I.

For a long time blithe and fragile Miss Eunice, demure, correct in

deportment, and yet not wholly without enthusiasm, thought that day the

unluckiest in her life on which she first took into her hands that

unobtrusive yet dramatic book, "Miss Crofutt's Missionary Labors in the

English Prisons."

It came to her notice by mere accident, not by favor of proselyting

friends; and such was its singular material, that she at once devoured

it with avidity. As its title suggests, it was the history of the

ameliorating endeavors of a woman in criminal society, and it contained,

perforce, a large amount of tragic and pathetic incident. But this last

was so blended and involved with what Miss Eunice would have skipped as

commonplace, that she was led to digest the whole volume--statistics,

philosophy, comments, and all. She studied the analysis of the

atmosphere of cells, the properties and waste of wheaten flour, the cost

of clothing to the general government, the whys and wherefores of crime

and evil-doing; and it was not long before there was generated within

her bosom a fine and healthy ardor to emulate this practical and

courageous pattern.

She was profoundly moved by the tales of missionary labors proper. She

was filled with joy to read that Miss Crofutt and her lieutenants

sometimes cracked and broke away the formidable husks which enveloped

divine kernels in the hearts of some of the wretches, and she frequently

wept at the stories of victories gained over monsters whose defences of

silence and stolidity had suddenly fallen into ruin above the slow but

persistent sapping of constant kindness. Acute tinglings and chilling

thrills would pervade her entire body when she read that on Christmas

every wretch seemed to become for that day, at least, a gracious man;

that the sight of a few penny tapers, or the possession of a handful of

sweet stuff, or a spray of holly, or a hot-house bloom, would appear to

convert the worst of them into children. Her heart would swell to learn

how they acted during the one poor hour of yearly freedom in the

prison-yards; that they swelled their chests; that they ran; that they

took long strides; that the singers anxiously tried their voices, now

grown husky; that the athletes wrestled only to find their limbs stiff

and their arts forgotten; that the gentlest of them lifted their faces

to the broad sky and spent the sixty minutes in a dreadful gazing at the

clouds.

The pretty student gradually became possessed with a rage. She desired

to convert some one, to recover some estray, to reform some wretch.

She regretted that she lived in America, and not in England, where the

most perfect rascals were to be found; she was sorry that the gloomy,

sin-saturated prisons which were the scenes of Miss Crofutt's labors

must always be beyond her ken.

There was no crime in the family or the neighborhood against which she

might strive; no one whom she knew was even austere; she had never met a

brute; all her rascals were newspaper rascals. For aught she knew, this

tranquillity and good-will might go on forever, without affording her an

opportunity. She must be denied the smallest contact with these

frightful faces and figures, these bars and cages, these deformities of

the mind and heart, these curiosities of conscience, shyness, skill, and

daring; all these dramas of reclamation, all these scenes of fervent

gratitude, thankfulness, and intoxicating liberty--all or any of these

things must never come to be the lot of her eyes; and she gave herself

up to the most poignant regret.

But one day she was astonished to discover that all of these delights

lay within half an hour's journey of her home; and moreover, that there

was approaching an hour which was annually set apart for the indulgence

of the inmates of the prison in question. She did not stop to ask

herself, as she might well have done, how it was that she had so

completely ignored this particular institution, which was one of the

largest and best conducted in the country, especially when her desire to

visit one was so keen; but she straightway set about preparing for her

intended visit in a manner which she fancied Miss Crofutt would have

approved, had she been present.

She resolved, in the most radical sense of the word, to be alive. She

jotted on some ivory tablets, with a gold pencil, a number of hints to

assist her in her observations. For example: "Phrenological development;

size of cells; ounces of solid and liquid; tissue-producing food; were

mirrors allowed? if so, what was the effect? jimmy and skeleton-key,

character of; canary birds: query, would not their admission into every

cell animate in the human prisoners a similar buoyancy? to urge upon the

turnkeys the use of the Spanish garrote in place of the present

distressing gallows; to find the proportion of Orthodox and Unitarian

prisoners to those of other persuasions." But beside these and fifty

other similar memoranda, the enthusiast cast about her for something

practical to do.

She hit upon the capital idea of flowers. She at once ordered from a

gardener of taste two hundred bouquets, or rather nosegays, which she

intended for distribution among the prisoners she was about to visit,

and she called upon her father for the money.

Then she began to prepare her mind. She wished to define the plan from

which she was to make her contemplations. She settled that she would be

grave and gentle. She would be exquisitely careful not to hold herself

too much aloof, and yet not to step beyond the bounds of that sweet

reserve that she conceived must have been at once Miss Crofutt's sword

and buckler.

Her object was to awaken in the most abandoned criminals a realization

that the world, in its most benignant phase, was still open to them;

that society, having obtained a requital for their wickedness, was ready

to embrace them again on proof of their repentance.

She determined to select at the outset two or three of the most

remarkable monsters, and turn the full head of her persuasions

exclusively upon them, instead of sprinkling (as it were) the whole

community with her grace. She would arouse at first a very few, and then

a few more, and a few more, and so on _ad infinitum_.

It was on a hot July morning that she journeyed on foot over the bridge

which led to the prison, and there walked a man behind her carrying the

flowers.

Her eyes were cast down, this being the position most significant of her

spirit. Her pace was equal, firm, and rapid: she made herself oblivious

of the bustle of the streets, and she repented that her vanity had

permitted her to wear white and lavender these making a combination in

her dress which she had been told became her well. She had no right to

embellish herself. Was she going to the races or a match, or a

kettle-drum, that she must dandify herself with particular shades of

color? She stopped short, blushing. Would Miss Cro----. But there was no

help for it now. It was too late to turn back. She proceeded, feeling

that the odds were against her.

She approached her destination in such a way that the prison came into

view suddenly. She paused, with a feeling of terror. The enormous gray

building rose far above a lofty white wall of stone, and a sense of its

prodigious strength and awful gloom overwhelmed her. On the top of the

wall, holding by an iron railing, there stood a man with a rifle

trailing behind him. He was looking down into the yard inside. His

attitude of watchfulness, his weapon, the unseen thing that was being

thus fiercely guarded, provoked in her such a revulsion that she came to

a standstill.

What in the name of mercy had she come here for? She began to tremble.

The man with the flowers came up to her and halted. From the prison

there came at this instant the loud clang of a bell, and succeeding this

a prolonged and resonant murmur which seemed to increase. Miss Eunice

looked hastily around her. There were several people who must have heard

the same sounds that reached her ears, but they were not alarmed. In

fact, one or two of them seemed to be going to the prison direct. The

courage of our philanthropist began to revive. A woman in a brick house

opposite suddenly pulled up a window-curtain and fixed an amused and

inquisitive look upon her.

This would have sent her into a thrice-heated furnace. "Come, if you

please," she commanded the man, and she marched upon the jail.

She entered at first a series of neat offices in a wing of the

structure, and then she came to a small door made of black bars of iron.

A man stood on the farther side of this, with a bunch of large keys.

When he saw Miss Eunice he unlocked and opened the door, and she passed

through.

She found that she had entered a vast, cool, and lofty cage, one hundred

feet in diameter; it had an iron floor, and there were several people

strolling about here and there. Through several grated apertures the

sunlight streamed with strong effect, and a soft breeze swept around the

cavernous apartment.

Without the cage, before her and on either hand, were three more wings

of the building, and in these were the prisoners' corridors.

At the moment she entered, the men were leaving their cells, and

mounting the stone stairs in regular order, on their way to the chapel

above. The noisy files went up and down and to the right and to the

left, shuffling and scraping and making a great tumult. The men were

dressed in blue, and were seen indistinctly through the lofty gratings.

From above and below and all around her there came the metallic snapping

of bolts and the rattle of moving bars; and so significant was

everything of savage repression and impending violence, that Miss Eunice

was compelled to say faintly to herself "I am afraid it will take a

little time to get used to all this."

She rested upon one of the seats in the rotunda while the chapel

services were being conducted, and she thus had an opportunity to regain

a portion of her lost heart. She felt wonderfully dwarfed and belittled,

and her plan of recovering souls had, in some way or other, lost much of

its feasibility. A glance at her bright flowers revived her a little, as

did also a surprising, long-drawn roar from over her head, to the tune

of "America." The prisoners were singing.

Miss Eunice was not alone in her intended work, for there were several

other ladies, also with supplies of flowers, who with her awaited until

the prisoners should descend into the yard and be let loose before

presenting them with what they had brought. Their common purpose made

them acquainted, and by the aid of chat and sympathy they fortified each

other.

Half an hour later the five hundred men descended from the chapel to the

yard, rushing out upon its bare broad surface as you have seen a burst

of water suddenly irrigate a road-bed. A hoarse and tremendous shout at

once filled the air, and echoed against the walls like the threat of a

volcano. Some of the wretches waltzed and spun around like dervishes,

some threw somersaults, some folded their arms gravely and marched up

and down, some fraternized, some walked away pondering, some took off

their tall caps and sat down in the shade, some looked toward the

rotunda with expectation, and there were those who looked toward it with

contempt.

There led from the rotunda to the yard a flight of steps. Miss Eunice

descended these steps with a quaking heart, and a turnkey shouted to the

prisoners over her head that she and others had flowers for them.

No sooner had the words left his lips, than the men rushed up pell-mell.

This was a crucial moment.

There thronged upon Miss Eunice an army of men who were being punished

for all the crimes in the calendar. Each individual here had been caged

because he was either a highwayman, or a forger, or a burglar, or a

ruffian, or a thief, or a murderer. The unclean and frightful tide bore

down upon our terrified missionary, shrieking and whooping. Every

prisoner thrust out his hand over the head of the one in front of him,

and the foremost plucked at her dress.

She had need of courage. A sense of danger and contamination impelled

her to fly, but a gleam of reason in the midst of her distraction

enabled her to stand her ground. She forced herself to smile though she

knew her face had grown pale.

She placed a bunch of flowers into an immense hand which projected from

a coarse blue sleeve in front of her; the owner of the hand was pushed

away so quickly by those who came after him that Miss Eunice failed to

see his face. Her tortured ear caught a rough "Thank y', miss!" The

spirit of Miss Crofutt revived in a flash, and her disciple thereafter

possessed no lack of nerve.

She plied the crowd with flowers as long as they lasted, and a jaunty

self possession enabled her finally to gaze without flinching at the

mass of depraved and wicked faces with which she was surrounded. Instead

of retaining her position upon the steps, she gradually descended into

the yard, as did several other visitors. She began to feel at home; she

found her tongue, and her color came back again. She felt a warm pride

in noticing with what care and respect the prisoners treated her gifts;

they carried them about with great tenderness, and some compared them

with those of their friends.

Presently she began to recall her plans. It occurred to her to select

her two or three villains. For one, she immediately pitched upon a

lean-faced wretch in front of her. He seemed to be old, for his back was

bent and he leaned upon a cane. His features were large, and they bore

an expression of profound gloom. His head was sunk upon his breast, his

lofty conical cap was pulled over his ears, and his shapeless uniform

seemed to weigh him down, so infirm was he.

Miss Eunice spoke to him. He did not hear; she spoke again. He glanced

at her like a flash, but without moving; this was at once followed by a

scrutinizing look. He raised his head, and then he turned toward her

gravely.

The solemnity of his demeanor nearly threw Miss Eunice off her balance,

but she mastered herself by beginning to talk rapidly. The prisoner

leaned over a little to hear better. Another came up, and two or three

turned around to look. She bethought herself of an incident related in

Miss Crofutt's book, and she essayed its recital. It concerned a lawyer

who was once pleading in a French criminal court in behalf of a man

whose crime had been committed under the influence of dire want. In his

plea he described the case of another whom he knew who had been punished

with a just but short imprisonment instead of a long one, which the

judge had been at liberty to impose, but from which he humanely

refrained. Miss Eunice happily remembered the words of the lawyer: "That

man suffered like the wrong-doer that he was. He knew his punishment was

just. Therefore there lived perpetually in his breast an impulse toward

a better life which was not suppressed and stifled by the five years he

passed within the walls of the jail. He came forth and began to labor.

He toiled hard. He struggled against averted faces and cold words, and

he began to rise. He secreted nothing, faltered at nothing, and never

stumbled. He succeeded; men took off their hats to him once more; he

became wealthy, honorable, God-fearing. I, gentlemen, am that man, that

criminal." As she quoted this last declaration Miss Eunice erected

herself with burning eyes and touched herself proudly upon the breast. A

flush crept into her cheeks, and her nostrils dilated, and she grew

tall.

She came back to earth again, and found herself surrounded with the

prisoners. She was a little startled.

"Ah, that was good!" ejaculated the old man upon whom she had fixed her

eyes. Miss Eunice felt an inexpressible sense of delight.

Murmurs of approbation came from all of her listeners, especially from

one on her right hand. She looked around at him pleasantly.

But the smile faded from her lips on beholding him. He was extremely

tall and very powerful. He overshadowed her. His face was large, ugly,

and forbidding; his gray hair and beard were cropped close, his eyebrows

met at the bridge of his nose and overhung his large eyes like a screen.

His lips were very wide, and, being turned downward at the corners, they

gave him a dolorous expression. His lower jaw was square and protruding,

and a pair of prodigious white ears projected from beneath his

sugar-loaf cap. He seemed to take his cue from the old man, for he

repeated his sentiment.

"Yes," said he, with a voice which broke alternately into a roar and a

whisper, "that was a good story."

"Y-yes," faltered Miss Eunice, "and it has the merit of being t-rue."

He replied with a nod, and looked absently over her head while he rubbed

the nap upon his chin with his hand. Miss Eunice discovered that his

knee touched the skirt of her dress, and she was about to move in order

to destroy this contact, when she remembered that Miss Crofutt would

probably have cherished the accident as a promoter of a valuable

personal influence, so she allowed it to remain. The lean-faced man was

not to be mentioned in the same breath with this one, therefore she

adopted the superior villain out of hand.

She began to approach him. She asked him where he lived, meaning to

discover whence he had come. He replied in the same mixture of roar and

whisper, "Six undered un one, North Wing."

Miss Eunice grew scarlet. Presently she recovered sufficiently to pursue

some inquiries respecting the rules and customs of the prison. She did

not feel that she was interesting her friend, yet it seemed clear that

he did not wish to go away. His answers were curt, yet he swept his cap

off his head, implying by the act a certain reverence, which Miss

Eunice's vanity permitted her to exult at. Therefore she became more

loquacious than ever. Some men came up to speak with the prisoner, but

he shook them off, and remained in an attitude of strict attention,

with his chin on his hand, looking now at the sky, now at the ground and

now at Miss Eunice.

In handling the flowers her gloves had been stained, and she now held

them in her fingers nervously twisting them as she talked. In the course

of time she grew short of subjects, and as her listener suggested

nothing, several lapses occurred; in one of them she absently spread her

gloves out in her palms, meanwhile wondering how the English girl acted

under similar circumstances.

Suddenly a large hand slowly interposed itself between her eyes and her

gloves, and then withdrew, taking one of the soiled trifles with it.

She was surprised, but the surprise was pleasurable. She said nothing at

first. The prisoner gravely spread his prize out upon his own palm, and

after looking at it carefully, he rolled it up into a tight ball and

thrust it deep in an inner pocket.

This act made the philanthropist aware that she had made progress. She

rose insensibly to the elevation of patron, and she made promises to

come frequently and visit her ward and to look in upon him when he was

at work; while saying this she withdrew a little from the shade his huge

figure had supplied her with.

He thrust his hands into his pockets, but he hastily took them out

again. Still he said nothing and hung his head. It was while she was in

the mood of a conqueror that Miss Eunice went away. She felt a touch of

repugnance at stepping from before his eyes a free woman, therefore she

took pains to go when she thought he was not looking.

She pointed him out to a turnkey, who told her he was expiating the sins

of assault and burglarious entry. Outwardly Miss Eunice looked grieved,

but within she exulted that he was so emphatically a rascal.

When she emerged from the cool, shadowy, and frowning prison into the

gay sunlight, she experienced a sense of bewilderment. The significance

of a lock and a bar seemed greater on quitting them than it had when she

had perceived them first. The drama of imprisonment and punishment

oppressed her spirit with tenfold gloom now that she gazed upon the

brilliancy and freedom of the outer world. That she and everybody around

her were permitted to walk here and there at will, without question and

limit, generated within her an indefinite feeling of gratitude; and the

noise, the colors, the creaking wagons, the myriad voices, the splendid

variety and change of all things excited a profound but at the same time

a mournful satisfaction.

Midway in her return journey she was shrieked at from a carriage, which

at once approached the sidewalk. Within it were four gay maidens bound

to the Navy-Yard, from whence they were to sail, with a large party of

people of nice assortment, in an experimental steamer, which was to be

made to go with kerosene lamps, in some way. They seized upon her hands

and cajoled her. Wouldn't she go? They were to sail down among the

islands (provided the oil made the wheels and things go round), they

were to lunch at Fort Warren, dine at Fort Independence, and dance at

Fort Winthrop Come, please go. Oh, do! The Germanians were to furnish

the music.

Miss Eunice sighed, but shook her head. She had not yet got the air of

the prison out of her lungs, nor the figure of her robber out of her

eyes, nor the sense of horror and repulsion out of her sympathies.

At another time she would have gone to the ends of the earth with such a

happy crew, but now she only shook her head again and was resolute. No

one could wring a reason from her, and the wondering quartet drove away.