maledictions of judicial treason to constitutional
liberty.
But occasionally some old bald-headed ashler, with a heart beating
responsive to every human joy or sorrow, would preach a sermon on love
or sympathy or some other noble trait that in spite of heredity still
lived even in the heart of stones. One old divine, having read some of
the plutocratic papers on the Pullman strike and their anathemas of
sympathy, when one workingman’s heart, throbbing responsive to the
divine law of love, prompted him to aid his brother in distress,
discussed sympathy. He said sympathy was one of the perennial flowers of
the Celestial City, and that angels had transplanted it in Eden for the
happiness of Adam and Eve, and that the winds had scattered the seed
throughout the earth. He said there was no humanity, no elevating,
refining, ennobling influences in operation where there was no sympathy.
Sympathy, he said, warmed in every ray of the sun, freshened in every
breeze that scattered over the earth the perfume of flowers and glowed
with the divine scintillation of the stars in all the expanse of the
heavens.
Referring to the men and women of other labor organizations who had
sympathized with the American Railway Union in its efforts to rescue
Pullman’s slaves from death by starvation, the old preacher placed a
crown of jeweled eulogies upon their heads and said that in all the
mutations of life, in adversity or prosperity, in the vigor of youth or
the infirmities of age, there would never come a time to them when like
the Peri grasping a penitent’s tear as a passport to heaven, they would
not cherish as a valued souvenir of all their weary years that one act
of sympathy of the victims of the Pullman piracy, and that when
presented at the pearly gate of paradise, it would swing wide open and
let them in amidst the joyous acclaims of angels.
From such reflections I turn to the practical lessons taught by this
“Liberation Day” demonstration. It means that American lovers of liberty
are setting in operation forces to rescue their constitutional liberties
from the grasp of monopoly and its mercenary hirelings. It means that
the people are aroused in view of impending perils and that agitation,
organization, and unification are to be the future battle cries of men
who will not part with their birthrights and, like Patrick Henry, will
have the courage to exclaim: “Give me liberty or give me death!”
I have borne with such composure as I could command the imprisonment
which deprived me of my liberty. Were I a criminal; were I guilty of
crimes meriting a prison cell; had I ever lifted my hand against the
life or the liberty of my fellowmen; had I ever sought to filch their
good name, I would not be here. I would have fled from the haunts of
civilization and taken up my residence in some cave where the voice of
my kindred is never heard. But I am standing here without a
self-accusation of crime or criminal intent festering in my conscience,
in the sunlight once more, among my fellowmen, contributing as best I
can to make this “Liberation Day” from Woodstock prison a memorial day,
realizing that, as Lowell sang:
“He’s true to God who’s true to man; wherever wrong is done,
To the humblest and the weakest, ’neath the all-beholding sun.
That wrong is also done to us, and they are slaves most base,
Whose love of right is for themselves and not for all their race.”