THE PRISON ANGEL.
There is no cavern so deep, no darkness so profound that the Holy One
cannot penetrate it with his mercy. It is unrepentant and stubborn guilt
alone which resists Him. Soon as the cry left her lips, Katharine found
her answer. Notwithstanding the hardness of her bed and the damp air
which floated heavily around her, she grew calm; some heavenly strength
fell upon her, and, folding her hands peacefully over her bosom, she
fell asleep. The water kept dropping from the roof, monotonous and cold;
the fresh straw grew moist under her cheek, but she smiled in the
darkness and whispered softly of a little child that had come from a
pleasant, happy place to comfort her, and which would visit that hard
couch nightly, and tell her of the heavenly home where it had found a
resting-place for them both.
When Katharine awoke in the morning, she was surprised to feel how
strong the night had made her, and she went forth to the life which had
seemed so terrible, with the firm resolve to find out her duty and do
it.
What human being ever turned resolutely to the performance of a duty
without finding some comfort growing up under it?
The gentleness and sweet obedience which marked Katharine Allen's
conduct in the prison, won many a kind word and act from her keepers.
Perhaps her beauty had something to do with this; but it was not her
beauty which made those rude men respect her in the cells of that copper
mine, as if she had been in the chambers of a palace. It was not her
beauty which checked the curses on the convicts' lips, or led them to
some rude efforts of politeness as she passed in her humble prison garb.
After awhile, Katharine began to see how wise and good the Almighty had
been in sending her to that gloomy place; how all unconsciously she had
been led to a great work through sorrows that prepared her for it, step
by step. If ever woman has a mission except that of performing the
duties which come naturally before her day by day, and hour by hour, it
is that of nursing the sick, and comforting the afflicted. Women were
intended for the gentler works of humanity, and who shall say that the
great reformers of the earth can surpass her in this mission of love, or
find a channel in all society through which her womanhood can be so
beautifully perfected?
It is guilt which makes the convict repulsive; attach a firm conviction
of innocence, or even repentance to the prisoner and his coarse dress
becomes picturesque, his hard fare sublime. When I describe Katharine
Allen in prison she is lifted out of all real convict life, but seems to
me like an angel wandering through those dark places, as one of old
sought out and unlocked the dungeon of the apostle. Suffering had done a
heavenly work with this young creature. Certainly, she had been unjustly
punished, but had not this chain of events brought her into a field of
great usefulness! Of her own accord would she ever have sought that
place, or descended that ladder? Yet where on earth was there a spot in
which humanity suffered so much, or where the influence of a good woman
could so surely bring comfort.
In her solitude, Katharine remembered many a wise lesson and kindly
precept that old Mr. Thrasher had taught her when she was restive in her
first imprisonment. It was wonderful how deeply the sayings of this good
old man had impressed her.
It was not long before Katharine was lifted out of the deepest misery of
her prison life and placed in the hospital as head nurse of that most
horrible place. The unwholesome position of the prison, the dreary
darkness of its mines, and the damps that trickled down their walls,
engendered diseases of all kinds with frightful rapidity, and that bleak
hospital room was always full. Those who know only of the common anguish
of comfortably appointed sick chambers can have little idea of the
terrible duties which fell upon this young creature. Instead of prayers
she heard little but raving curses of the past and eager cries for
release from that awful life, which was worse, these poor wretches
protested, over and over again, than any punishment which could await
their souls beyond the grave. Some would jest desperately about the ways
and means of this escape; laugh about the scant shrouds and pine boxes
in which they must set forth on the long journey. Others bore their pain
with stolid obstinacy, fearing to die, but dreading to get well, for
death gave them to the grave, health back into those damp mines, which
was a living burial.
With the sweet calm of one who finds an unexpected duty to be performed,
Katharine entered this place. Her very presence had a holy effect upon
the suffering convicts. Cruelty only hardens sin, and in those days
moral kindness to a convict was almost considered an offence against the
law. Men were convicted to be punished, not with any idea of
reformation, and being thrust utterly beyond the pale of mercy, grew
desperate and reviled one another when the evil spirit tortured within
them could find no other means of expression.
But the sweet goodness of this young woman, their fellow-prisoner,
softened all this. She comforted them with her gentle ways; soothed down
the profane spirit that gave out curses instead of groans, and dropped
softer feelings into those uneasy souls as Heaven gives dew to weeds
trampled along the dusty highway. She never preached, never exhorted
them, never forced the prison Bible upon their rejection; but the simple
promises of Scripture fell like poetry from her lips, at times when the
hungry soul of some poor convict, not utterly lost, seemed to crave
comfort at her hands. Sometimes, too, when a sick man, won by her
goodness, would ask where she found the beautiful words with which she
was striving to comfort him, Katharine would open the Bible and read
aloud to convince him of their reality. Then some patient in the next
cot would whisper her to read louder, and when her silvery voice was
lifted those sick men would turn wearily on the hard pillows and listen.
It is no great hardship to read or pray with the sick. Many a dainty
person can be found to perform such duties punctiliously; but to work
for the sick, to watch with them, wait on them, and with little means
supply great wants--this is a noble work even for the patience and
endurance of a woman. This is charity in its perfect work, mingling
prayers, kindness, and stern labor in one beautiful phase of
Christianity. This work Katharine performed so well that the fiend which
she found brooding over the pillow of many a wretched fellow-creature,
stole away under the sound of her comfortings, and a pitying angel came
in his place. This was a work of slow growth, but alas! Katharine had
plenty of time--eight long years.
You ask me if this young girl was unhappy in her dreary life, and I
answer _no_. Those who confer great good on humanity by self-sacrifice,
cannot be made utterly miserable. To such hope never dies. No, I say
again, the slumber which Katharine found in her pauses of rest was very
sweet. At such times the dreary sound of those water-drops trickling
down the walls of her prison, seemed like the bell-like murmurs of a
fountain, around which a baby child--one that always came in her
dreams--was hovering and waiting for her to finish her work in that
prison and see how beautiful the world was beyond it.
I cannot pause now to give the details of her strange life, or tell you
how many touching events rose each day to interest her best feelings.
The prisoners, young and old, began to look upon her with affection.
Even the women, whose hearts are not always easy of access to a sister
woman, received her little kindnesses, when she found power to offer
them, with something like gratitude. All this won upon the officers of
the institution. With her they began to enforce the discipline of the
prison less rigidly than they had ever done before; employed her in
lighter tasks; gave their own needle-work to her deft fingers; and
frequently supplied her with better food than was awarded to her fellow
sufferers. She received every favor with thankfulness, but took no
benefit to herself. The food which she appeared to carry off and consume
in private, went to the nourishing of some poor invalid, whose grateful
eyes thanked her and told of gentler feelings growing up in his heart.
Thus, through her favor with the prison officers and her influence with
the convicts, this young woman won for herself a power of good, which
those terrible walls had never witnessed since their foundation.