platforms of public halls to relate the stories of their past lives,
their many crimes and subsequent conversions. This may be thought by
some to be helpful in mission work and among church people, but in a
work like ours it would be more than unwise. Talking of an evil past is
often the first step that leads to repeating the evil deeds. Anything
like boasting of the crimes and achievements of an evil past cannot
be too strongly deprecated. In their own little home gatherings among
themselves our "boys" freely give their testimonies as to what God has
done for them, but even there with no outsiders present, they feel too
deeply ashamed of the forgotten and buried past to wish to resurrect
it. One of the mottoes of Hope Hall is, "Never talk of the past and
so far as possible do not think of it." There is in this however one
disadvantage in that the world cannot have the object lesson which
would surely be helpful to many when brought face to face with the
results already gained. The missionary can bring back his Indian or
Chinese convert and the dark face and simple earnest broken words
appeal to a Christian audience; the doctor can exhibit his cures at the
clinic; the teacher can glory over her scholars at their examinations,
but in work like ours the victory can never be fully shown to the world
without violating sacred confidences, and making a show of that which
it would be cruelly unjust and unwise to parade.
That something of the grateful hearts and bright hopeful lives of
our graduates may be known to others, I gather here and there, from
hundreds of like letters, just a few that will speak for themselves.
To the "boys" still in prison one man writes: "Dear Comrades:--I
will try and write a few lines to assure you, that you have in me a
converted comrade who has left the 'college' but has not forgotten
those still confined there" (as not a few have since found out).
"I am very grateful for this, another opportunity to send a few words
of cheer to those who, I know, are deprived of many blessings of this
nature that cost so little--a smile, a cheering word or a pleasant nod
that you dare not receive or return.
"Dear comrades, you probably would not know me now, as such a
marvellous change has come over me. The dear Lord has been very good to
me. I am very often surprised at the wonderful alterations in my life
of late, the complete abnegation of my former desires, and, thank God!
I now possess a fervent desire to henceforth be a man.
"At the time of my conversion I little thought my future life would be
the success it has since proven to be.
"It is just a little over two years ago since I left 'college' and what
has that two years wrought in my life? I have made many new friends,
won their confidence and esteem, hold a fine position on the official
paper of this town, live right with the editor in his own home, have
been elected president of one of our local Sunday-schools, have a fine
large class of little girls, am studying preparatory to entering the
University of Illinois, have been restored to citizenship by Governor
Yates, and am now purchasing a two thousand dollar piece of property.
"Dear comrades, let me give you two keys to my success. One--God loves
to bestow where gratitude is extended; two--I have a private book on
the page of which it reads: 'May 3d, 1902. One-tenth of my earnings,
$---- paid and used in God's cause, May....'
"I fear I have gone beyond the space allotted me so must close, dear
comrades, with this, my last remark, and if you forget all the rest,
remember this: 'Value and grasp the opportunities to form character as
they are extended, and God will take care of the rest.' Fraternally
yours, ONE OF THE GRADUATES.
Another writes me after two years the following cheering news, though
as I write I can add on another year for the record since that date.
"Dear Little Mother:--It is now close to two years since I gained my
liberty from Joliet Prison, and I know that it will make you happy
to know that I am leading a good life. The thought that you were
instrumental in procuring my release upon parole, and that you still
take an interest in me for the future gives me great joy and pride, and
I thank God for the many benefits I have received at His hands through
you.
"I have a splendid position at $21 per week, and save half of it. I
have the respect of my employers and neighbors and live with my father
and mother and have the knowledge that I am loved of God. I am happy,
and have good reason to be. I shall always appreciate your loving
kindness to me, also the help I have received from Adjutant and Mrs.
McCormick and Sergeant Sam of Hope Hall No. 2.--Yours truly, Frank ----"
The next letter is from a man who was a very successful and notorious
forger. Of him the warden said to me one day while he was still in
prison, "If you can keep that man right after his discharge, you will
save the country thousands of dollars. All your work would be worth
while only for one such." He was, when we first met him a pronounced
infidel and terribly embittered against the world in general. He became
a sincere simple-hearted Christian, coming straight to us from fifteen
years in prison. He was nervous and unstrung and felt utterly helpless
to cope with life. In this condition Hope Hall meant everything to him.
He soon regained strength, nerve and courage. He is now a prosperous
man and has been out of prison nearly five years.
"Dear Little Mother:--It was my intention to write you ere this, but my
time has been so much taken up with the cares and labor of my position,
and things are so unsettled yet, that I put it off from one day to
another, but I will not neglect to obey the call of duty; the more so,
as it entails only a labor of love. I want you to believe me, that my
heart is in no manner changed towards you and your work. It is just as
full of love as when first I had the happiness to meet you in those
dark and bitter days, when nothing but darkness and friendlessness
seemed to be before me, and you proved yourself such a faithful friend.
Though I still live in the shadow of the past, there is such a lot of
sunshine about me now. If any word of mine can be a comfort to you and
a help to any one of my comrades still behind the bars, I gladly give
the word.
"I am well in body and mind. It seems to me that I am making friends
and well wishers everywhere. It lies with me to stay or not, but there
are so many things in this particular business which I cannot entirely
approve, that of late I thought much if it were not better for me
to turn to something else. I have not decided yet, but as soon as I
shall have done so, I will let you know. Be sure of one thing, though,
whatever I shall do, or wherever I may be, there is none anywhere, that
I know of, who can replace the friend who found me in wretchedness and
stretched forth her hand to help and comfort me. To the Christ-love
planted then in my heart, I shall remain true in storm or sunshine."
Since then this man has gone into business for himself. He is now
married and has a happy little home.
Another writes:
"Dear Little Mother:--Yours of the 4th received, and I need not tell
you how happy it made me feel when I realized that though you are
constantly behind the walls or touring across the country for your
'boys' you have not forgotten me and the other graduates. I am sure
that there are none of the 'boys' who have forgotten you.
"What a blessing Hope Hall has been to the thousands that have passed
through its doors, almost all of whom have been faithful to all that
the V.P.L. means.
"I have a good position and am living the life of a God-fearing man.
You would be surprised at the number of 'boys' that I meet in the city
constantly, all looking bright and happy and doing well in every sense
of the word.
"Asking your prayers and praying God to bless and prosper you in the
work, Yours for Christ."
The remark has sometimes been made that it is innate laziness that
leads to crime. I do not agree with this statement, but I can say that
if any of our "boys" were lazy in the old days, they certainly have not
shown it in their new life, for we find them most anxious to work and
they often undertake and keep bravely at work far beyond their strength.
"My dear Little Mother:--I was both surprised and happy to receive your
letter. I have not only friends of the right sort, but a position and a
prospect which increases in brightness each time I look forward after
doing nine years in prison. When I received my pay yesterday it was
the first legitimately earned money I have had in fifteen years. I have
never regretted giving up the past. I am satisfied with my position,
although the first few days I was not. I wrote to Lieutenant B----,
and he advised me to stick, in my own behalf, and his advice I have
taken. My work is hard and the hours long, but it can never be so hard
as to make me throw up the sponge. I have a little of your writing,
which I received on last Christmas in a Christmas present while at Hope
Hall. God bless you and your work for the 'boys' behind the bars. Your
comrade.
"P.S.--Enclosed find my first subscription to the Maintenance League."
The next letter is from a young man who had been the sorrow of his
home people because of his wild life. He was bright, well educated and
had good ability but he sold his soul to evil, demoralizing pleasures.
He became a thief and at last reached the point where the patience
of his people was exhausted and they believed it impossible for him
to be reclaimed. He came to us from a prison where our work was not
yet established. A copy of the _Gazette_ had reached him and through
its influence he learned to look upon us as his friends. He made no
profession of conversion but merely declared that he was anxious to
try and make a success of an honest life. His stay at Hope Hall was
quite a long one and we who watched him closely, could see the growth
and development of his better self as he fought desperately the old
vices.
Speaking to a comrade about this time he said, "When I have written in
the past to Mrs. Booth I have never called her Little Mother because
I was not sure I was going to stay right. I dared not call her that
until I was _sure_ but now when I write it will be always, 'Little
Mother.'" Here is a letter from him after he had been twelve months in
one position, and at the same time there came to me a letter full of
commendation, from his employer.
"Dear Little Mother:--I am sorry that I must begin by asking your
pardon for not having written for so long a time, but I am deeply
thankful that my next words can be, that I have done well in every
sense of the word. After the dull emptiness of the past, my life here
comes like the opening of summer after a long winter of weariness and
discontent. Day by day the influences that had grown up in the old
life have been losing their place, and new interests coming into my
heart that make me happier and stronger and better. I have written but
few letters since the beginning of the year, and I cannot write much
now, but I think you can understand much, perhaps all, of what I feel
and would wish to say. But I can say, after the year that has passed
since I left Hope Hall, that there are few months of my life that I
can remember with more pleasure than those I spent there, and I have
felt since leaving, that I there gained the strength I needed to help
me start life anew. I shall always feel the influence of those months
of close companionship with the men--each with a different story, and
a different struggle, and, no matter where my life may be passed, or
how dear the interests that may come into it, I shall always feel, when
I think of Hope Hall, the tenderness one feels when thinking of an
absent, well-loved friend."
The following note was an acknowledgment of a special copy of the
little Day Book sent to one of our "boys" shortly after his graduation.
"Dear Little Mother:--I am more pleased than I can say for your
remembrance of me and the delightful manner of this remembrance
emphasizes itself in the gift. Every day as I read this precious little
book I will think of the giver, and pray that God may grant unto you
every good and perfect gift. I am now in the world and must fight my
fight, but I know that that power which alone can subdue the enemy will
be my strength and shield if I but walk circumspectly. I know too that
the testimony of words will avail nothing, but that it is my life that
must speak. In the selection of the evening portion for to-day I read,
'Ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord. Walk as
children of the light.' I want my life to say this for me. Accept, dear
Little Mother, the remembrance of a grateful heart and in the charity
of your prayers remember me."
To those who do not know the writers much behind the written words
cannot be realized and I find myself saying, "After all what will these
pages mean to the public?" To me they are unspeakably precious; they
represent so many nights of prayer and anxious days, after the darkness
of which they come as the touch of a rosy dawn; they remind me of tears
to which they have brought the rainbow gleam of promise. I almost
grudge them to other eyes and yet if by their words other hearts may be
strengthened, their value will be doubled.
VI
UNWELCOMED HOME-COMING
Liberty! How much that word means to all of us! It is the keynote of
our Constitution. It is the proud right of every citizen. The very
breeze that flutters our starry flag sings of it; the wild forests,
the rocky crags, the mountain torrents, the waving grasses of the
wide-stretching prairies echo and reecho it. Yet much as we may think
we know of the fullness, sweetness and power of that word, we cannot
form an estimate of its meaning to one who is in prison. He has lost
the gift and those who have it not, can often prize the treasure more
than those who possess it.
People have talked to me about the prisoner becoming quite reconciled
to his lot, and in time growing indifferent to the regaining of
liberty. I think this is one of the fallacies that the outside world
has woven. I do not know from what prison such an idea emanated. So
far as my observation goes, I have yet to find the first prisoner
who did not long with an unspeakable desire for freedom. Even the
older life-men who have been in long enough to outlive all their
friends, who have no kith or kin to return to, and for whom there is no
home-spot on earth, plead earnestly for the chance to die in liberty.
They hope and plan, they appeal and pray for pardon, though it would
send them from the familiar sheltering walls into a strange, cold
world, but the world of free men. In every cell are men who count all
dates by one date, the day coming to them in the future when they will
be free again. Sometimes it is very far away and yet that does not make
it any less vividly present in their thought. The chief use in the
calendar is to mark off the passing days and some have even figured off
minutely the hours that stand between them and liberty.
There is a weird cry that breaks out sometimes amid the midnight
stillness of the prison cell-house, the venting of a heart's repressed
longing, "Roll around, 1912," and from other cells other voices echo,
each putting in the year of his liberty. I heard the cry break out in
chapel one Christmas day as the gathering at their concert broke up,
every year being called by the "boys" who looked forward to it as their
special year of liberty. "Roll around, 1912." How far away it seems to
us even in liberty, but how much further to the man who must view it
through a vista of weary toilsome prison days.
Having talked with many just before their dis when the days and hours
leave but a few grains to trickle through the glass of time they have
watched so closely, I know just what a strain and tension these last
days represent. Often the man cannot sleep for nights together under
the excitement and the nervous strain proves intense. Through the dark
nights of wakefulness he puts the finishing touches to the castles in
the air that he has been building through the weary term when with his
body in prison, his mind wandered out into the days to come, and hope,
battling with fear, painted for him a rainbow in the storm clouds of
the future.
Can you imagine how hard and bitter is the awakening for such a man
when he returns to life to find himself a marked and branded being, one
to be distrusted and watched, pointed out and whispered about, with all
too often the door of honest toil shut in his face? The man discharged
from prison is not unreasonable. He does not expect an easy path. We do
not ask for him a way strewn with roses or a cheer of welcome. He has
sinned, he has strayed from the right road, plunged over the precipice
of wrong-doing, and it must at best be a hard climb back again. The
men do not ask nor do we ask for them an easy position, the immediate
restoration of the trust, confidence and sympathy of the world on the
day of their return. They know they cannot expect, having thrown away
their chances in an evil past, to find them awaiting their return to
moral sanity. I have not found them unreasonable and certainly very few
have been lazy or unwilling to prove their sincerity. What we do ask
for the released prisoner and what we feel he has a right to ask of the
world is a chance to live honestly, an opportunity to prove whether
or not he has learned his lesson so that he may climb back into the
world of freedom and into a useful respectable position where he may be
trusted.
When God forgives us He says that our sins and transgressions shall be
blotted out like a cloud or cast into the sea of His forgetfulness. He
believes in a buried past. The world alas! too often goes back to that
wretched old grave to dig up what lies there, and flaunts the miserable
skeleton before the eyes of the poor soul, who had fondly hoped that
when the law was satisfied to the last day and hour, he had paid for
his crime, and might begin afresh with a clean sheet to write a new
record.
How often we hear the term "ex-convict." Do the people who use it ever
stop to think that the wound is as deep and the term as odious as that
of "convict" to the man who has been in prison? When he is liberated,
when the law has said, "Go in peace and sin no more," he is a free
man, and no one has the right to regard him as other than this. Any
name which marks him out is a cruel injustice. If the State provided
for the future of these men; if they were not dependent on their
own labors for their daily bread, it would not be quite so ghastly,
but when one thinks that this prejudice and marking of discharged
prisoners, robs them of the chance of gaining a living, and in many
instances forces them back against their will into a dishonest career,
one can realize how truly tragic the situation is.
Many a time one can pick up a daily paper and see the headlines, "So
and So to be Liberated To-morrow," or, "Convict ... will return to the
world," or some such announcement. If a man who is at all notorious has
finished a term in prison, the article tells of the crime he committed
five, six or even ten years before; what he did; how he did it; why he
did it. Some account of his imprisonment--with an imaginary picture
of himself in his cell--may be added, with the stripes in evidence,
and even a chain and ball to make it more realistic. This heralds the
day of his discharge. What a welcome back after his weary paying of
the penalty through shame and loneliness, toil and disgrace, mingled
often with bitter tears of repentance during those best years lost from
his life forever! This raking up of the past reminds his friends and
acquaintances of the wretched story which had been nearly forgotten,
and tells it to many more who had not heard of it. Is this fair?
Perhaps it may be said that this is part of the penalty of doing wrong.
I answer that it should not be! In a civilized land our wrong-doers
must be punished by proper lawful means. The law does not require this
publicity after release. Why should the world ask it? Besides that,
could we not quote the recommendation given of old that only those who
are without sin have the right to cast stones, and, if that precept
were lived up to, very few would ever be cast at all, for the saint in
heart and life would be charitable.
It does not take many days of tramping in a fruitless search for
work, or many rebuffs and slights, to shake for the most sanguine man
the foundation of those castles he saw in the air before his term
expired. When money is gone, and there is no roof to cover the weary
head, no food to stop the gnawing of hunger, and no friend at hand to
sympathize, the whole airy structure topples to the ground amid the
dust and ashes of his fond hopes, and the poor man learns in bitterness
of heart an anger against society that makes him more dangerous and
desperate than he ever was before.
Much is said of the habitual criminal. Some contend that he is born,
that, as a poor helpless infant, he is doomed to a career of crime and
vice. Others believe that such lives are the outcome of malformation of
brain and skull, and yet others have their own pet theories to account
for the large number of "repeaters," as they are called in some states,
"old-timers," or "habituals," as they are known elsewhere. I have
personally known many of these men and have traced their lives, talked
with them heart to heart, and I can tell the world, as my profound
conviction, that the habitual criminal is made, not born; manufactured
by man, not doomed by a monster-god; that such criminals are the result
of the lack of charity, of knowledge or thought or whatever else you
may like to call it, that makes the world shrink from and doom the
sinner to a return to sin, that treads further down in the mire the man
who has fallen.
What is a man to do on leaving prison with his friends dead or false to
him, with no home, little money, the brand of imprisonment upon him,
nervous, unstrung, handicapped with the loss of confidence in himself,
and with neither references nor character? The cry of the world is,
"Let the man go to work; if he is honest, and proves himself so, then
we will trust him and stretch out a hand to help him." Ah, then if
that day ever comes to him, he will not need your outstretched hand.
Your chance to help and strengthen him will have passed forever; the
credit of his success will be all his own, but few can reach that
happy day. It is easy to say, let the man work, but where shall he
find occupation; who wants the man who can give no clear account of
himself? If in honesty of heart he tells the truth and states, "I am
straight from prison," he is told to go on his way, and often the voice
that gives the command is harsh with indignant contempt and loathing,
and yet this man has one inalienable right in common with all his
fellow-men, the right to live, and to live, the man must have bread.
Some have said to me that it is cruel that the right to end their lives
is denied them, for should they commit suicide they would only be
condemned, and if they attempted it and were not successful, they would
be imprisoned for trying to do away with that which no man helped them
to make endurable.
These released men are not of the beggar class. Their hands are
eager for work. Their brains have a capacity for useful service, yet
they have to stand idle and starve, or turn to the old activities
and steal. Does the world say this is exaggerated? I declare I have
again and again had proof of it. I believe that with hundreds who are
now habitual criminals, and have made themselves experts in their
nefarious business, there was a day when they truly wanted to be honest
and tried to follow up that desire, but found the chance denied them.