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Walled In
[Illustration: THE WALLED IN REGIMENT.]
Walled In
A True Story of Randall’s Island
BY
William O. Stoddard
AUTHOR OF
“Dab Kinzer,” “Crowded out of Crowfield,”
“Saltillo Boys,” etc., etc.
_Illustrated_
[Illustration]
New York Chicago Toronto
Fleming H. Revell Company
M DCCC XCIX
Copyright, 1897,
BY
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE HIGH STONE WALL 9
II. SUPPER TIME 20
III. EVENING VISITORS 31
IV. BEHIND BOLTS AND BARS 42
V. JIM’S PLOT FOR LIBERTY 51
VI. PLANS FOR ACTION 61
VII. ONE PLAN THAT FAILED 70
VIII. NEW IDEAS THAT CAME 80
IX. GETTING OVER THE WALL 91
X. A NEW HOME OF REFUGE 102
XI. JIM’S HIDING PLACE 114
XII. THE STOLEN MONEY 124
ILLUSTRATIONS.
THE WALLED IN REGIMENT. _Frontispiece_
THE SILENT PRINTING OFFICE. _Facing p._ 48
THEY ALL STOOD STILL WHILE THE DRUM BEAT. “ “ 82
Walled In
I
THE HIGH STONE WALLS
When the world was made, a number of islands were loosely scattered
around at the mouth of the Hudson River. To this day, the old river
works steadily on, trying to change the saltness of the Atlantic by
pouring in fresh water, and trying to widen its own mouth by washing
away these islands, but the ocean is as salt as it was a thousand years
ago and the islands are of about the same size that they ever were,
so far as anybody can see. When they were put there, however, and for
nobody knows how long afterward, there was not a boy or girl to have
been found upon either of them, while nowadays there are swarms and
swarms, from every nation this side of Asia, and they are of all sorts
and sizes.
Some of the ways and doings of those boys and girls cannot be rightly
told without first asking those who are to hear the story to take a
look at a map of New York City and of the land and water around it. The
map shows everything pretty clearly excepting the people and the houses
they live in.
One of the boys belonging to this story might have required a sharp
search to find him, on a particular morning, early in the spring. Not
that he seemed to be hiding, or that he was alone. On the contrary, he
stood nearly in the middle of a long line of boys. There were over four
hundred of them, dressed all alike, in jackets and trousers of dark,
thick gray cloth. Their caps and shoes were of the same pattern, all
along the line.
Stationed at intervals, here and there, were boys no larger than the
rest, in uniforms of dark, but bright blue cloth, with red stripes
on their arms, and these were officers and this was a battalion, and
it was marching briskly forward to the spirited music of half a dozen
drums and several shrill fifes.
It was a kind of charge, across the level, gravelly parade-ground, and
the boys were marching well, but right before them stood a high and
frowning stone wall and it was of no use to charge against it. It could
neither be broken through nor climbed and this one boy, in the middle
of the line, was staring at it as if he hated it, while he marched. His
feet kept time with the music and perfect pace with the feet of the
other boys, but there was an angry look in his black eyes and a hot
flush on his face, as if the wall had spoken to him, saying something
to rouse his temper and make him answer back. What he did say, was, in
a whisper that the next boy to him heard:
“I will!--See if I don’t!”
“What?” whispered the other boy.
“I’ll go over it, some day.”
“I’ll go with you, then. I can climb anything you can----”
“_Halt!_”
The clear-voiced command was at that instant heard, all along the line,
and every boy stood still in his tracks.
They were a pretty well drilled battalion.
“About,--_face_!”
In an instant the long, double lines stood, with their backs to the
wall and facing the parade-ground.
Away out in the middle of it stood the commander, the drill-master of
that very remarkable battalion. He was a handsome, pleasant eyed man,
of about twenty-five, dressed in a trim blue uniform, very like that of
a United States Army officer. He was really a naval officer, detailed
there by the Government to be practically the colonel of a regiment
of pretty wild boys. He was there to teach them discipline, order,
obedience, only a shade or so more strictly than if they had been
cadets at West Point, or the Naval Academy at Annapolis.
Other commands had been given and obeyed, and the entire force was now
marching around the broad enclosure by companies, six of them, and each
company was composed of boys of nearly the same height.
The first company consisted of boys, the oldest of whom may have been
eighteen, and the rear company was made up of little fellows as young
as twelve, or even younger.
Very nearly all of them, white or colored, moved as if they liked the
idea of being young soldiers, but they had not been recruited like
other soldiers. Some of them were there because they had no other
home to go to nor any other school to be taught in. Many, however,
were there for other reasons. For instance, that tall young fellow in
command of the foremost company. The captain, in bright, blue uniform
who handled his men so well. He is here for highway robbery and it will
be a long time before they let him out, although he is one of the
best behaved boys in the House of Refuge. He is not here altogether as
a punishment, however, nor are any of his companions, no matter what
their fault was. This is not a place of judgment, but of help and hope,
and, not long ago, a well-known literary man, after inspecting the
whole institution, said to the Superintendent:
“Sir, this is one of the footprints of Christ on earth. It is an
effort, in His name, to seek and to save that which was lost.”
“Thank God!” replied the officer. “About eighty-five out of every
hundred do well and become good citizens. We keep track of them, long
after they leave us.”
Nevertheless, the House of Refuge has to be a kind of prison. It is on
Randall’s Island, separated from the city of New York, on Manhattan
Island, by a swiftly running branch of the East River, which is not a
river at all, but an arm of the sea, and its rapid current is made by
the changing tides.
If, in one view, this is a prison, in another it is a great boarding
school, with very remarkable appliances for the education and
discipline of its pupils.
The entire enclosure, of which the parade-ground is a part, contains
several acres. The stone wall, twenty feet high, in front of which the
battalion halted, guards all of one of the sides of the enclosure and
parts of two other sides.
The remaining lengths of those two are protected just as well by high
buildings but on the southern side a tall chimney sticks up from a
range of buildings that are not so high. They contain a steam engine,
machinery and several kinds of workshops.
The drill was long and must have been tiresome, particularly to the boy
who carried and pounded the big, bass drum and to the other boy who
carried the flag. It all but blew him over, more than once, for there
were sharp gusts of March wind, now and then. He looked relieved, very
much so, when the battalion at last halted on the side nearest the
green lawn and the buildings, and was ordered to “break ranks.”
That command dispersed the young soldiers and sent them off to fun of
their own making, just as the order to assemble for drill had found
them, scattered here and there. It had not been a regular “school day”
and none of them had been in the vast schoolroom in the main building,
busy with books. At the moment when the military instructor’s whistle
had sounded, a brisk game of base ball had been going on in the ball
ground, next to the parade-ground. On that itself, a number of knots of
boys had been skylarking. Most of them had been indoors, however, and
of these, some had been in the conservatory, learning to be gardeners;
others in the printing shop; in the tailor-shop; in the shoe-shop; in
the stocking factory; in the carpenter shop; in the rope and matting
shop; and so on. It was not the season for farm work and none had been
away outside, on the island farm learning to be farmers as they soon
were to be, later in the spring. Moreover, the model ship, in front of
the main building, toward the East River, had a deserted look, but it
was waiting for the boys to come, crew after crew, and play sailors
under the nautical instructor. In that way many of them were to get
themselves ready to go to sea, really some day.
Jim, the boy who had hated the wall, had been in the printing shop, and
he had walked out of it with a look on his face as if he did not care
much for drill or for printing or for anything else. He was a tall,
wiry looking boy, of not much over fourteen, and he might have seemed
even good looking if he had not been so downcast. That was hardly the
right word for it, either, for right along with what some people might
have mistaken for sullenness was another look that was full of the
most determined pluck. It had stuck to his face during drill-time and
had grown stronger when he stared at the wall. It was there now, as
he walked along with the other boys, toward the entrance of the shop
buildings.
“I don’t belong here!” came out in another whisper, that nobody heard.
“I never did it! I never did it! I’ve been here long enough! I won’t
stay any longer. I’m going to climb that wall, somehow. I’m going to be
free and go where I choose!”
That was it. He was struggling with a sense of injustice, in some way
done him, and it was stirred up to unusual bitterness by a longing for
freedom. It was as natural as breathing to hate to be shut in and to
hate the wall and to study how it could be climbed over, and to dream
of all the wonderful things beyond it.
“Jim!” said a boy of his own size who was walking with him. “You can’t
do it!--You can’t even get a chance to try.--Then, if you did get out,
there’s the East River to cross and we never could swim it. What’s
more, if we got to New York, we’d be known by our clothes and the cops
would catch us and send us back. It’s no use!”
“I will, though,” said Jim. “You see if I don’t. I don’t belong here!”
And then he added, in his hot and angry thoughts, but not aloud:
“I’ve been here a whole year and I ought not to have been sent here. I
didn’t do it!--I never stole a cent of that money,--I don’t care what
they say.--When I get out, though, I won’t go back to uncle John’s
house. He’s as hard as flint. Aunt Betty isn’t, though. I’d like to see
her. She tried to keep me from being sent here.”
II
SUPPER TIME
No boy has ears keen enough to hear a woman who is speaking fifty miles
away from him. Nevertheless, Jim might have been glad to hear what a
woman was saying, in a farmhouse away up the Hudson, at the very moment
when the battalion he was in was halted in front of the wall. She was a
kindly faced, middle aged woman, and she was speaking with more energy
than seemed naturally to belong to her, for she did not look energetic.
“John Bronson,” she said, “I suppose you did what you thought was
right, but I never did believe Jim took that money!”
“Well!” sharply responded a large, heavy looking man, who sat near
her. “You are all wrong! Nobody else could possibly have taken it. The
court said so. Jim was the only one who could have got at it, anyhow.
Besides, he was seen a spending money in the village, too. He took it.”
“I’ll never believe it!” she said. “I don’t care how they made it look.
He never confessed it, either.”
“Jim always was obstinate, and you know it,” said her husband, sternly.
“He never would give in. The House of Refuge men’ll bring him to his
senses, though. He’ll learn something, there.”
“He has been there a whole year,” she said, sadly enough. “O, how I
want to see him, sometimes!”
Something else cut off the talk about Jim, at that point. He did not
hear the remarks of Aunt Betty, or Uncle John, but it was just as
impossible for any boy or girl on Randall’s Island,--for there were
many girls there,--to have heard what people were saying, over in
the great city, so near at hand. Part of that city of New York is on
Manhattan Island, but a larger part, with not nearly so many people in
it, is on the mainland, above the arm of the sea known as Harlem River.
It begins just above the upper end of Randall’s Island.
Away up in that new part of the city, a girl of about Jim’s age, and a
boy who may have been a little older but was no taller, were standing
in front of another kind of stone wall and were talking about it.
This wall was about twelve feet high and was roughly made, with a
rugged face, very different from the smooth finish of the barrier
around the parade-ground. In fact it was nothing at all but the side
of a new street. An old road which once had run along there had been
contented to go down into a hollow and come up again on the higher
ground beyond. Now, however, that the city had spread out and taken
in all that land, it had been best to make a level. All high places
were cut down and across all low places the streets were carried on
“viaducts.” These left the ground on either side of such a street away
down below it, looking more of a hollow than ever.
One of these streets was a broad avenue, promising to be good looking
after it was finished, but very ugly now. It was so much wider than the
old road it was taking the place of that it cut off an old front yard
entirely, and the house there which had been a number of feet from its
old front gate was now almost exactly on a line with the stone wall at
the edge of the avenue. That was the reason why the girl looked hard at
the wall and at the house and then turned to the boy, exclaiming:
“Why, Rodney Nelson! Your folks are just walled in! How on earth are
you going to get out?”
It looked like it, for the side streets, crossing the avenue at the
ends of the square, were built up in the same way and on the fourth
side, to which their backs were turned, were the backs of a solid row
of buildings, fronting upon another avenue.
“You can’t get over that wall,” said Rodney. “Billy’s tried it,
everywhere, and he can climb anything that isn’t straight up and down.”
He seemed to be pretty cheerful about it, nevertheless, whoever Billy
might be.
“Tell you what,” she said, “you can come across and get out through our
house and the shop, till you can put up some stairs, or a ladder.”
“Guess we’ll have to,” replied Rodney, “but Billy’s got to stay at
home, now. They finished the last of that wall, this morning. Come on
upstairs and see how mother’s going to get in, this evening.”
In half a minute more they were up in the room over the parlor and she
at once remarked:
“O! I see! your mother’ll climb in at the second story windows.”
“She won’t have to climb,” said Rodney. “Look here.”
The Nelson house was old, but it was not large. That second story had
but four rooms, two of them of good size, two of them, at each end of
its entry, quite small. The large front room, however, had an ample bay
window that jutted out, now, almost over the edge of the wall. That was
not the window Rodney went to, but the one in the little room on the
left, and he had it open in a twinkling.
“There, Millie,” he said, “I can nail down some pieces of board and
mother can step right in. She won’t need any ladder. We can change
things around, too, and bring the parlor up here.”
“That’ll do,” said Millie, “but it isn’t as good as a door. I wouldn’t
want to live in a house that’s upside down, anyway. That avenue won’t
be anything but mud, till they pave it and put in the sidewalks. I’m
glad we can’t be walled in or lose our doors and windows.”
“It changes everything for us,” said Rodney. “I don’t quite know what
to make of it, yet, but I’ve loads of work to do, all day, to have
things right when mother comes home.”
“So have I!” exclaimed Millie, and away she went, downstairs, to go
home across lots, while he stepped out of the window and turned to
stare, in a puzzled way, at all of his house that stuck up above the
new avenue. It certainly was not the same house it had been, and all
the ground around it was walled in, but, after all, Rodney was the same
boy.
How about all those other boys, over on Randall’s Island? They too were
walled in, but were they not the same boys? Did the house they were in
change them?
At all events, like Rodney, they had “loads of work to do,” all day,
until supper time. Then indeed there was a curious kind of coming in to
supper, for this, too, was part of their schooling and their discipline.
All over the enclosure and in every workshop, could be heard the tap of
a drum. Everywhere, work stopped. There were minutes of preparation
and of “putting away things.” Then another drum-tap was heard, and from
all directions compact and orderly squads of young fellows began to
march toward the great dining-room, supper-room, of the House. Every
boy was “tallied,” on leaving his place of work, and he was counted
again as he went in to supper. Every sentry on duty; every boy in the
“office”; promoted there for good behavior; every inmate of the House
was at that hour reported and the Superintendent knew where he was and
what he was doing.
All but a very few of the boys were either eating supper or taking
their regular turns as waiters, under the supervision of a blue-coated
gentleman who was all the while explaining the supper management to
half a dozen visitors.
The supper was plentiful, of good quality, well cooked, and there
was absolute fairness in the way it was served. There were many
tables, each large enough for a dozen or so of boys to sit around
it comfortably, and each table had its own boy watcher, a kind of
corporal, promoted to that post, temporarily, for good conduct. There
could be no favoritism shown by the waiters, for among them, to and
fro, walked the regular officers of the Institution. Anyhow, the supper
of those hundreds of young fellows, so many of whom would otherwise
have gone without any supper, was worth anybody’s while to go and see,
for it suggested something that was said, once: “I was hungry and ye
fed Me.”
Hundreds of boys, and not a word from one of them, even to his next
neighbor, for the rule of the place was that there should be no talking
at the table. Therefore, at all of the many tables arranged around the
great dining hall, the most noticeable person present was Silence.
So it was, although not so perfectly, at Uncle John Bronson’s house,
fifty miles away, up the Hudson, but the silence was broken there, at
last.
“John!” exclaimed Aunt Betty. “I can’t help thinking of Jim. I wish I
knew what he is doing and how they treat him.”
“I guess they treat him well enough,” he responded, grimly. “But it
doesn’t do any good for us to talk about him.”
“Well, I s’pose it doesn’t,” she said. “But it seems as if he had lost
everything. When a boy is sent to such a place, you take away from him
all he has----”
“No, you don’t,” he exclaimed. “They say it’s a good place. Besides,
he did it, himself, when he stole the money. He’d always been kind o’
reckless and self-willed. I guess he’ll learn something.”
“When a boy loses his good name, and his self-respect, and his
liberty,” slowly replied Aunt Betty, looking sorrowfully through the
window near her, “I think he loses about everything there is.”
Uncle John may have acted from what he thought was a sense of duty, in
something he had done concerning Jim, but he looked very uncomfortable,
just now. He sat there, with a face that grew redder and redder, all
the while Aunt Betty was gone into the kitchen, after the teapot and
the other things that belonged to the farmhouse supper-table. It might
have been better for them both if Jim had been there, instead of at one
of the tables in the House of Refuge.
III
EVENING VISITORS
Rodney had said enough to Millie to make it plain that his mother was
accustomed to go out to work and that she earned barely enough for them
to live on. He may have been thinking of that, now, as he stared at his
house.
“It’s a big avenue,” he said, “but mother’s got to sell one of our
lots to pay off the taxes and assessments for having it done. I don’t
care if the city does pay for What land they take. It’s hard on
mother.--She’ll be awful tired, but supper’s ready. Good one, too.
Don’t I Wish I could find something to do, now I’m out of school? I’ve
tried in dozens of places. Guess there are too many boys.--Hullo!”
“Me b’ye,” came at that moment in a deep, good-humored voice, behind
him, “what ye want is a dure, where the small windy is. I can put wan
in, chape.”
“That’s what we want, Pat,” said Rodney.
“It’s a dure was in a building we tore down,” said Pat, “and it’s a
good big wan. All it wants is puttin’ in, and a dure step to the walk,
wid a good rail, and ye’ll be as well aff as iver ye was, wid a foine
front on the aveny.”
“I’ll tell mother,” said Rodney, with a keen and hopeful survey of the
place where the door was to be.
“’Twon’t cost her much,” added Pat, “and the likes of her don’t want to
be climbin’ in and out o’ windies.”
Away he went and Rodney was still considering the matter when he was
again spoken to.
“O Rodney! This is dreadful! Seems to me as if they were taking away
everything.”
“Mother!” exclaimed Rodney. “We’ll have a door, there, instead of a
window----” and he rapidly explained Pat’s offer.
“Tell him to go ahead!” said Mrs. Nelson. “No matter what it is, so
long as it’s a door. But somebody’s neck’ll be broken, yet, tumbling
down that wall, into our garden.”
She said that as she was getting in at the window, after Rodney had
taken away a bundle she had carried.
“I’ll take it downstairs,” he said, as he followed her. “The parlor’s
got to come up here, but we can leave the dining-room where it is, and
the kitchen. Billy’s been walking around, all day, at the foot of the
wall, trying to find a place to climb out, but there isn’t any.”
At that very moment, a bearded, contented looking face, appeared at the
bay window.
“Ba-a-beh!” it remarked.
“Mother!” exclaimed Rodney. “How on earth did that fellow get out? Even
a goat can’t climb up and down a wall.”
“I don’t care how he got out,” she replied, wearily. “I must have my
supper.--O, dear! What are we to do! I feel clean discouraged.”
Downstairs they went and both of them seemed to be carrying heavier
burdens than the bundle, whatever it was. Rodney had evidently been
both housekeeper and cook and a little table was set in the kitchen,
handy to the stove and the teapot, but Mrs. Nelson walked straight on
and out at the back door.
“How high those walls are!” she said. “Yes, I suppose the Kirbys would
let us get out through their place, but I’d rather have a door of my
own.”
“So would I,” said Rodney. “I’ll tell Pat to go ahead and put one in,
as soon as I can see him, to-morrow.”
“Ba-a-beh!” came, just then, in a tone of strong approval, from a
friend whose left horn was almost under Rodney’s elbow.
“I say, mother,” exclaimed Rodney, “how did he get down here again.
Guess there’s a weak spot in that wall, somewhere.”
That might be, but Mrs. Nelson was too tired to be interested in goats
and walls, and she went into the house. It was a great mystery to her
son, however, for he had inspected the entire enclosure, that day,
accompanied by Billy, and had decided that no fellow could get out
unless he used a ladder.
“He’s about the smartest goat there is,” remarked Rodney, “but I’d
better watch him and see how he does it.”
Supper time came and went, everywhere, and after that the evening
shadows began to settle down over the city. Then anybody looking in
that direction from a distance would have seen a kind of glow in the
sky above it, coming up from all the lights that were burning along
all the hundreds of streets. There was no moon to speak of but there
were lights, in front windows of dwellings and business places, and the
stars helped also, so that it seemed a pleasant kind of evening.
There was one street, on the eastern side of the city, which projected
nearly a hundred feet out into the East River in the form of a wooden
pier. Only one solitary street-lamp was burning on the pier and beyond
it all was a gloomy glimmer of rippling, rushing water. A swift tide
was rushing out and a brisk wind was blowing.
The one lamp was on the left side of the pier, at the head of a flight
of wooden steps, leading down to a float, and by the float was moored
a small but serviceable steam tugboat. In that light, all that could
be seen of her was a stumpy, sheetiron engine chimney; a lot of small
windows, lighted up inside; some steam from a puffing pipe; and the
rest of the boat had to be taken for granted. There were puffs and
coughs of steam because the boat was at that moment casting loose her
hawser and setting out upon a voyage.
She did not go directly across, but in a slanting, southerly course,
out of which she was quickly compelled to veer, yet more to starboard,
that is, to her right, by a vast blaze of glitter and puff and a
warning hoot of a steam whistle which came swiftly up from the
southward. The glittering ranges of windows and the two huge, black
pipes that towered above them, belonged to one of the largest “Sound
Steamers.” She was so large, indeed, that when the tug had passed her
and steered into her wake, the swell it was rocked in called out an
exclamation of:
“O!--Well!--I declare!” from one of two gentlemen who were sitting in
the little cabin.
The next words he uttered, as he once more squared himself in the seat
he had been so suddenly pitched out of, were:
“What a swell!--But what I was saying about Jim is this:--He isn’t so
bad a boy----”
“Not bad at all, I think,” said the other.
“But then I can’t get at him. I’ve tried again and again----”
“So have I. He’s a complete puzzle.”
“And he isn’t sullen, either, and he isn’t exactly rebellious, but you
can’t make any impression on him.”
“He says he was unjustly convicted and it works on him worse and worse,
all the time. We can’t help it, though----”
“Of course we can’t, but I’m afraid it’ll hurt him, all his life----”
“To be sure it will, but we must do our duty. Some of the boys are
turning out splendidly. I’ve been hearing good news from several of
mine.”
“So have I, but I don’t mean to give up Jim. There’s the making of a
man in that boy.”
“He is doing well in the school.”
“He is the best type-setter in the printing office.”
“I wish he was out. There are a dozen more that ought never to have
been sent there. I don’t mean that none of them did wrong, but it hurts
some boys, worse than others, to be shut up. They feel a sting----”
“Here we are----”
They had talked pretty steadily all the way, but the tug was now at
her wharf on Randall’s Island, and these were two of the managers of
the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents. The boys were
“in prison and they visited them.” They were men of wealth, education,
unusual intelligence. There were others like them who came and worked
as they did, and it was curious how strong a hold the youngsters
seemed to have upon them. Of course the boys liked their friendly,
sympathizing visitors, but probably none of them ever knew, at least
while on the Island, what a study and worry they were to such men as
these, as well as to the exceedingly capable and faithful officers who
were all the while in charge of them. Many learned more after going out
into the world and finding that even then these friends of theirs did
not let go of them but followed them with help and hope and sympathy.
So this great school, with its high, stone walls and its rigid
discipline and its likeness to a prison, was after all a splendid token
of the love that goes out after even the very bad boys whom some people
are willing to give up and to throw away. The other name of that Love
is very sacred and beautiful.
Jim was not a bad boy, but he felt like one, that night. He felt bad,
all over, and angry, and rebellious, and almost hopeless, for he was
all the while thinking of the wall and of how high it was, and of all
the great world of life and liberty that lay beyond it.
So far as he could see, there were to be long years of House of
Refuge life, during which he was to know little and see nothing at
all of that wide, bright world, and the thought was very terrible.
He thought a great deal and imagined a great deal, but not among any
of his imaginings did there come any idea that he had an interest in
another boy, over in New York City,--a boy whose house and garden had
been walled in by new streets. Jim knew nothing of Rodney; nor of his
mother; nor of Billy the goat; nor of Millie Kirby. He could not have
guessed that they were ever to be of any importance to him, over on the
Island, listening and waiting for the rap of the drum that was shortly
to tell him and all the rest that it was bedtime.
IV
BEHIND BOLTS AND BARS
Bedtime at the House of Refuge was quite an affair. Wherever there
might be a squad of boys, in any part of the buildings or grounds, at
the tap of the drum, they were expected to “fall in,” like soldiers,
and march toward the dormitory. Each detachment was sure to have its
own officer, a boy promoted, for good behavior and trustworthiness, to
be corporal, sergeant, or lieutenant.
The dormitory itself was a remarkable sleeping place. It contained a
separate room for each boy, but the rooms were not arranged like those
of a hotel or a dwelling. There was one immense room, with plenty of
windows for daylight and plenty of burners for gaslight. All around the
sides of this room ran a broad, empty space, or passage-way, and inside
of this, up and down the middle, had been constructed two tiers, one
above another, of little bedrooms. Each tier was composed of two rows
of rooms, set back to back with their faces toward the outer windows.
The face or front of each room was made of slender, upright steel bars,
not much more than two inches apart, and each room had a door, made
in the same way, shutting with a strong, spring lock. Of course, each
room was small and the beds were only wide enough for one boy, but they
were very clean and comfortable. There was plenty of light when light
was needed; plenty of air, always; and then perfect silence to sleep
soundly in was secured by the rule which forbade talking or any kind of
skylarking in the dormitory.
Watchmen patrolling around the upper or lower tier of cells, or rooms,
could at any time see the entire inside of each, as they walked by. The
outer doors of the dormitory closed with strong and intricate locks,
of a peculiar pattern. Beyond these were other doors, with watchmen,
and beyond all was the open parade-ground inclosure and its high stone
wall. Beyond this was the chilling, rushing, impassable tide of the
deep and pitiless East River. No boy could hope to get out from one of
those sleeping cells and into the city,--into liberty and the world
until the appointed time should come for him.
The dormitory was as still as still could be, that night, when Jim lay
upon his bed and thought of it all, and he grew bitter at heart with
the seeming impossibility of even getting a chance to try Whether or
not he could climb the outer wall.
“I’m about the best climber on the training ship, when they send us
into the rigging,” he said to himself. “I could go up on a rope or
anything. If I could have some of the other fellows with me! Some
things I guess I couldn’t do alone. I don’t want any but plucky fellows
and good climbers. I don’t belong here. I never did it and I’ve been
here long enough. I’m going to get out, if I can.--There, he’s just
gone by.”
That meant the passage of a watchman, on his patrol, and Jim obeyed a
strong, angry impulse, to jump out of bed and stare after him through
the grated door of his cage.
“It’s just like what they put wild animals in, in a menagerie,” he
thought, fiercely, as his fingers griped the slim, but strong steel
rods.
O!--How he wanted to break out! He drew back, a moment, and then he
threw himself, with all his might, against the grating.
He did not care if it hurt him. He was so sore inside that it almost
felt good to be pained a little, outside.
Click!
“What was that?--What?--The door is open?--What have I done?--I
couldn’t have broken it!”
That was so. Every rod in the grating near him and in the door, was
perfectly sound and whole, and yet,--he could hardly believe his
eyes,--the door of his cage was now standing ajar, as if inviting him
to push it open wider and walk out into the roomy corridor. He did so,
but it was very much as if it were all a dream.
Jim’s first feeling was a strong sense of exhilaration, for one of the
barriers he had been thinking of had unexpectedly given way. It was
such a strong barrier, too, with its steel gratings and its lock. He
turned and stared at his open door and empty bedroom and he came near
exclaiming aloud:
“How did it happen?”
He knew the door had been shut as carefully as usual by the officer who
had been in charge of the boys when they marched into the dormitory.
He examined the look.
It was a very pretty, very perfect lock, but he saw that its strong,
brass tongue, that played back and forth on its spring when a key
worked it, could also be pushed back by his finger, pressing on its
end. Then he almost shut the door and could see that the brass tongue
was short and would only go under its catch, on the upright at the
side, about half an inch or so.
“That’s it!” exclaimed Jim. “I can see, now. When I pushed so hard, I
bent the grating, for those light steel bars are springy. They sprung
out so far that they pulled out that tongue beyond the catch and so the
door slipped open. I can do it again,--Why,--I can get out into the
corridor as often as I want to, but I mustn’t let anybody know how it’s
done. Not even the other fellows.--I’ll look at their locks.”
It seemed to him as if his very breathing could be heard by somebody,
and so he hardly breathed as he stepped softly along to the next door.
The gas-jet near him had been turned low and the light was dim, but he
could see that the boy in that cell was sleeping soundly, after his
hard work in one of the shops and his long drill-marching.
“He isn’t one of the fellows I want,” thought Jim. “He can’t climb
worth a cent and he hollers when he’s hurt.”
That would never do, for Jim was beginning to feel like a captain,
hunting up recruits for some difficult and almost desperate enterprise.
Nevertheless, he tried the lock of that boy’s door.
“Yes,” he said to himself, “they are all alike. I can get my finger in
over the end of the catch-bolt and push it back.--There, I’ve opened
that door, but I’ll shut it again. Guess I’ll go back to bed, too,
before anybody comes to catch me. I know I can open the doors, but what
good’ll that do? I’ve got to think about it.”
[Illustration: THE SILENT PRINTING OFFICE.]
Silently, with his heart beating hard and his breath coming short, Jim
slipped back to his own door, and through it, and pulled it shut behind
him. He made no noise in doing so,--only a slight click as the bolt
sprang into the hasp,--but he did not feel safe until the bedclothes
were over him and he could seem to be asleep. Not many minutes passed
before he heard the feet of another watchman, or it may have been the
same man,--going along the corridor.
“I’d have been caught,” he thought. “I must look out for that.”
During all those minutes, and long afterward, he lay and thought of
locks, locks, locks, on all the doors he knew of in that House of
Refuge. He made up his mind to examine them, every chance he could get,
and he thought of all sorts of impossible ways of opening them.
It was more and more like a dream until his eyes closed and he was
asleep, and he slipped at once into a real dream of having passed all
the locked doors, only to find himself standing in front of a stone
wall twenty feet high.
Away over in one of the northern wards of the city of New York, Rod
Nelson, as sound asleep as Jim, was also dreaming and he too had a
stone wall to dream of. He was not trying to climb it himself, however,
for he was only looking on while his bearded friend Billy walked up the
side of that wall into the avenue, remarking, triumphantly:
“Ba-a-a-beh!”
When morning came, the usual round of activities began, everywhere.
The boys in the House of Refuge dormitory dressed themselves in their
rooms. Then, as the Superintendent’s assistant came and let them out,
they all marched away to breakfast. Jim went with the rest, but he gave
a keen, inquiring side-glance, at the lock of every door they passed.
He thought he saw something worth remembering in the lock of the great,
outer door of the dormitory itself.
“He only turned his key in it once,” he said to himself. “I’ve seen
them turn it away around three times. What does that mean? I don’t know
much about locks. They say these are the best and safest kind, though.”
V
JIM’S PLOT FOR LIBERTY
Women, like Mrs. Nelson, who go out to work for other people, have to
get up early, but her first thought, and Rodney’s, was more about the
door she was to go out by than even about breakfast.
“I’m going right off to find Pat,” said Rodney, as he helped her
through the upper side-window.
Nevertheless, before setting out on that errand, he went down into the
garden and took a long look at all the land which had been walled in.
It might be as good as ever, for a garden, but it had a queer, shut-up
appearance.
“Where’s Billy?” he inquired, aloud. “Hullo. There he is, out on the
avenue. How did the old rascal foot it up that wall?”
There was Billy, indeed, with his toes on the very edge, and with a
wisp of something green sticking out at one side of his mouth.
“Greens!” exclaimed Rodney. “He can steal from a grocer’s wagon better
than any other goat I know of.--We used to have a garden. Tell you
what, we can make garden of our lots and all the others, too, if we can
only have it ploughed. But how would a horse and plough ever get down
here?”
It was a pretty deep question and he gave it up, for that time. In a
minute more he was upstairs and out through the window, on his errand
to Pat. So far as he knew, he left the house without a living soul in
it, but before he reached the next corner, the door of the little back
bedroom, at the head of the stairs, went to with a sharp slam. It must
have been a strong draft of air that did it, or else the door shut
itself.
Pat was found and a bargain was made but Rodney did not see the new
door. That is, the old door that was to take the place of the window.
In fact, he felt like being satisfied with almost anything.
When he reached home again, he closed the window carefully behind him
and went down and out for another look around at his vacant land.
Hardly was he beyond the back doorstep, however, before he was hailed
with:
“Rodney!--Do look up there!--Doesn’t he look funny! How did he ever
manage to get there?”
“Why!--Millie!” exclaimed Rodney.
“Ba-a-a-beh!” came almost piteously down from the upper back window, on
the left. It Was Rodney’s own room and the window had been left open,
to air it, and there was Billy.
“I don’t care so much how he got in,” said Rodney, “but there he is and
we must get him out, somehow.”
At that very hour, the breakfast room at the House of Refuge was full
of hungry boys but it was wonderfully quiet. There was a slight
rattle of crockery, and now and then a low-spoken word from one of the
officers, but the eyes of those watchful guardians were everywhere and
the rules of order were thoroughly enforced. Beyond a doubt, this also
was a valuable part of the schooling the boys were getting but it was a
kind of restraint and was in danger of being mistaken for oppression.
It is one of the traditions of the House that all of the half-way
rebellions among the young fellows have broken out in the dining-room
or in the schoolroom, where the discipline is so complete, and never in
any manner out of doors, no matter how severe might be the drill of the
parade-ground.
Jim, at his own table, was willing enough to be silent, then and there,
but he was ready to burst with his great secret and was anxious to find
somebody, the right boy, to tell it to. He thought them over, one by
one, for he knew them all, but it was not easy to decide among them.
He was compelled, at all events, to wait for a proper opportunity,
and that could not come for hours, yet. His next experiences must
necessarily come to him at his type-setting work, at his “case” in the
printing room.
This was a light and pleasant place to be in. It had altogether an air
of regular business and not at all of restriction, unless it might
be in the clock work precision of whatever was going on and in the
fact that there was no talking, no communication, among the many busy
“typos.”
Jim had a slip of printed “copy” put before him, on his case, and the
moment he saw it he remarked to himself:
“Star Spangled Banner?--If I haven’t had to set that up four times! I
know where that comes from. The Superintendent is always telling us we
are Americans. Going to be citizens. So is the Military Instructor.
They’re both naval officers--I’m an American, but loads of the other
fellows are not. It’s my flag--I’ll set it up----”
There was something in it. A great deal more teaching than he or any of
the others knew was in the flag, the starry flag of freedom, that was
carried at the head of the parade-ground battalion; that was displayed
in the larger rooms of the House; that hung over the principal’s
platform in the schoolroom; and that so finely ornamented the handsome
lecture room in the main building. It had something to do with the
other teachings and with some of the traditions that passed around
among the boys. How some had gone out from that place to be sailors in
the navy; others to be soldiers and even officers in the army; and how
that and everything else, to them and all other boys, depended on good
behavior.
Jim was thinking about it, now, but his uppermost thought was that
sailors went all over the world, into far off seas, into foreign lands,
in freedom; and that soldiers, especially cavalry soldiers, rode
across the plains and among the mountains, seeing and doing wonderful
things, in freedom. O, how he longed for something wild and dashing and
adventurous,--something like the very dash for freedom that he was even
now looking forward to and trying to plan!
He naturally supposed that his undertaking, if he should make it, would
have to do with the various kinds of persons near him, and would as
soon have thought of China, as of a boy and girl who were looking at a
goat, in a second story window, over in the city. He was not in their
thoughts either, and Millie’s next remark was:
“Mother says you can go through our house as much as you want to. She
won’t look the back door----”
“I’ll come right over and see her, soon as I’ve got Billy down,” said
Rodney. “I want to find out how he got into my room.”
“I’ll wait,” said Millie. “Mother said she wanted to see you--” but he
had already darted into the house.
In a moment more the door of his bedroom was opened and out sprang
Billy. Without stopping to explain how he got in, or in what freak of
goat-mind he butted that door shut, he showed Rod that he could at
least go downstairs. Rod followed him out and Millie shouted:
“There he goes!--Now you come right along with me!”
She was a short, thin, dark haired girl, with eyes and a face that
seemed all one flush and sparkle of go and energy. Her very voice had
in it something peremptory and Rod stepped off as obediently as if
she had been a school-teacher. He knew the way through the gap in the
fence and through the Kirby back-yard, and he knew that they had a hall
running through the house to the street door. That opened on an old
avenue that was all built up and almost all the lower stories of the
houses were used for business purposes. Mr. Kirby was a printer and his
ground floor was his shop, with a steam engine in the rear room. There
were two stories above for the family to live in and the hall went all
the way through.
“Thank you ever so much,” said Rodney to Mrs. Kirby, when she came
downstairs, “but we’re going to have a door put in and then we won’t
have to climb through the window----”
“You can use our hall till then,” said Mrs. Kirby, with a voice and
manner precisely like Millie’s, “but I can’t have you bringing any
other boys to tramp through. Mr. Kirby’s workmen are bad enough----”
Something else called her and she was gone before Rodney could think
what to say to her, but she had used one word that fitted closely to
all he had been thinking about while he was looking at the walls and
the land and the house.
“Workmen?” he said. “Tell you what, Millie, don’t I wish I had a
trade! I’m afraid I ain’t going to get one. They say there isn’t any
chance for boys, nowadays----”
“I can set type,” said Millie, “when there’s any to set, but father
says it’s awful dull times. I want to do something else.”
“I’m going to!” exclaimed Rodney. “You see if I don’t. I won’t let my
mother work to support me. I’m going to get out, somehow.”
So he too had a feeling that he was somehow penned in. Circumstances
were against him and he must climb over them or get around them. Billy
the goat had somehow or other circumvented the walls created by the
streets and avenues. What a goat could do, a boy could do, but then
Rodney did not as yet quite understand how Billy had managed to perform
his feat.
VI
PLANS FOR ACTION
Different people have different kinds of difficulties to overcome.
Rodney Nelson, over in the city, felt as if he were shut up from doing
anything better than the work of changing his mother’s furniture from
one room to another. He had no trade; nothing that he could earn money
with; no prospects for the future. Jim, setting up type at his case
in the printing office of the House of Refuge, felt almost as if he
had no hope whatever. He had a new experience before him, however, and
it began to come soon after he got out upon the parade-ground. It was
not yet time for the afternoon drill and all the boys were at liberty
to do as they pleased. Some of them were playing ball; some were at
leap-frog; some were simply skylarking, as they called it, and that
meant all sorts of rough fun. It was Jim’s time for selecting the boys
to whom he could tell his secret and get them to join him in whatever
he was going to do. He was just going to speak to one boy, when
something came into his mind that made him stop.
“No, I guess I won’t tell him,” he said to himself. “I don’t belong
here, but he does. I couldn’t look the Superintendent in the face if I
should let that fellow out. It’s the best place for him. He didn’t know
a thing when he came here. Now he can read and write and make shoes----”
Just then one of the officers passed him, with a nod and a smile, and
Jim could smile back, as he touched his hat, for he had less of a sort
of guilty feeling which had troubled him. He turned and looked at the
great crowd of boys, scattered over the enclosure, and his thought took
a wider form.
“Let ’em all out!” he exclaimed. “Why, it would be the worst thing in
the world for most of ’em.”
That did not change his idea concerning himself and he may not have
been a good judge of what was best for others, for, before the
afternoon was over there were four boys besides himself who knew about
the dormitory door-locks.
“If yours won’t spring open, mine will,” he said. “Just you wait,
anyhow, till I come and let you out.”
They were excited enough about it, but each boy of them seemed to feel,
as strongly as he did, that it would be doing the hundreds of others
hurt instead of good to let them out of that place.
The Superintendent and the Managers might even have been gratified if
they could have known how clear was the opinion expressed that they
were “doing first-rate” with the youngsters under their charge.
That was not the only matter that Jim had to study, during that very
long day. He believed that he knew every stone in the parade-ground
wall, already, and now he found himself studying the buildings also,
and wondering how he should ever manage to lead a squad of escaping
boys right through them. Getting out of a bedroom was only a kind of
beginning, after all, and Jim’s heart sank within him, for he thought:
“They are stronger than the wall is, and beyond them is the East
River.--I don’t care! It’s just the awfullest kind of thing to do, but
I’m going to do it, somehow!”
No point or place in all the barriers of the House of Refuge seemed to
promise a door through which he could get out.
That very evening, over in their house, Rodney and his mother were also
discussing the door question, but they were also wondering over the
fact that Billy the goat had evidently found one, for that remarkable
animal was again missing.
“He can stay outside, too,” said Rodney, “if we’re going to have a
garden.”
“He’d eat up everything we planted,” remarked Mrs. Nelson. “We’ve
three whole lots of our own, and we can garden all the rest till they
build on them. That won’t be for ever so long.”
“It’s about all I can do,” said Rodney, and he seemed to have a
hopeless feeling about it and he went to bed thinking:
“If there’s anything that just tires a fellow out, it’s having nothing
to do.”