Not only did the prisoners whom I knew never betray my confidence, but
ex-convicts who knew of me through others sometimes came to me for
advice or assistance in getting work; and many an odd job about our
place was well done by these men, who never gave us cause to regret our
confidence in them. A stranger fresh out of jail applied to me one cold
December day just before the holidays. I was in the high tide of
preparations for Christmas, and to this young man I gladly intrusted the
all-day work of trimming the house with holly and evergreen under my
direction, and never was it done more effectively or with more of the
Christmas spirit. The man had a beautiful time and confided to my mother
his longing to have a home of his own. He left us at evening with a
heart warmed by the vision of a real home, and his pay supplemented by a
good warm overcoat. These men used to make all sorts of frank admissions
to me in discussing their difficulties. I remember one man saying:
"I want to be an honest man; I don't like this kind of a life with all
its risks; I want to settle down, but I never can get a start. Now, if I
could just make a clean steal of one hundred dollars I could get some
decent clothes, pay in advance at a respectable boarding-house; then I
could get a job and I could keep it; but no one will give me work as I
am, and no one will trust me for board." And that was the hard fact. As
the man was leaving he asked:
"Could you give me one or two newspapers?" As I handed him the papers he
explained: "You see, if a fellow sleeps on the bottom of a freight-car
these cold nights--as I am likely to do--it's not quite so cold and hard
with a newspaper under you, and if I button them under my coat it isn't
quite so cold out-of-doors." It was no wonder that the man wanted to
settle down.
Several incidents of honor among thieves are recorded in the annals of
our household. One evening as we were starting for our usual drive my
mother exclaimed: "Stop a minute! There is Katy's sweetheart, and I want
to speak to him."
Katy was our cook and her sweetheart was a stout, blond working man
closely resembling the one walking up our front driveway. My mother
stopped the man and gave him this bit of information:
"The house is all open and any one could go in and help himself. I wish
you would ask Katy to lock the front door." The man bowed, and we drove
on.
When we returned Katy reported that a strange man had come to the
kitchen door and told her that the mistress wished her to lock the front
door. She left the man while she did this and found him waiting when she
came back. Then he asked her for something to eat, stating that he was
just out of prison, and wished to see Miss ---- (mentioning my name).
The cook gave him a lunch and made an appointment for me to see him next
day.
Katy did not resent the man's being taken for her Joe, for she noticed
the resemblance, but there was reproach in her tone as she added: "But
you know Joe always dresses up when he comes to see me."
At the appointed hour the man came again, bringing me a message from an
acquaintance, a fellow convict who had been his cell-mate in prison. He
did not refer to the fact that had he chosen he might have taken
advantage of the information received from my mother, but no better
plan for a robbery could have been devised than the circumstance that
fell ready to his hand.
But of all the ex-convicts employed at various times on our place the
one in whom the family took the greatest interest was George--his other
name does not matter because it was changed so often.
One Sunday morning I found George the only prisoner in our county jail.
He was a thief awaiting trial at the next term of court several weeks
ahead. He had "shifty" eyes and a sceptical smile, was thin, unkempt,
and altogether unprepossessing; but I did not think so much of that as
of his loneliness. He was reserved concerning himself but seemed to have
some education and a taste for reading, so I supplied him with books
from the library and called on him once or twice a week; but I made slow
progress with acquaintance, and one day George said to me:
"I understand perfectly why it is that you come to see me and bring me
things to read; _you think that you will gain a higher place in heaven
when you die_." In other words, George thought that I was using him as a
stepping-stone for my own advantage--his sceptical smile was not for
nothing.
How I disarmed his suspicions I do not know; but in the weeks that
followed before he was taken to prison we came to know each other very
well. The prison life was hard on George, so hard that when I first saw
him in the convict stripes I did not know him, so emaciated had he
become; and I was startled when his smile disclosed his identity.
Clearly he would be fit for no honest work when released from prison. He
made no complaint--he did not need to, for his appearance told the story
only too well. George was an insignificant-looking man, only one of the
hundreds consigned to that place of punishment, and by mere chance had
been given work far beyond his strength. When I called the warden's
attention to George he was immediately transferred to lighter work, and
was in better condition when I saw him next time.
And then we had some long and serious talks about his way of life, which
he invariably defended on the score that he would rather be "a downright
honest thief" than to get possession of other people's property under
cover of the law, or to grind the poor in order to pile up more money
than any one could honestly possess. George _thought_ that he really
believed all business men ready to take any unfair advantage of others
so long as their own safety was not endangered.
With the expiration of this term in prison George's letters to me ceased
for a while, to be resumed later from a prison in another State where he
was working in the greenhouses and had become interested in the flowers.
That gave me my chance.
In a fortunate hour I had encountered a little story by Edward Everett
Hale, "How Mr. Frye Would Have Preached It," and that story had formed
my ideal of loyalty to my prisoners when once they trusted me, and by
this time I had won the confidence of George. Accordingly, I wrote
George a Christmas letter making a direct appeal to his better
nature--for I knew it was there--and I asked him to come to me on his
release the following July, which he was glad to do.
Now, my mother had always been sympathetic with my interest in
prisoners, and she dearly loved her flower garden, and had difficulty in
finding intelligent help in the care of her flowers. She knew that
George was just out of prison, and after introducing him as a man who
might help her with her roses I left them together.
A few minutes later my mother came to me and reported:
"I don't like the looks of your George: he looks like a thief."
"Yes," I answered, "you know he has been a thief, and if you don't want
him I'll try and get another place for him."
But the flowers were pulling at my mother's heart and she decided to
give George a trial. And what a good time they both had that summer! It
was beautiful to see the two together morning after morning, caring for
those precious flowers as if they were babies. My mother had great
charm, and George was devoted to her and proved an altogether
satisfactory gardener. Unquestionably the two months that George spent
with us were the happiest of his life. My mother at once forgot all her
misgivings as to his honesty and came to regard him as her special ally;
she well knew that he would do anything in his power to serve her.
One afternoon my mother informed me that she was going driving with the
family that evening--she was always nervous about "leaving the house
alone"--and that the maids were going to be out, too; "but George is
going to stay in charge of the house, so everything will be all right
and I shall not worry," she said with all confidence.
I smiled; but I had no misgiving, and sure enough we all went off, not
even locking up the silver; while George, provided with newspapers and
cigars, was left in charge.
On our return, some two hours later, I noticed that George was unusually
serious and silent, and apparently didn't see any joke in the situation,
as he had on a former occasion when I sent him for something in a closet
where the family silver was in full view. He told me afterward that the
time of our absence covered the longest two hours of his life, and the
hardest to bear.
My home is on the edge of the town in the midst of twelve acres with
many trees. "You had not more than gone," said George, "when I began to
think 'what if some one should come to rob the house and I could not
defend it. And they could _never know_ that I had not betrayed their
trust.'"
George spent his Sundays under our trees, sometimes on guard in the
orchard, which rather amused him; and I generally gave him an hour of my
time, suggesting lines of work by which he could honestly earn his
living, and trying my best to raise his moral standards. But he
reserved his right to plan the general course of his life, or, as he
would have said, to follow his own line of business. He knew that his
work with us was but for the time, and he would never commit himself as
to his future. This was the way he stated his position:
"I have no health; I like a comfortable place to sleep and good things
to eat; I like a good class of entertainments and good books, and to buy
magazines and send them to my friends in prison, and I like to help a
man when he is just out of prison. Now, you ask me to forego all this;
to work hard just to earn the barest living--for I could never earn big
wages; you ask me to deny myself everything I care for just for the sake
of a moral idea, when nobody in the world but you cares whether I go to
the devil or not, and I don't really believe in either God or devil.
Now, how many churchgoing men do you know who would give up a
money-making business and accept the barest poverty and loneliness just
for the sake of a moral idea?" And I wondered how many, indeed.
However, for all his arguments in defence of his way of life, when the
time came to leave us better desires had taken root. My mother's taking
his honesty for granted had its effect, and seemed to commit him to an
effort in the right direction. We had fitted him out with respectable
clothing and he had earned money to last several weeks. My mother gave
him a letter of recommendation as gardener and he left us to seek
employment in the parks of a large city.
But his appearance was against him and he had no luck in the first city
where he applied; the time of the year, too, was unfavorable; and before
his money had quite melted away he invested the remainder in a peddler's
outfit of needles and other domestic requisites. These he sold among the
wives of farmers, and in that way managed to keep body and soul together
for a time. Frequent letters kept me informed of his whereabouts, though
little was said of his hardships.
One morning George appeared at our door seeming more dulled and
depressed than I had ever seen him. He stayed for an hour or more but
was not very communicative. It was evident, however, that he had found
the paths of honesty quite as hard as the way of the transgressor. As he
was leaving he said:
"You may not believe me, but I walked all night in order to have this
visit with you. I was off the railroad and couldn't otherwise make
connections with this place in time to keep an appointment with a friend
this evening; and I wanted to see you."
He hurried away then without giving me time for the inevitable surmise
that the "friend" whom he was to meet was an "old pal," and leaving me
to question whether I had another friend on earth who would walk all
night in order to see me.
Only once again did I see George; he was looking more prosperous then,
and handed me a ten-dollar bill, saying: "At last I can return the money
you lent me; I wanted to long ago but couldn't."
I did not remember having lent him the money, and so I told him. "But I
want you to take it anyway," he said.
And then, brought face to face with the thief in the man, I replied:
"I cannot take from you money that is not honestly yours."
Flushing deeply he slowly placed the bill among some others, saying:
"All right, but I wanted you to take it because I knew that you would
make better use of it than I shall." Never had the actual dividing line
between honesty and dishonesty been brought home to George as at that
moment; I think for once he realized that right and wrong are white and
black, not gray.
For some years after I had occasional notes from George; I answered them
if an address was given, but his was then a roving life. Always at
Christmas came a letter from him with the season's greetings to each
member of the family, and usually containing a line to the effect that
he was "still in the old business." When my sister was married, on my
mother's golden wedding-day, among the notes of congratulation to the
bride of fifty years before and the bride of the day was one from
George; and through good or ill report George never lost his place in
the regard of my mother.
His last letter was written from an Eastern Catholic hospital where he
had been ill. Convalescent he then was "helping the sisters," and he
hoped that they might give him employment when he was well. Helpful I
knew he would be, and loyal to those who trusted him. I wrote him at
once but received no reply; and the chances are, as I always like to
think, that the last days of George were apart from criminal
associations, and that the better elements in his nature were in the
ascendant when the end came.
I believe George was the only one of my prisoners who even made a bluff
in defence of the kind of life he had followed; and in his heart he knew
that it was all wrong. I do not defend him, but I do not forget that the
demoralization of the man, his lack of moral grip, was the logical
product of the schools of crime, the jails, and prisons in which so much
of his youth was passed. Yes, the life of George stands as a moral
failure; and yet as long as flowers bloom in that garden where he and my
mother spent so many pleasant hours helping the roses to blossom more
generously, so long will friendly memories cluster around the name of
George, and he certainly did his part well in the one opportunity that
life seems to have offered him.