"I'll show him his room," Ann said.
When the door was closed on us, she threw her arms about my neck and
cried as I had never seen a woman cry.
"Oh! beloved," she sobbed. "I'm so glad. I was afraid--afraid you were
going to be blind."
She had always been so cheerful, so professional, about my case--of
course it would turn out all right--that I had not seen it from her
point of view. It was a revelation to me that her bravery had been a
sham.
"Oh. I was afraid--afraid!"
I tried to comfort her but all the pent-up worry and fear of weeks had
broken out. And I had not realized that her love had made my risk a
personal tragedy for her.
When she had quieted a little, I wanted her to stand away so that I
might look at her. But no--she said--she did not want me to see her
first when her eyes were swollen with tears. She clung to me tightly
and would not show me her face.
There was a knock at the door. I had not lived long enough to realize
the seriousness of a woman's wet eyes, and, without thought of this, I
said, "Come in." It was Benson.
"Miss Wright tells me--"
He hesitated. He was looking at Ann. I turned too. She was making a
brave effort to appear unconcerned, but her eyes were red past all
hiding.
"Yes," she said, in her professional tone. "The news is very good.
Better than we hoped."
"Fine. I dropped in," Benson said, as though there was nothing to be
embarrassed about, "to see how you came out and get you to spend the
week-end with me if they let you go. I've got to visit my uncle and
aunt--stupid old people--hypochondriacs. But they are going to Europe
next week and I really must see them. I'll die of boredom if there isn't
someone to talk to. Better come along--the sailing's good. I've got to
run over to the club for a few minutes. Can you get your grip packed in
half an hour? All right. So long."
Ann was as nearly angry as I have ever seen her.
"At least you might have given me time to dry my eyes."
"I don't believe he noticed anything. Men never see things like that,"
I said.
But Ann laughed at this and so her good temper was restored.
Her face, now that I saw it, was not at all what I had expected. It was
serious, meagre, a bit severe. I had thought of her as blonde, but her
hair was a rich, deep brown. Of course I am no judge of her looks. She
had brought joy into my darkness. She could not but be beautiful for
me.
The expression is what counts most. About her face, emphasized by her
nurse's uniform, was a definite air of sensibleness, of New England
reliability. Perhaps under other circumstances she would not have
attracted me. Her face in repose might not have inspired more than
confidence. But when she put her hands on my shoulders and looked up
into my face, with the light of love in her eyes, it seemed to me that a
mystic halo of beauty shone about her. No other woman has ever looked
to me as Ann did. And yet I know that most people would call her
"plain."
The hardest thing for me to accept about her was her height. I had
thought her considerably shorter than Miss Wright. I had been misled of
course by the relative size of their voices. Ann was above average
height and Miss Wright hardly five feet.
In the half hour before Benson returned, we had not discussed anything
more concrete than opportunities to meet outside the hospital. She was
free on alternate Saturdays from supper time till midnight. I was
rather afraid that Benson, when we were alone, might ask some questions
or make some joke about her, but he talked busily of other things.
His uncle and aunt were a lonely old couple. Their children were
established and they had little left to interest them except their
illnesses, some of which, Benson said, were real. It was a beautiful
house just out of Stamford on the Sound--rather dolefully empty now that
the children had gone. I had never seen such luxury, such heavy silver,
such ubiquitous servants.
They were planning to live in Paris, near a daughter who had married a
Frenchman. Their arrangements had been all made. But at the last
moment their trained nurse had thrown them into confusion by deciding
suddenly that she did not want to leave America. The aunt told us about
it, querulously, at dinner. Ann's desire came to mind.
"How much free time would the nurse have?" I asked. "I know one who is
anxious to live in Paris and study with Pasteur. She is very capable.
Your nephew has seen her--Miss Barton--she was at the hospital. I liked
her immensely."
Benson shot a quick glance at me. It was the only sign he ever gave of
having noticed any intimacy between us.
"My aunt expects to live permanently in Paris," he said. "She would not
want to take any one who was not willing to stay indefinitely."
"That, I think, would suit Miss Barton exactly."
Benson immediately fell in with my suggestion and recommended Ann
enthusiastically. I had to answer a string of questions. The aunt was
one of those undecided persons who hate to make up their mind, but the
uncle wanted to get started. We talked about it continually during the
three Sunday meals, and on Monday morning they went in to see her, with
a note of introduction from me.
Ann, as I had foreseen, was delighted with the opportunity. She pleased
them, and as soon as she could find a substitute, an easy matter, as her
position was desirable, the arrangements were made.
*VII*
Ann and I spent together the day before they sailed. We had planned an
excursion to the sea-side, but it rained desperately and we found refuge
in an hotel. We were too much interested in each other to care much
about the weather or our surroundings. Any beauties of nature which
might have distracted our attention would have seemed an impertinence.
It was a day of never-to-be-forgotten delight. And yet it was not
without a subtle alloy. By an unexpressed agreement, we lived up to
Omar's philosophy, we discussed neither the past nor the future. I was
afraid to stop and think, for fear it might seem wrong....
Once she brought a cloud by some expressions of gratitude for my having,
as she put it, given her this great opportunity to realize her dream of
studying with Pasteur. And all the while, I knew it was not solely for
her sake that I had picked up this chance, which the fates had thrown
me. Despite the joy of her love there was this under-current of
incertitude. I wanted to get far enough away from it, to judge it. It
is hard to express what I mean, but I was happier, more light-hearted,
that day, because I knew she was leaving the next.
But these blurred moments were--only moments. We were young. It was the
spring of life as it was of the year. The spirit of poesy, of the great
Lyrics, was there in that tawdry hotel room....
In the early morning, through the wet glistening streets we made our way
across town towards the river. Of course I knew just where we were
going, but somehow the entrance to the dock found me surprised and
unprepared. For a moment we stood there, shaking hands as formally as
might be. Suddenly tears sparkled in her eyes, she reached up and
kissed me. Then she turned abruptly and walked into the bare, shadowy
building. She had a firm step, she was sallying out to meet her
destiny.
I watched until she was out of sight. And then I surprised myself by a
sigh of strange relief.
*VIII*
Later in the day I lunched with Benson at the University Club.
"What are your plans now?" he asked as we settled down to coffee and
cigarettes.
"Find a job, I suppose."
"You're in no condition to work nor to look for work--just out of the
hospital."
"But I've got to eat."
"That's a fool superstition!" he exploded. "You don't have to work in
order to eat. None of 'the best people' do. Half the trouble with the
world is that so many idiots will sweat--just to eat. If they'd refuse
to work for tripe-stews and demand box seats at the opera, it would do
wonders. Why people will slave all their lives long for a chance to die
in a tenement is beyond me. What kind of work do you want?"
My ideas on that point were vague.
"How much money have you?"
That I had figured out.
"One hundred and eighty-five dollars and ninety-three cents. And then
my books--perhaps I could get a hundred more for them."
"Of course if you are sufficiently unscrupulous that's a good start for
a fortune. Lots of men have done it on less. But it's a bore to sit
back and watch money grow. Did you ever see a hunk of shad-roe--all
eggs? Money's a darn sight more prolific than fish. Impregnate a silver
dollar with enough cynicism and you can't keep your expenses up with
your income. Look how wealth has grown in this country in spite of all
our thievery and waste! In the Civil War we burned money--threw
millions after millions into the flames--we never noticed it. The
nation was richer in '65 than in '60.
"But making money is a fool's ambition. Just think how many dubs
succeed in earning a living. Anybody can do that. It isn't original.
Look round for interesting work. Something that's worth doing aside
from the wages. Take things easy. If you begin worrying, you'll grab
the first job that offers and think you're lucky. Come down to the
settlement--the board's seven a week. You can live three months on half
your money. In that time you'll see a dozen openings. You'll be able to
take your choice instead of snatching the first job you see."
This conversation was typical of Benson. He nearly always started off
with some generalized talk, but just when you began to think he had
forgotten you and the issue, he would end up sharp, with a definite
proposition. I accepted his advice and moved to the "Children's House."
So my temporary blindness brought me into contact with two great facts
of life I had hitherto ignored, women and want--the beauty of sex and
the horror of misery. And these two things occupied my whole mind.
One by one I picked out my memories of Ann and pondered them in all
their implications. I tried to arrange them like beads on a thread, in
some ordered unified design. Day by day she became a more real and
concise personality.
The effect of my encounter with Ann, I could then have found no word to
describe. But a very modern term would explain my meaning to some. She
opened my spirit to the "over-tones" of life. Last year I heard
"Pelleas and Melisande." I sat through the first half hour unstirred.
There was much sensuous appeal to the eyes, but the music seemed
unsatisfactory. Suddenly appreciation came. Suddenly I understood with
a rush what he was meaning to say. All the mystic harmony, the
unwritten, unwritable wonder of it swept over me. And now Debussy seems
to me the greatest of them all. "The Afternoon of the Faun" moves me
more deeply than any other music. In fact, I think, we must invent some
newer name than "music," for this more subtle perfume of sound.
In a similar way Ann showed me the "over-tones" of life. Deeper
significance, mystic meanings, I found in many things I had hardly
noticed before. The sunsets held a richer wealth of colors. I had
known Chaucer and his predecessors intimately, somewhat less thoroughly
all the world's great poetry. It had interested me not only as a study
of comparative philology, not only as a delicate game of prosody--of
rhythm and rhyme and refrain. It had held for me a deeper charm than
these mechanical elements--fascinating as they are. But somehow it all
became new to me. I discovered in the old familiar lines things, which,
alone in my study, I had never dreamed of. I began to see in all
poetry--in all art--an effort to express these "overtones."
On the other hand, my active life was spent in the appalling misery of
the slums--a thing equally new to me. In those days the majority of our
neighbors were Irish and German. Decade after decade the nationality of
Stanton Street has changed. First the Germans disappeared, then the
Russian and Hungarian Jews pushed out the Irish, now one hears as much
Italian as Yiddish. The heart-rending poverty, the degradation of filth
and drunkenness is not a matter of race. Wave after wave of immigration
finds its native customs and morality insufficient to protect it from
the contagion of the slum. And so it will be until we have the wisdom
to blot out the crime of congestion and give our newcomers a decent
chance.
I try to force my mind back to its attitude in those first weeks in the
"Children's House" and try to explain to myself how I became part of
"The Settlement Movement." I fail. I think very few of the really
important things in life are susceptible to a logical explanation.
I have met some people, who from books alone have been impressed with
the injustices of our social organization, and have left the seclusion
of their studies to throw their lives into the active campaign for
justice. Such mental processes are, I think, rare. Certainly it came
about differently in my case.
When Benson proposed that I should come to live in the settlement, I
felt no "call" to social service. I was lonely, out of work, utterly
adrift. The memory of the evening I had spent with him in the
Children's House and the interesting people I had met was very pleasant.
I had no suspicions that I was going there to stay. It appealed to me
as sort of convalescent home, where I could rest up until I was able to
go out and cope with the ordinary life of the world.
At first the little circle of workers seemed incoherent. Here were half
a dozen highly educated men and women, most of whom had left pleasant
homes, living in the most abject neighborhood of the city. Why? What
good were they doing? Around us roared the great fire of poverty. Here
and there they were plucking out a brand, to be sure. But the fire was
beyond their control. They did not even think they could stop it.
I remember one night at dinner we had for guest, a professor of
economics from one of the big universities. He prided himself on his
cold scientific view-point, he regarded the settlement movement as
sentimental, almost hysterical, and he had the ill-breeding to forget
that what he scoffed at was a desperately serious thing to his hosts.
"This settlement movement reminds me of a story," he said. "Once upon a
time a kind hearted old gentleman was walking down the street and found
a man--drunk--in the gutter. He tried vainly to pull the unfortunate
one up on the sidewalk and then losing courage, he said, 'My poor man, I
can't help you, but I'll get down in the gutter beside you.'"
He laughed heartily, but no one else did. The story fell decidedly
flat. It was several minutes before anyone took up the challenge. At
last, Rev. Mr. Dawn, the head worker, coughed slightly and replied. He
had turned quite red and I saw that the joke had stung him.
"That is a very old story," he said, "it was current in Jerusalem a good
many centuries ago. It was told with great _eclat_ by a scribe and a
pharisee who 'passed by on the other side.'"
"Oh, come, now!" our guest protested. "That's hardly a fair comparison.
The Samaritan we are told really did some good to the poor devil. And
besides the victim in that case was not a drunkard, but a person who had
'fallen among thieves.'"
"Thieves?" Benson asked, with a ring of anger in his voice. "Do you
think there are no thieves but highway robbers?"--and then apparently
realizing the uselessness of arguing with such a man, he smiled blandly
and in a softer tone went on. "Besides some of us are foolish enough to
imagine that we also can do some good. Let's not discuss that, we'd
rather keep our illusions. Won't you tell us what you are teaching your
classes about Marx's theory of surplus value? Of course I know that
phrase is taboo. But what terms do you use to describe the proceeds of
industrial robbery?"
I could not make up my mind whether the professor realized that Benson
was trying to insult him or whether he was afraid to tackle the
question. At all events he turned to Mrs. Dawn and changed the
conversation.
This little tilt gave me a great deal to think of. I did not like the
professor's attitude towards life. But after all, what good were these
settlement workers doing? Again and again this question demanded an
answer. Sometimes I went out with Mr. Dawn to help in burying the dead.
I could see no adequate connection between his kindly words to the
bereaved and the hideous dragon of tuberculosis which stalked through
the crowded district. What good did Dawn's ministrations do? Sometimes
I went out with Miss Bronson, the kindergartner and listened to her talk
to uncomprehending mothers about their duties to their children. What
could Miss Bronson accomplish by playing a few hours a day with the
youngsters who had to go to filthy homes? They were given a wholesome
lunch at the settlement. But the two other meals a day they must eat
poorly cooked, adulterated food. Sometimes I went out with Miss Cole,
the nurse, to visit her cases. It was hard for me to imagine anything
more futile than her single-handed struggle against unsanitary tenements
and unsanitary shops.
I remember especially one visit I made with her. It was the crisis for
me. The case was a child-birth. There were six other children, all in
one unventilated room, its single window looked out on a dark, choked
airshaft, and the father was a drunkard. I remember sitting there,
after the doctor had gone, holding the next youngest baby on my knee,
while Miss Cole was bathing the puny newcomer.
"Can't you make him stop crying for a minute?" Miss Cole asked
nervously.
"No," I said with sudden rage. "I can't. I wouldn't if I could. Why
shouldn't he cry? Why don't the other little fools cry! Do you want
them to laugh?"
She stopped working with the baby and offered me a flask of brandy from
her bag. But brandy was not what I wanted. Of course I knew men sank
to the very dregs. But I had never realized that some are born there.
When she had done all she could for the mother and child, Miss Cole put
her things back in the bag and we started home. It was long after
midnight but the streets were still alive.
"What good does it do?" I demanded vehemently. "Oh, I know--you and the
doctor saved the mother's life--brought a new one into the world and all
that. But what good does it do? The child will die--it was a
girl--let's get down on our knees right here and pray the gods that it
may die soon--not grow up to want and fear--and shame." Then I laughed.
"No, there's no use praying. She'll die all right! They'll begin
feeding her beer out of a can before she's weaned. No. Not that. I
don't believe the mother will be able to nurse her. She'll die of
skimmed milk. And if that don't do the trick there's T.B. and several
other things for her to catch. Oh, she'll die all right. And next year
there'll be another. For God's sake, what's the use? What good does it
do?" Abruptly I began to swear.
"You mustn't talk like that," Miss Cole said in a strained voice.
"Why shouldn't I curse?" I said fiercely, turning on her challengingly,
trying to think of some greater blasphemy to hurl at the muddle of life.
But the sight of her face, livid with weariness, her lips twisting
spasmodically from nervous exhaustion, showed me one reason not to. The
realization that I had been so brutal to her shocked me horribly.
"Oh, I beg your pardon," I cried.
She stumbled slightly. I thought she was going to faint and I put my
arm about her to steady her. She was almost old enough to be my mother,
but she put her head on my shoulder and cried like a little child. We
stood there on the sidewalk--in the glare of a noisy, loathsome
saloon--like two frightened children. I don't think either of us saw
any reason to go anywhere. But we dried our eyes at last and from mere
force of habit walked blindly back to the children's house. On the
steps she broke the long silence.
"I know how you feel--everyone's like that at first, but you'll get used
to it. I can't tell 'why.' I can't see that it does much good. But
it's got to be done. You mustn't think about it. There are things to
do, today, tomorrow, all the time. Things that must be done. That's
how we live. So many things to do, we can't think. It would kill you
if you had time to think. You've got to work--work.
"You'll stay too. I know. You won't be able to go away. You've been
here too long. You won't ever know 'why.' You'll stop asking if it
does any good. And I tell you if you stop to think about it, it will
kill you. You must work."
She went to her room and I across the deserted courtyard and up to mine.
But there was no sleep. It was that night that I first realized that I
also must. I had seen so much I could never forget. It was something
from which there was no escape. No matter how glorious the open fields,
there would always be the remembered stink of the tenements in my
nostrils. The vision of a sunken cheeked, tuberculosis ridden pauper
would always rise between me and the beauty of the sunset. A crowd of
hurrying ghosts--the ghosts of the slaughtered babies--would follow me
everywhere, crying, "Coward," if I ran away. The slums had taken me
captive.
As I sat there alone with my pipe, the groans of the district's uneasy
sleep in my ears, I realized more strongly than I can write it now the
appalling unity of life. I sensed the myriad intricate filaments which
bind us into an indivisible whole. I saw the bloody rack-rents of the
tenements circulating through all business--tainting it--going even into
the collection plates of our churches. I saw the pay drawn by the lyric
poet, trailing back through the editorial bank account to the pockets of
various subscribers who speculated in the necessities of life, who waxed
fat off the hunger of the multitude. My own clothes were sweat-shop
made.
I could not put out the great fire of injustice. I could at least bind
up the sores of some of my brothers who had fallen in--who were less
lucky than I. My old prep. school ethics came back to me. "I want to
live so that when I die, the greatest number of people will be glad I
did live." In a way it did not seem to matter so much whether I could
accomplish any lasting good. I must do what I could. Such effort
seemed to me the only escape from the awful shame of complaisancy.
Wandering in and out of the lives of the people of our neighborhood, I
looked about for a field of activity. There were so many things to be
done. I sought for the place where the need was greatest. It did not
take me long to decide--a conclusion I have not changed--that the worst
evils of our civilization come to a head in "The Tombs."
The official name for that pile of stone and brick is "The Criminal
Courts Building." But the people persist in calling it "The Tombs."
The prison dated from the middle of the century and a hodge-podge of
official architecture had been added, decade by decade, as the political
bosses needed money. It housed the district attorney's office, the
"police court," "special sessions" for misdemeanants, and "general
sessions" for felons. One could study our whole penal practice in that
building.
I was first led into its grim shadow by a woman who came to the
settlement. Her son, a boy of sixteen, had been arrested two months
before and had been waiting trial in an unventilated cell, originally
designed for a single occupant, with two others. His cell-mates had
changed a dozen times. I recall that one had been an old forger, who
was waiting an appeal, another was the keeper of a disorderly house and
a third had been a high church curate, who had embezzled the foreign
mission fund to buy flowers for a chorus girl. The lad was patently
innocent. And this was the very reason he was held so long. The
district attorney was anxious to make a high record of convictions. His
term was just expiring and he was not calling to trial the men he
thought innocent, these "technically" bad cases he was shoving over on
his successor. At last, with the help of a charitable lawyer, named
Maynard, of whom I will write more later, we forced the case on the
calendar and the boy was promptly acquitted.
In talking over this case with Benson, I found that he was already
interested in the problems of Criminology. He was one of the trustees of
"The Prisoner's Aid Society." The interview in the newspaper, which Ann
had read to me at the hospital, had been an effort of his to draw
attention to the subject and to infuse some life into the society.
"They're a bunch of fossils," he said. "Think they're a '_societe
savante_.' They read books by foreign penologists and couldn't tell a
crook from a carpet sweeper. We need somebody to study American crime.
Not a dilettante--someone who will go into it solid."
I told him I had thought a good deal about it and was ready to tackle
the job if the ways and means could be arranged.
"I imagine I could get the society to pay you a living salary. But they
are dead ones. If you did anything that wasn't in the books, it would
scare them. I'll think it over."
About a week later, I received a letter from the recently elected, not
yet installed district attorney asking me to call on him. His name was
Brace, his letter the result of Benson's thinking. I found him a
typical young reform politician. A man of good family, he was filled
with enthusiasm, and confidently expected to set several rivers on fire.
There was going to be absolute, abstract justice under his regime.
Benson had told him how the actual district attorney was shoving off the
"bad cases" on him and he was righteously indignant. He wanted someone
whose fidelity he could trust, who would keep an eye on the prison side
of the Tombs. He was sure there were many abuses there to stop, and he
was the man to do it. The only position he could offer me under the law
was that of special county detective. The pay would be eighteen hundred
a year.
"It is not exactly a dignified position," he said. "The county
detectives are a low class,--but of course you won't have to associate
with them."
I was more than ready to take the place. With the rest of the new
administration I was sworn in, and so entered on my life work. It was a
far cry from my earlier ambition to be a Fellow at Oxford.
*BOOK IV*
*I*
"Literary unity" can be secured in an autobiography only at the expense
of all sense of reality. The simplest of us is a multiple personality,
can be described only partially from any one point of view. The text
book on physiology which I studied in school contained three
illustrations. One of them pictured a human being as a structure of
bones, a skeleton; another showed man as a system of veins and arteries;
the third as a mass of interwoven muscles. None of them looked like any
man I have ever seen. It is the same with most autobiographies, the
writers, in order to center attention on one phase of their activities,
have cut away everything which would make their stories seem life-like.
"The Memoirs" of Cassanova give us the picture of a lover. But he must
have been something more than a _roue_. "The Personal Recollections" of
General Grant portray the career of a soldier. But after all he was a
man first, it was more or less by chance that he became a
victory-machine. How fragmentary is the picture of his life, which
Benvenuto Cellini gives us!
I might accept these classic models and tell directly the story of my
work in the Tombs. I might limit my narrative to that part of myself
which was involved in friendship with Norman Benson. Or again, I might
strip off everything else, ignore the flesh and bones and blood vessels,
and write of myself as an "emotional system." In one of these ways I
might more nearly approach a literary production. But certainly it
would be at a sacrifice of verisimilitude. Perhaps some great writer
will come who will unite the artistic form with an impression of
actuality. But until genius has taught us the method we must choose
between the two ideals. My choice is for reality rather than art.
And life, as it has appeared to me, is episodal in form, unified only in
the continual climaxes of the present moment. It is a string of
incidents threaded on to the uninterrupted breathing of the same person.
The facts of any life are related only _de post facto_, in that they
influence the future course of the individual to whom they happen. The
farther back we strive to trace these influences, which have formed us,
the greater complexity we find. It is not only our bodies which have
"family trees," that show the number of our ancestors, generation by
generation, increasing with dizzy rapidity. It is the same with our
thoughts and tastes. From an immensely diffuse luminosity the lens of
life has focused the concentrated rays of light which are you and I.
So--in telling of my life, as I see it--my narrative must break up into
fragments. Unartistic as such a form may be, it seems to me the only
one possible for autobiography. Incidents must be given, which, however
unrelated they appear, seem to me to have been caught by the great lens
and to have formed an integral part of the focal point, which sits
here--trying to describe itself.
*II*
For some years I have been continually writing on the subject of
criminology. I could not give, here in this narrative, a complete
picture of the Tombs and its people, nor show in orderly sequence how
one incident after another forced me into a definite attitude towards
our penal system, without repeating what I have published elsewhere.
But the atmosphere in which I have spent my working life has so
definitely influenced me, has been so important a force in my experiment
in ethics, that I must give it some space. I must try, at least, to
give some illuminating examples of the sort of thing which did influence
me and a brief statement of the attitude which has resulted from my
work, for without this background the rest of my story would be
meaningless.
At first I found myself the object of universal hostility. The Tombs
was a feudal domain of Tammany Hall. I was regarded as an enemy.
The "spoils system" had given place to the evils of civil service.
Municipal employees could not be displaced unless "charges" had been
proven against them. The people of the Tombs did not worry much about
the reform administration. They regarded it as an interruption in the
even tenor of their ways, which happily would not last long. They were
used to such moral spasms on the part of the electorate and knew how
little they were worth. Some of the "Reform" officials tried earnestly
to clean up their departments. Their efforts were defeated by unruly
subordinates, men trained by and loyal to the machine.
The way things went in the Tombs was typical. Brace had a conference
with the new commissioner of correction and as a result some
"Instructions for the guidance of prison keepers" were pasted up on the
walls. But district attorneys change with every election, while the
warden--protected by civil service--goes on forever. The sale of "dope"
to the prisoners, forbidden by the "instructions" in capital letters,
was not interrupted for a day. Within a week the screws had forgotten
to make jokes about it.
Having been appointed by the reformer Brace, I was naturally supposed to
be his personal spy. I was saved from falling into so fatal a mistake
by a queer old prison missionary called "General Jerry." He had lost an
arm at Three Oaks, in the hospital at Andersonville he had found
"religion." And as the Lord had visited him in prison, he had devoted
what was left of his life to similar work. I think he had no income
beyond his pension--he was always shabby. He had very little learning,
but an immense amount of homely wisdom. If ever a man has won a right
to a starry crown it was Jerry. He and the Father--each in his
different way--were the most wholesouled Christians I have ever
encountered. Such a noble dignity shone from the eyes of this humble
old man that I felt it ever a privilege to sit at his feet and learn of
him.
First of all, from watching him, I found that a man who was sincere and
honest could win the respect of the Tombs, in spite of such handicaps.
Before long we became friends, and he gave me much shrewd advice.
"I come here to save souls," he said. "That's all I come for. I don't
let nothin' else interest me. I ain't no district attorney. Sure, I
see graft. Can't help it. Every year--onct--I talk to each one of the
screws about his soul. 'Big Jim,' I says, 'you ain't right wid God. I
ain't the only one as seed you take money from the mother of that dago
what was hanged. I ain't the only one as heard you lie to that Jew
woman, telling her how you'd help her husband out. I ain't the only one
as knows the hotel you took her to. God sees! God hears! He knows!
You'd better square it wid Him!' That's all I says. They knows I don't
go round tellin' it. And they helps me wid my work. Just yesterday Big
Jim comes to me. 'General,' he says, 'there's a guy up in 431 what's
crying. I guess you'd better hand him a bit of Gospel.'
"What do you come down here to the Tombs for? To help out the poor guys
what they've got wrong. Well. Don't do nothin' else. The screws all
think you're gum-shoein' for Brace. 'Jerry,' they says to me, 'who's
the new guy? What's he nosin' around here for?' 'Don't know,' I says.
'Better keep your eye on him--same as I'm doin',' I says. 'After a
while we'll know.'"
I felt their eyes on me all the time. A couple of months later I sat
down beside Jerry in the courtyard; he had a Bible on his knees and a
cheese sandwich in his hand.
"I ain't no good sayin' Grace," he explained, "so I always reads a Psalm
when I eat," .... "Say, young man," he went on, "I got a word to say to
you. The screws ain't got you quite sized up yet--but most of 'em agrees
you ain't nobody's damn fool. Now I just want to tell you something.
You take this here Tombs all together--warden, screws, cops and lawyers,
district attorneys and jedges--you can't never be friends wid all of
'em. They's too many what's hatin' each other. So you got to pick.
You say you're going to stay by this job. Well, you just better figure
out who's goin' to stick wid you. The jedges stay and the screws stay.
But the district attorneys don't never stay more'n two years. Figure it
out. That's what the good book means by 'Be ye wise as sarpents.'"
Jerry's advice was good. I had already "figured out" that the favor of
the judges was more important for me than that of the district attorney.
I had to choose whom I would serve, and it was very evident that it was
expedient--if I wished to accomplish anything--to make friends with the
mammon of political unrighteousness. The reformers were not only
pitifully weak, few of them commanded confidence. They had not been in
office six weeks before it was evident that their reelection was
impossible. The best of them were rank amateurs in the business of
politics and government. Much of their disaster was due no doubt to
well intentioned ignorance. But very few of them stuck to the ship when
it began to sink. It would furnish some sombre amusement to publish the
figure about how many loud-mouthed reformers went into office again two
years later--under the machine banner.
Brace, my chief, as soon as he discovered that the walls of Tammany
would not fall down at the sound of newspaper trumpets, lost heart. He
had no further interest except to keep himself in the lime-light. Just
like all his predecessors, he neglected the routine work of his office
and gave all his attention to sensational trials which added to his
newspaper notoriety.
One of the big scandals of the preceding administration, which as much
as anything else had stirred public indignation against ring politics,
had centered about a man named Bateson. He called himself a
"contractor" and got most of the work in grading the city streets.
There was conclusive evidence to show that almost all the work he did
was along the routes of the street car lines. The scandal had been
discovered and worked up by one of the newspapers in a most exhaustive
manner. The facts were clear. The engineer of the street car company
would report to his superiors that such and such a street was too steep
for the profitable operation of their cars. One of the directors would
call in Bateson. Bateson would take up the matter with the mysterious
powers on Fourteenth Street, the aldermen would vote an appropriation to
grade the street; Bateson would get the contract and after being well
paid by the city would get a tangible expression of appreciation from
the street car company. The newspapers had already collected the
evidence. The fraud was patent. Everyone expected Brace to call
Bateson to trial at once. And it seemed inevitable that from the
evidence given in this case, indictments could be drawn against both the
"Old Man" on Fourteenth Street and the bribe giving directors of the
street car company.
Brace began on this case with a great flourish of trumpets. But one
adjournment after another was granted by the Tammany judges. It trailed
along for months. And when at last it was called, the bottom had, in
some mysterious manner, dropped out of the prosecution. Bateson was
acquitted. A few months later Brace resigned and became counsel for the
notorious traction reorganization. Some recent magazine articles have
exposed the kind of reform he stood for.
"Politics" has always seemed to me a very sorry sort of business. I
found plenty of non-partisan misery to occupy all my time. Gradually I
fitted myself into the life of the Tombs and became a fixture. When the
new elections brought Tammany back to power, "civil service" protected
me from the grafters, just as it had protected them from their enemies.
And so--in that ill-smelling place--I have passed my life.
To one who is unfamiliar with our juggernaut of justice it is surprising
to find how much work there is which a person in my position can do, how
many victims can be pulled from under the merciless wheels. First of all
there are the poor, who have no money to employ an able lawyer, no means
to secure the evidence of their innocence. Then there are the
"greenhorn" immigrants who do not know the language and laws of this new
country, who do not know enough to notify their consuls. Saddest of
all--and most easily helped--are the youngsters. We did not have a
children's court in those days. But most of my time, I think, has gone
in trying to ease the lot of the innocent wives and children of the
prisoners. Whether the man is guilty or not it is always the family
which suffers most. And if there had been none of these things, I would
have had my hands more than full with trying to help the men who were
acquitted. Look over the report of the criminal court in your county
and see what the average length of imprisonment while _waiting trial_
is. It varies from place to place. It is seldom less than three weeks.
And three weeks is a serious matter to the ordinary mechanic. About a
third of all the people arrested are acquitted. They get no
compensation for their footless imprisonment. Besides the loss of
wages, it generally means a lost job.
Two stories, which have been told elsewhere, are worth retelling, as
examples of the varied work I found to do.
It was in the summer of my first year in the Tombs that I got interested
in the case of a redhaired Italian boy named Pietro Sippio. He was only
fourteen years old and he had been indicted for premeditated murder.
The prosecution fell to the lot of the most brilliant young lawyer on
the district attorney's staff. The Sippio family was too poor to employ
counsel and Judge Ryan, before whom the case was tried, had assigned to
the defense a famous criminal lawyer. The trial became at once a
tourney of wit between these two men. Little Pietro and his fate was a
small matter in the duel for newspaper advertising.
The principal witness for the state was Mrs. Casey, the mother of the
little boy who had been killed. She was a widow, a simple, uneducated
Irishwoman, who earned her living by washing. She told her story with
every appearance of truthfulness. During the morning of the tragic day,
she had had a quarrel with Pietro in the backyard of the tenement, where
both families lived. Pietro had thrown some dirt on her washing and she
had slapped him. Instead of crying as she thought an ordinary boy would
have done, he had said he would "get even" with her.
When she heard the noon whistles blow in the neighboring factories, she
had gone out on the front sidewalk to get her baby for dinner. The
youngster was sitting on the curbstone and as she stood in the doorway
calling him, a brick, coming from the roof of the tenement, struck the
baby on the head, killing him instantly. She rushed out and--she swore
very solemnly--looked up and saw "the little divil's red head, jest as
plain as I sees yer honor."
The counsel for the defense was unable to shake her testimony in the
least.
Other witnesses swore that, on hearing Mrs. Casey's cry for help, they
had rushed up to the roof and had met Mrs. Sippio coming down through
the skylight with her two younger children, Felicia a girl of eight and
Angelo, who was five. When they had asked her where Pietro was she said
she had not seen him. But these witnesses were Irish and sided with
Mrs. Casey. They testified that it was easy to pass from one roof to
another. And it was evidently their theory that Pietro had escaped in
this manner.
A few minutes after the tragedy, Pietro had come whistling up the street
and had walked into the arms of the police, who were just starting out
to search for him.
In his own defense Pietro testified that after quarreling with Mrs.
Casey he had played about in the street for some time and then had gone
down to the river with a crowd of boys for a swim. They had not left
the water until the noon whistles had warned them of dinner time. They
had all hurried into their clothes and gone home. He swore positively
that he had not been on the roof during the morning. He evidently did
not realize the seriousness of his position and was rather swaggeringly
proud of being the center of so much attention.
Two or three other boys testified that Pietro had been swimming with
them and had not left the water until after the whistles blew. This was
an important point as the baby had been killed a very few minutes after
noon. But the district attorney, in a brutal, bullying
cross-examination, succeeded in rattling one of the boys--a youngster of
eleven--until he did not know his right hand from his left. He broke
down entirely, and sobbingly admitted that perhaps Pietro had left
before the whistles blew.
Mrs. Sippio testified that she had not seen Pietro after breakfast. She
had gone upon the roof about half past eleven to beat out some rugs.
She had taken the two younger children with her. But Pietro had not
been on the roof. She was a very timid woman, so frightened that she
forgot most of her scant English. But she seemed to be telling the
truth.
After the testimony was in the counsel for the defense made an eloquent,
if rather bombastic plea. He turned more often to the desk of the
reporters than to the panel of jurymen. No one, he said, had given any
testimony which even remotely implicated Pietro, except the
grief-stricken and enraged Mrs. Casey. He made a peroration on the
vengeful traits of the Irish. He almost wept over the prospect of
eternal damnation which awaited Mrs. Casey's soul on account of her
perjury. No reasonable man, he concluded, would condemn a fly on such
unreliable testimony.
The prosecutor commenced his summing up by referring to his position as
attorney for the people of the state of New York. He said that his able
opponent was technically called "The counsel for the defense," but that
in reality he himself more truly deserved that title. He was engaged
not in the defense of an individual offender, but in that of the whole
community of law abiding citizens. And in the pursuance of this most
serious function he could not allow his personal pity for the youthful
murderer to deflect him from his public duty.
He then gave a picturesque and blood curdling account of the Vendetta
and Mafia. He called the jury's attention to the well known traditions
of vengeance and murder among the Italians.
As for Mrs. Sippio's testimony--despite his high regard for the sanctity
of an oath--he could not find it in his heart to blame this mother who
by perjury was endangering bar own soul to save her son. He was more
stern in regard to the evidence of the boys. Their only excuse for
perjury was their youth. They were members of a desperate gang, of
which Pietro was the chief. They were corrupted by the false standards
of loyalty to their leader, so common among boys of the street.
The only testimony which deserved the serious attention of the jury was
that of Mrs. Casey--the estimable woman, who had seen her babe foully
murdered before her eyes. Her identification of Pietro had been
absolute.
"I am sorry," he ended, "for this boy, who, by so hideous a crime, has
ruined his life at the very outset. But you and I, gentlemen of the
jury, are bound by oath to consider only the cold facts. The judge may,
if he thinks it wise, be merciful in imposing sentence. But your sole
function is to discover truth. Here is a boy of fiery disposition and
revengeful race. He vowed vengeance. Some one must have thrown the
brick. No one else had the motive. Either the defendant is guilty as
charged in the indictment or the brick fell from heaven."
The law explicitly states that a person charged with crime, must be
given the benefit of any "reasonable doubt." In the face of the
manifestly conflicting testimony, I think every one in court was
surprised when the jury returned a verdict of "guilty."
I had not then been long enough in the Tombs to get used to it. I had
not become hardened. The tragedy of this case amazed me. A little boy
of fourteen condemned of deliberate murder! But the thing which
impressed me most was the way the lawyers in the court room rushed up to
congratulate the prosecutor for having won so doubtful a case. It would
be revolting enough to me if any one should congratulate me on having
sent an adult to the gallows. But this little boy of fourteen....
I went over the Bridge of Sighs and talked to Pietro in his cell. If
ever a boy impressed me as telling a straightforward story he did. I
was convinced that he had been at the riverside when the Casey baby was
killed.
After lunch I went up to the scene of the tragedy and my faith in
Pietro's innocence was considerably shaken although not overthrown by my
talk with Mrs. Casey. She was angry, of course, but she did not seem
malicious or vindictive. As I talked with her in her squalid basement
room, full of steam from the tubs of soiled clothing, I could not doubt
her sincerity. She really believed that Pietro had killed her child.
Wiping the suds from her powerful arms, she led me out on the sidewalk
and showed me the place where the baby had been sitting and pointed out
where she had seen the devilish red head above the coping.
The idea flashed into my mind that a boy would have to be surprisingly
clever to throw a brick from that height and hit a baby. With Mrs.
Casey following me, I went upon the roof. The chimneys were in a
dilapidated condition and a number of loose brick lay about. I was a
fairly good ball player at college, but when I tried to hit a water plug
on the curb stone, six stories below, I over shot at least eight feet.
I asked Mrs. Casey to try and her brick lit in the middle of the street.
I called up some of the boys, who were watching my operations from the
street, and offered them a quarter if they could hit the water plug.
Their attempts were no better than mine.
A little further along the low coping some bricks were piled where
children had evidently been building houses with them. I asked Mrs.
Casey to push one of them over, easily as if by accident. It fell out a
little way from the wall and crashed down fair on the curbing.
"Mrs. Casey," I said, "I don't think Pietro threw that brick. He
couldn't have hit the baby if he had tried. Somebody pushed it over by
accident."
She stood for some seconds looking down over the wall, shaking her head
uncertainly.
"Faith, and I'd think ye were right, sir," she said at last, "If I
hadn't seen his red head, sir, jest as plain as I sees yours."
And as we went down stairs, she kept repeating "I sure seen his red
head." She was evidently convinced of it.
I went to see Mrs. Sippio. She had moved to another tenement, because
of the hostility of the Irish neighbors. I found Mr. Sippio at home
taking care of his wife, she was half hysterical from the shame and her
grief over Pietro's fate. But she told me her story just as simply and
convincingly as had Mrs. Casey. Pietro had not been on the roof. There
had been only Felicia and Angelo. I was on the point of leaving in
discouragement. Apparently one of the women was lying. I could not
guess which. I had gained nothing but a conviction that the brick could
not have been thrown with an intent to kill. And that would be a very
weak plea against the verdict of a jury. Just as I was getting up,
there was a patter of feet in the hall-way. Mrs. Sippio's face lit up.
"It is the children," she said. As they rushed noisily into the room
the whole mystery was cleared up. It had not occurred to me--nor to any
one--that there might be two redheaded boys in the same Italian family.
But Angelo's hair was even more flaming than Pietro's.
I took him up in my lap and amused him until I had won his confidence.
And when he was thinking about other things, I suddenly asked him.
"Angelo, when that brick fell off the roof the other day, why didn't you
tell your mother?"
For a moment he was confused and then began to whimper. He had been
afraid of being whipped. I gave a whoop and reassuring the family, I
rushed down town and caught Judge Ryan, just as he was leaving his
chambers. He listened to me eagerly, for he was as tenderhearted a man
as I have ever known and he had been deeply horrified at the idea of
having to sentence such a youngster for premeditated murder.
The attorneys were summoned to the judge's chambers, and--I guess that
the "pathos" writers of the newspapers were notified. For the next
morning they attended court in force. The district attorney made a
touching speech. He was grandiloquently glad to announce that new
evidence had been discovered which cleared the defendant from all
suspicion. The judge set aside the verdict of the jury. The district
attorney said that Mrs. Casey had so evidently mistaken Angelo for his
older brother that there was no use having a new trial and Pietro was
discharged. In making a few remarks on the case, Judge Ryan mentioned
my name and thanked me personally for my part in the matter. With
increasing frequency he began to call on me for assistance in other
cases and in time the other judges took notice of my existence. I found
my hands more than full.
Very often I was able in a similar manner to unearth evidence, which the
defendants were too poor and ignorant or the lawyers too lazy to obtain.
But it was in another class of cases that I proved of greatest utility
to the judges. A large proportion of the prisoners plead guilty,
without demanding a trial. If the whole matter is thrashed out before a
jury, the trial judge hears all the evidence and so gets some idea of
the motives of the crime, of the personality and environment of the
accused. But when a prisoner pleads guilty, practically no details come
out in court and unless the judge has some special investigation made he
must impose sentence at haphazard. Ryan, almost always asked me to look
into such cases. The other judges--with the exception of O'Neil--did so
frequently. I would visit the prisoner in his cell and get his story,
listen to what the police had to say, and then make a personal
investigation to settle disputed points.
As time went on Ryan came to rely more and more on my judgment. He
felt, I think, that I was honest; that I could not be bribed and that I
was more likely to err on the side of mercy than otherwise. His easy
going kindliness was satisfied with this and he was only too glad to let
his responsibilities slip on to my shoulders. In the last years before
he was elevated to the Supreme Court, he practically let me sentence
most of his men. Except in the cases where political influences
intervened, my written reports determined the prisoner's fate.
Of course I had to manage his susceptibilities. If I had presumed to
suggest definitely what sentence he should impose he would have taken
offense. He was very sensitive about his dignity. But I worked out a
formal phraseology which did not ruffle his pride and accomplished what
I intended. After stating the facts of the case I would end up with a
sort of code phrase. If I wanted the judge to give the man another
chance under a suspended sentence, I would say: "Under the
circumstances, I believe that the defendant is deserving the utmost
leniency. I am convinced that the arrest and the imprisonment which he
has already suffered have taught him a salutary lesson which he will
never forget." From that as the circumstances warranted I could go to
the other extreme: "During my investigation of this case, which has been
seriously limited because of lack of time, I have been able to find very
little in this man's favor."
Every time I had to present such a report as this I felt defeated. It
meant that the prisoner was an old offender, hardened to a life of
professional crime. And that I could see no hope of reformation. But
if I had not accepted such defeats, when circumstances compelled them,
the judges would very quickly have lost confidence in my pleas for
mercy.
I was valuable to the judges because I relieved them from worry.
Whenever anyone approached them on behalf of a prisoner, they shrugged
their shoulders and referred the suppliant to me. Now-a-days we have a
probation law and such work as I have been describing is legalized. But
in the early days, when I had no official sanction I found my position
very embarrassing. Without having been in any way elected to office I
was actually exercising a power which is supposed to be the gift of the
voters. However--like so many things in our haphazard government--my
position, extra-legal as it was, grew out of the sheer necessity of the
case. The theory is that our judges shall be jurists. And a knowledge
of the law does not fit one for the responsibility of deciding how we
shall treat our criminals. In the old days when the law frankly
punished offenders it was a simple matter and perhaps not too much to
ask of judges. But today when we are beginning the attempt to reform
those individuals who endanger society, the business of imposing
sentence requires not so much a knowledge of law as familiarity with
psychology, medicine and sociology. Although an expert in none of these
lines, I was accepted as a makeshift. The law did not provide for the
employment of specially trained men to assist the judges. I was
informally permitted to entirely neglect the ordinary work of a county
detective and give all my time to the courts.
The danger in such happy-go-lucky arrangements is that of graft. I
could have doubled or quadrupled my salary with impunity. The "shyster"
lawyers, who infest the Tombs tried for several years to buy my
intercession for their clients. I had to be constantly on my guard to
keep them from fooling me. And when they found that they could not
reach me in this manner, they tried industriously to discredit me, to
trick me into some suspicious conditions so they could intimidate me.
More than once they set women on my trail.
The politicians also tried to use me. I received a letter one day from
the "Old Man" asking me to intercede for a friend of his. I wrote back
that I would investigate carefully. A couple of days later I sent
another letter containing the prisoner's record, he had been twice in
state prison and many times arrested. "Under the circumstances," I wrote
"I cannot recommend mercy in this case."
The next day one of the "Old Man's" lieutenants met me in the corridor
and leading me into a corner, told me I was a fool. When what he called
"reason" failed to shake me, he became abusive and threatened to have me
"fired." I took the whole matter to Ryan. He told me not to worry, that
he would talk it over with the "Old Man." I do not know what passed
between them. But after that I had no more trouble from Fourteenth
Street. Whenever I saw the "Old Man," he gave me a cordial nod.
Frequently his runners would hand me one of his cards with a penciled
note, "See what you can do for this friend of mine and oblige." But
with one or two exceptions the "friend" turned out to be deserving. One
day he sent word that he would like to see me personally. I called on
him in Tammany Hall. He thanked me for "helping out" one of his friends
and told me that the city, in some of its departments, or some of his
"contracting friends" were always taking on new hands and that he would
try to find a place for any man I sent him. This was an immense help to
me in my work and a God-send to many a man who had lost his job because
of a baseless arrest.
So I gradually found a place of usefulness in the life of the Tombs.
Another typical case happened years later. I would not have known how
to handle it at first. The defendant was a Norwegian named Nora Lund.
She was about seventeen and the sweetest, most beautiful young girl I
have ever seen in the Tombs. She was employed in one of the smartest
uptown stores. It had an established reputation as a dry goods house.
The founder had died some years before, a stock company had taken it
over and was developing it into a modern department store. Besides the
old lines of goods they were carrying silverware, stationery, furniture
and so forth. Their patrons were most of the very well to do classes.
Just inside the main entrance was an especial show case, where a variety
of specialties were exhibited. Nora presided over this display and it
was her business to direct customers to the counters they sought and
answer all manner of questions. She had been chosen for this post
because of her beauty and her sweet, lady-like manners. If you asked
her where the ribbons were for sale, you carried away with you a
pleasing memory of her great blue eyes and her ready smile.
She was paid six dollars a week. Her father, who had been a printer,
was dead. Her mother worked in a candy factory. A sister of fourteen
was trying to learn bookkeeping at home while she took care of the two
younger children.
Nora's wage, together with the mother's, was enough to keep them in
cleanliness, if not in comfort, and to put by a trifle every week for
the education of the boy whom the women fondly dreamed of sending to
school. But the mother fell sick. Gradually the little pile of savings
was swallowed up. Mrs. Lund needed expensive medicine. And six dollars
a week is very little for a family of five, especially when one is sick
and another must always have fresh clean linen collars and cuffs. At the
store they insisted that the girls should always be "neat and
presentable." The fourteen year old sister went to work looking after a
neighbor's baby, but she only got two dollars a week and two meals.
When the savings had been exhausted Nora took her troubles to the
superintendent. She did not want to seem to be asking for charity, she
begged to be given some harder work so she could earn more. It was
refused. That week Wednesday there was nothing in the house to eat.
The druggist and tradesmen refused further credit, and the rent was due.
Nora went again to the superintendent and asked to have her wages paid
in advance or at least the three dollars she had already earned. The
superintendent was angry at her importunity.
When Nora left the store that evening she carried with her a box
containing a dozen silver spoons. Unfortunately she did not know any of
the regular and reliable "receivers of stolen goods," so she had to take
a chance on the first pawnshop she came to. The man suspected her,
asked her to wait a moment and telephoned for the police. He kept her
at the counter with his dickering until the officer came. Nora did not
know the first thing about lying and broke down at the first question.
If she had been a man I would have encountered her sooner, but I very
seldom went into the women's prison. It is part of the burden of their
sex, I suppose, but the women one generally finds in prison are the most
doleful spectacle on earth. Having once lost their self respect they
sink to an infinitely lower level than men do. With the first
enthusiasm of my early days I used often to dare the horror of that
place. But I soon recognized my defeat before its hopelessness and gave
it a wide berth. So I did not hear of Nora when she first came to the
Tombs. It was two weeks before her case was called. It came up before
Ryan. I was not in court when she was arraigned, but the next morning I
found a note in my box from the judge.
"Please look into the case of Nora Lund, grand larceny in the second
degree. She plead guilty yesterday but she does not look like a thief.
I remanded the case till Wednesday to give you plenty of time."
Before Wednesday I had the facts I have already related. It was pitiful
to see Mrs. Lund. The shame and disgrace to the family name hurt her
much more than the starvation which threatened the household. She was
really sick, but she came down every morning to cry with her daughter.
They were in a bad way at home, as Nora's wage had stopped since her
arrest. I fixed them up with some food, squared the landlord, and did
what I could to cheer them. Ryan had already shown his sympathy and I
allowed myself to do, what I made it a rule never to do. I practically
promised the mother that Nora would be released.
I prepared my report with extra care. It was an unusually good case.
All the goods had been restored. The firm had lost no money. I had
rarely had an opportunity to report so strongly my belief that the
offender could be safely discharged. I recommended the "utmost
leniency" with a light heart.
When the case was called, I handed up my report to the judge. He read
it rapidly as if he had already made up his mind to let her go.
"You're sure it's the first offense?" he asked perfunctorily.