-----
"Yes!" said the Colonel, reflectively, "I've been almost everywhere in
my time except in gaol, and I've been in a great deal worse places than
a first-class American gaol with all the modern improvements. The fact
is, that philanthropic people have gone so far in improving the
condition of prisoners, that most of our prisons are rather better than
most of our hotels. At any rate, they are less expensive, and the guests
are treated with more respect.
"I never could understand the craze that some people have for prisoners.
For instance, in New York and Chicago, the young ladies have a society
for giving flowers to murderers. Whenever a man is convicted of murder
and sentenced to be hung, the girls begin to heave flowers into his cell
till he can't turn round without upsetting a vase of roses, or a big
basin full of pansies, and getting his feet wet. I once knew a murderer
who told me that if anything could reconcile him to being hung it would
be getting rid of the floral tributes that the girls lavished on him.
You see he was one of the leading murderers in that section of country,
and consequently he received about a cartload of flowers every day.
[Illustration: "HEAVE FLOWERS INTO HIS CELL."]
"I had a neighbour when I lived in New Berlinopolisville who was the
President of the Society for Ameliorating the Condition of Prisoners,
and he was the craziest man on the subject that I ever met. His name was
Hoskins--Colonel Uriah Hoskins--and he was the author of the Hoskins
Bill that attracted so much attention when it was before the
Legislature, though it never became a law. The bill provided that every
prisoner should have a sitting room as well as a sleeping room, and that
it should be furnished with a piano, a banjo, a library, a typewriter, a
wine cooler, and a whist table; that the prisoner should be permitted to
hold two weekly receptions, to which everybody should be allowed to
come, and that he should be taught any branch of study that he might
care to take up, books and masters being, of course, supplied free.
Colonel Hoskins used to insist that the only thing that made a man go
wrong was the lack of kindness, and that the sure way to reform a
criminal was to treat him with so much kindness that he would grow
ashamed of being wicked, and would fall on everybody's neck and devote
the rest of his life to weeping tears of repentance and singing hymns of
joy.
[Illustration: "DREW UP A BEAUTIFUL NOTICE."]
"While Colonel Hoskins was fond of all styles of criminals, burglars
were his particular pets. According to him, a burglar was more deserving
of kindness than any other man. 'How would you like it,' he used to say,
'if you had to earn your living by breaking into houses in the middle of
the night, instead of sleeping peacefully in your bed? Do you think you
would be full of good thoughts after you had been bitten by the
watch-dog and fired at by the man of the house, and earned nothing by
your labour except a bad cold and the prospect of hydrophobia? There is
nothing more brutal than the way in which society treats the burglar,
and so long as society refuses to put him in the way of earning an
easier and less dangerous living, he cannot be blamed if he continues to
practise his midnight profession.'
"I must say this for Colonel Hoskins. He did not confine himself to
talk, like many other philanthropists, but he was already trying to
carry out his principles. He really meant what he said about burglars,
and there isn't the least doubt that he had more sympathy for them than
he had for the honest men of his acquaintance. When people asked him
what he would do if he woke up in the night and found a burglar in his
house, and whether or not he would shoot at him, he said that he would
as soon think of shooting at his own wife, and that he would undertake
to reform that burglar then and there by kindness alone. Once somebody
said to Hoskins that he ought really to let the burglars know his
feelings towards them, and Hoskins said that he would do it without
delay.
"That same day he drew up a beautiful 'Notice to Burglars,' and had it
printed in big letters and framed and hung up in the dining-room of his
house. It read in this way: 'Burglars are respectfully informed that the
silver-ware is all plated, and that the proprietor of this house never
keeps ready money on hand. Cake and wine will be found in the
dining-room closet, and burglars are cordially invited to rest and
refresh themselves. Please wipe your feet on the mat, and close the
window when leaving the house.'
"Colonel Hoskins took a good deal of pride in that notice. He showed it
to everyone who called at the house, and said that if other people would
follow his example, and treat burglars like Christians and gentlemen,
there would soon be an end of burglary, for the burglars would be so
touched by the kindness of their treatment that they would abandon the
business and become honoured members of society--insurance presidents,
or bank cashiers, or church treasurers. He didn't say how the reformed
burglars were to find employment in banks and insurance offices, and
such, but that was a matter of detail, and he always preferred to devise
large and noble schemes, and leave the working details of them to other
men.
"One morning, Colonel Hoskins, who was an early riser, went down to the
dining-room before breakfast, and was surprised to find that he had had
a midnight visit from burglars. Two empty wine bottles stood on the
table, and all the cake was eaten, which showed that the burglars had
accepted the invitation to refresh themselves. But they did not seem to
have accepted it in quite the right spirit. All Hoskins's spoons and
forks lay in a heap in the middle of the floor, and every one was
twisted or broken so as to be good for nothing. The window had been left
open, and the rain had ruined the curtains, and on a dirty piece of
paper the burglars had scrawled with a lead pencil the opinion that 'Old
Hoskins is the biggest fule, and the gol-darndest skinflint in the
country. You set out whiskey next time, or we'll serve you out.'
"Hoskins was not in the least cast down by the rudeness of the burglars.
'Poor fellows,' he said, 'they have been so used to bad treatment that
they don't altogether appreciate kindness at first. But they will
learn.' So he laid in some new spoons and forks, and added a bottle of
whiskey to the wine that he kept in the closet for the burglars, and was
as confident as ever that the next gang that might break into his house
would be melted into tears and repentance, and would call him their best
and dearest friend.
[Illustration: "EVERY ONE WAS TWISTED OR BROKEN."]
"A week or two later Mrs. Hoskins was awakened by a noise in the
dining-room, and, after waking up her husband, told him that there were
burglars in the house, and that he must get out of the back window and
go for the police. He told her that he was sorry to see her manifest
such an unchristian spirit, and he would show her how burglars ought to
be treated. There was not the least doubt that there were burglars in
the house, and they were making a good deal more noise than was strictly
consistent with the prospect of rising in their profession, for no able
burglar ever makes any unnecessary noise while engaged in business,
unless, of course, he falls over a coal-scuttle, and then he naturally
uses language. St. Paul himself would probably say something pretty
strong in similar circumstances. Hoskins was sincerely delighted to have
the opportunity to meet his burglarious friends, and he lost no time in
dressing and descending to the dining-room.
"He wore his slippers, and the burglars--there were two of them--did not
hear him until he was fairly in the dining-room. They were seated at the
table, with their feet on the damask tablecloth, and the bottle of
whiskey was nearly empty. The Colonel was much pleased to see that they
had not damaged his silver-ware, and he was just about to thank them
when they saw him. They started up, and one of them caught him by the
throat, while the other held a pistol to his head, and promised to blow
out his brains if he made the slightest noise. Then they tied him hand
and foot, gagged him, and laid him on the floor, and then sat down to
finish the whiskey.
[Illustration: "CAUGHT HIM BY THE THROAT."]
"Both the burglars were partly drunk, which accounted for the
unprofessional noise they had been making. They talked in rather a low
tone, but Hoskins could hear everything they said, and it was not
particularly encouraging to a gagged and bound philanthropist. They
agreed that he was a fool, and a stingy fool, or else he would have kept
money in the house, and would have set out lemons and sugar as well as
plain whiskey. They said that any man who treated poor working men in
that way wasn't fit to live, and that Hoskins would have to be killed,
even if it was not necessary--as it plainly was in this case--to kill
him in order to prevent him from appearing at any future time as a
witness against them. They admitted that the whiskey was not bad of its
kind, but they were of the opinion that Hoskins had left it in their way
so that they might get drunk and be caught by the police.
"Colonel Hoskins listened to this conversation with horror, and the
prospect that the drunken rascals would be as good as their word, and
kill him before they left the house, was only a little more painful than
the conviction that his method, appealing to the better nature of
burglars, had failed for the second time. When the whiskey was exhausted
the men rose up and looked at Hoskins, and a happy thought struck one of
them. 'Thishyer idiot,' he said, 'may not have any money in the house,
but he's bound to have some in the bank, and he's going to write us a
cheque for a thousand dollars, provided we let him off, and don't kick
his brains out this time.' The other burglar, who was in that benevolent
frame of mind that Irish whiskey and conscious virtue sometimes produce,
agreed to the suggestion, and Hoskins was therefore unbound and seated
at the table, and told to draw a cheque at once if he had the least
regard for his life. As he was gagged he could not explain to the
burglars the kind feelings that he still had towards them, and the fact
that they could not draw the money on the cheque without being captured
by the police. So he simply signed the cheque, and groaned to think that
the poor burglars were so slow to be reformed in the way that he had
hoped they would be.
[Illustration: "TIED HIM IN A CHAIR."]
"When this business was over, the burglars tied Hoskins's wrists
together again, and then tied him in a chair. Then they set to work to
do all the damage they could do without making too much noise. They tore
the curtains and hacked the piano with knives, and poured a jug of
golden syrup over the carpet. Then they plastered Colonel Hoskins's face
with raspberry jam, and emptied a sack of flour over his head, and went
away, telling him that if he ever again ventured to trifle with the
feelings of poor but self-respecting men, they would put him to death by
slow tortures.
[Illustration: "MADE HIM WASH AT THE PUMP."]
"Hoskins sat in the chair for a couple of hours, till his wife timidly
crept downstairs and released him. It took him a good hour to get the
jam and the flour out of his hair and whiskers, and as Mrs. Hoskins said
that he was in no state to enter a decent bedroom, and made him wash at
the pump in the back yard, he found it a rather cold operation. Perhaps
it was the remarks that Mrs. Hoskins addressed to him during the
operation that irritated him, for she intimated very plainly that he was
no better than a professional idiot, and when a man's hair is stuck
together with jam remarks of this sort from the wife of his bosom seem
to be lacking in tenderness. However that may be, Colonel Hoskins had no
sooner got himself into what his wife condescended to call a state of
comparative decency, than he took down his 'Notice to Burglars,' and
tore it into a thousand pieces. That day he had an electric burglar
alarm put into his house; he bought the savagest dog that he could find,
and he stopped the payment of the cheque, which, however, was never
presented. He continued to be the President of the Society for
Ameliorating the Condition of Prisoners, but he steadily refused to
ameliorate a single prisoner convicted of burglary, and while he was
always a lunatic in regard to other criminals, he openly maintained that
a burglar was the worst of men, and that kindness was utterly thrown
away upon him. He never had any more burglars in his house, though the
dog now and then lunched off warm leg when some stranger to that part of
the country ventured into the Hoskins's premises at night. Hoskins was
very fond of the animal, which was quite right, but his practice of
leaving a bottle of whiskey, with an ounce of strychnine in it, on the
dining-room table every night, in case a burglar should succeed in
getting into the house, was, in my opinion, going a little too far.
Antimonial wine would have been much more humane and sufficiently
effective. But there is no man who is more severe than a philanthropist
who has been turned sour."
Experiences of a 'Varsity Oar.