There is another chapter to my experience with prisoners; it is the
story of what they have done for me, for they have kept the balance of
give and take very even between us. I have an odd collection of
souvenirs and keepsakes, but, incongruous as the different articles are,
one thread connects them all; from the coarse, stubby pair of little
mittens suggesting the hand of a six-year-old country boy to the flask
of rare Venetian glass in the dull Oriental tones dear to the æsthetic
soul; from the hammock that swings under the maple-trees to the
diminutive heart in delicately veined onyx, designed to be worn as a
pendant.
The mittens came from Jackson Currant, a friendly soul who unravelled
the one pair of mittens allowed him for the winter, contrived to possess
himself of a piece of wire from which he fashioned a hook, and evenings
in his cell crocheted for me a pair of mittens. Funny little things they
were, but a real gift, for this prisoner took from himself and gave to
me the one thing he had to give.
Another gift which touched me came from an old Rocky Mountain
trapper--then a prisoner for life. His one most cherished possession was
a copy of "A Day in Athens with Socrates," sent him by the translator.
After keeping the precious book for three years and learning its
contents by heart, he sent it to me as a birthday gift and I found it
among other birthday presents one February morning. Then there is the
cherry box that holds my stationery, with E. A.'s initials carved in the
cover; E. A., who is reclaiming his future from all shadow of his past.
It was E. A. who introduced me to my Welsh boy, Alfred Allen, and it was
Alfred who opened my heart to all the street waifs in the universe.
In many ways my life has been enriched by my prisoners. Most delightful
social affiliations, most stimulating intellectual influences, and some
of the warmest friendships of my life, by odd chains of circumstances
have developed from my prison interests.
Almost any friend can give us material gifts--the gift of things--the
friend who widens our social relations or broadens our interests does
us far better service; but it is the rare friend who opens our
spiritual perception to whom we are most indebted. For through the ages
has been pursued the quest of some proof that man is a spiritual being,
some evidence that what we call the soul has its origin beyond the realm
of the material; the learning of all time has failed to satisfy this
quest; and the wealth of the world cannot purchase one fragment of such
proof.
And yet it is to one of my prisoners that I owe the gift of an hour in
which the spirit of man seemed the one vital fact of his existence, the
one thing beyond the reach of death; and time has given priceless value
to that hour.
I met James Wilson in the first years of my prison acquaintance, and it
was long before it occurred to me that under later legislation he would
have been classed as an habitual criminal. I have often wondered at the
power of his personality; it must have been purely the result of innate
qualities. He was brave, he was generous, he was loyalty itself; and his
sympathies were responsive as those of a woman. He would have been an
intrepid soldier, a venturesome explorer, a chivalrous knight; but in
the confusion of human life the boy was shoved to the wrong track and
having the momentum of youth and strong vitality he rushed recklessly
onward into the course of a Robin Hood; living in an age when those who
come into collision with the social forces of law and order are called
criminals, his career in that direction fortunately was of short
duration.
Had Wilson not been arrested in his downward course he might never have
come into possession of the self whom I knew so well, that true self at
last so clearly victorious over adverse circumstances. In this sketch I
have not used Wilson's letters; they were so purely personal, so wholly
of his inner life, that to give them to the public seemed desecration.
I can give but one glimpse of his childhood. When he was a very little
boy he sat on his father's knee and looked up into kind and loving gray
eyes. The father died, and the son remembered him always as kind and
loving.
The loss of his father changed the course of Wilson's life. The mother
formed other ties; the boy was one too many, and left home altogether as
soon as he was old enough to shift for himself. He went honestly to
work, where so many boys along the Mississippi Valley are morally
ruined--on a river-boat.
After a time things began to go wrong with him. I don't know whether
the injury was real or fancied, but the boy believed himself maliciously
injured; and in the blind passion following he left the river, taking
with him money that belonged to the man who had angered him. Wilson had
meant to square the score, to balance wrong with wrong; but his revenge
recoiled upon himself and at sixteen he was a thief and a fugitive.
Before the impetus of that moral movement was exhausted he was in the
penitentiary--"one of the most vigorous and fine-looking men in the
prison, tall and splendidly built," so said another prisoner who knew
him at that time.
At the expiration of his three years' sentence Wilson began work in a
Saint Louis printing-office, opening, so he believed, a new chapter in
life. He was then twenty years of age.
During that year all through the West--if the Mississippi region can
still be called West--there were serious labor troubles. Men were
discharged from every branch of employment where they could be spared;
and the day came when all the "new hands" in the printing-office where
Wilson worked were turned off.
Wilson had saved something from his earnings, and while his money
lasted he lived honestly, seeking employment, but the money was gone
before he found employment. Outside the cities the country was overrun
with tramps; temptations to lawlessness were multiplied; starvation,
stealing, or begging seemed the only pathway open to many. None starved;
there was little choice between the other alternatives. Jails and
prisons were crowded with inmates, some of whom felt themselves
fortunate in being provided with food and shelter even at the cost of
liberty. "I have gone hungry so many days and slept on the ground so
many nights that the thought of a prison seems something like home," was
a remark made to me. "The world owes me a living" was a thought that
came in the form of temptation to many a man who could get no honest
work.
After Wilson had been out of employment for two or three months there
occurred a great commotion near a small town within fifty miles of Saint
Louis. Stores had been broken into and property carried off, and a
desperate attempt was made to capture the burglars, who were supposed to
be in that vicinity. A man who had gone to a stream of water was
arrested and identified as belonging to the gang. He was ordered to
betray his accomplices; he refused absolutely. The reckless courage in
his nature once aroused, the "honor" observed among thieves was his
inevitable course. A rope was brought, and Wilson was taken to a tree
where the story of his life would doubtless have ended had not a shout
from others, who were still searching, proclaimed the discovery of the
retreat of his companions. Wilson and Davis, the two leaders, were
sentenced each to four years in the penitentiary.
Defeated, dishonored, penniless, and friendless, Wilson found himself
again in prison; this time under the more than double disgrace of being
a "second-term" man, with consciousness of having deliberately made a
choice of crime. He was an avowed infidel, and his impetuous, unsubdued
nature was at war with life and the world. For two years he lived on in
this way; then his health began to fail under the strain of work and
confinement.
With the loss of strength his heart grew harder and more desperate. One
day his old recklessness broke out in open revolt against prison
authority. He was punished by being sent to the "solitary," where the
temperature in summer is much lower than that of the shops where the
men work; he took cold, a hemorrhage of the lungs resulted, and he was
sent to the prison hospital.
There, on a Sunday morning two months later, I first met Wilson. I think
it was the glance of the dark-gray eyes under long, sweeping black
lashes that first attracted me. But it was the expression of the face,
the quiet, dignified courtesy of manner, and the candid statement of his
history that made the deeper impression. Simply and briefly he gave me
the outlines of his past; and he spoke with deep, concentrated
bitterness of the crushing, terrible life in prison. His unspoken
loneliness--he had lost all trace of his mother--and his illness, almost
ignored but evident, appealed to my sympathy and prompted me to offer to
write to him. He thought it would be a pleasure to receive letters, but
assured me that he could write nothing worth reading in return.
Long afterward I asked what induced him to reply to my questions so
frankly and sincerely. His answer was: "Because I knew if I lied to you,
it would make it harder for you to believe the next man you talked with,
who might tell you the truth." During all that Sunday afternoon and
evening Wilson remained in my thoughts, and the next
afternoon--Hallowe'en, as it happened--found me again at the hospital. I
stopped for a few moments at the bedside of a young prisoner who was
flushed with hectic fever and wildly rebellious over the thought of
dying in prison--he lived to die an honest man in freedom, in the dress
of a civilized being and not in the barbarous, zebra-like suit then worn
in the prison. I remained for a longer time beside the bed of a man who
was serving a sentence of imprisonment for life for a crime of which he
was innocent. After twelve years his innocence was proved; he was
released a crippled invalid, with no means of support except by hands
robbed of their power to work. The State makes no reparation for an
unspeakable wrong like this, far more cruel than death.
When I turned to look for Wilson he was sitting apart from the other
men, with a vacant chair beside him. Joining him beside that west
window, flooded with the golden light of an autumn sunset, I took the
vacant seat intended for me; and the hour that followed so influenced
Wilson's future that he adopted that day--Hallowe'en--as his birthday.
He knew the year but not the month in which he was born.
I have not the slightest recollection of what I said while we sat beside
the window. But even now I can see Wilson's face as he listened with
silent attention, not meeting my eyes. I think I spoke of his personal
responsibility for the life he had lived. I am certain that I said
nothing about swearing and that I asked no promises.
But thoughts not in my mind were suggested to him. For when I ceased
speaking he raised his eyes, and looking at me intently he said: "I
can't promise to be a Christian; my life has been too bad for that; but
I want to promise you that I will give up swearing and try to have pure
thoughts. I can promise you that, because these things lie in my own
power; but there's too much wickedness between me and God for me ever to
be a Christian."
His only possession was the kingdom of his thoughts; without reservation
it was offered to his friend, and with the sure understanding that she
would value it.
It was a surprise when I received Wilson's first letter to see the
unformed writing and the uncertain spelling; but the spirit of the man
could be traced, even through the inadequate medium. In earnestness and
simplicity he was seeking to fulfil his promise, finding, as he
inevitably must, that he had committed himself to more than his promise.
It was not long before he wrote that he had begun a new life altogether
"for your sake and for my own." His "thoughts" gave him great trouble,
for the old channels were still open, and his cell-mate's mind was
steeped in wickedness. But he made the best of the situation, and
instead of seeking to ward off evil he took the higher course of sharing
his own better thoughts with his cell-mate, over whom he acquired a
strong influence. Steadfastly he sought to overcome evil with good. Very
slowly grew his confidence in himself; and his great anxiety seemed to
be lest I should think him better than he was.
Like all persons with tuberculosis Wilson was sanguine of recovery; and
as he went back to work in one of the shops the day after I left, and
always wrote hopefully, I took it for granted that his health was
improving.
Six months only passed before we met again, and I was wholly unprepared
for the startling change in Wilson's appearance. His cough and the
shortness of his breath were distressing. But the poor fellow was so
delighted to see me that he tried to set his own condition entirely
aside.
We had a long talk in the twilight of that lovely May evening, and again
we were seated beside a window, through which the light and sounds of
spring came in. I learned then how hard life was for that dying man. He
was still subject to the strict discipline of the most strictly
disciplined prison in the country: compelled to rise at five in the
morning and go through the hurried but exact preparations for the day
required of well men. He was kept on the coarse prison fare, forced to
march breathlessly in the rapid lock-step of the gang of strong men with
whom he worked, and kept at work in the shop all through the long days.
The strain on nerve and will and physical strength was never relaxed.
These things he told me, and they were all true; but he told me also
better things, not so hard for me to know. He gave me the history of his
moral struggles and victories. He told me of the "comfort" my letters
had been to him; his whole heart was opened to me in the faith that I
would understand and believe him. It was then that he told me he was
trying to live by some verses he had learned; and in answer to my
request, hesitatingly, and with breath shortened still more by
embarrassment, he repeated the lines:
"I stand upon the Mount of God,
With gladness in my soul,
I hear the storms in vale beneath--
I hear the thunder roll.
"But I am calm with Thee, my God,
Beneath these glorious skies,
And to the height on which I stand
No storm nor cloud can rise."
He was wholly unconscious that there was anything unusual in his
reaching up from the depths of sin, misery, and degradation to the
spiritual heights of eternal light. He rather reproached himself for
having left the valley of repentance, seeming to feel that he had
escaped mental suffering that was deserved; although he admitted: "The
night after you left me in October, when I went back to my cell, the
tears were just running down my face--if that could be called
repentance."
At the close of our interview, as Wilson was going out, he passed
another prisoner on the way in to see me.
"Do you know Wilson?" was Newton's greeting as he approached me.
"Do _you_ know Wilson?" was my question in reply.
Newton had taken offence at something in one of my letters and it was to
make peace with him that I had planned the interview, but all
misunderstanding evaporated completely in our common regret and anxiety
about Wilson; for my feeling was fully shared by this man who--well, he
_was_ pretty thoroughly hardened on all other subjects. But here the
chord of tenderness was touched; and all his hardness and resentment
melted in the relief of finding some one who felt as he did on the
subject nearest his heart.
"I have worked beside Wilson in the shop for two years, and I have never
loved any man as I have grown to love him," he said. "And it has been so
terrible to see him dying by inches, and kept at work when he could
scarcely stand." The man spoke with strong emotion; the very depths of
his nature were stirred. He told me all about this friendship, which had
developed notwithstanding the fact that conversation between convicts
was supposed to be confined to necessary communication in relation to
work. Side by side they had worked in the shop, and as Wilson's
strength failed Newton managed to help him. Newton's praise and
affection really counted for something, as he was an embittered man with
small faith in human nature. He said that in all his life nothing had
been so hard as to see his friend sinking under his fate, while _he_ was
powerless to interfere. Newton and I had one comfort, however, in the
fact that Wilson's sentence was near the end. In justice to the
authorities of the prison where these men were confined I wish to state
that dying prisoners were usually sent to the hospital. Wilson's was an
exceptional case of hardship.
Early in July Wilson was released from prison. When he reached Chicago
his evident weakness arrested the attention of a passer-by, who hired a
boy to carry his bundle and see him to his destination. He had
determined to try to support himself, believing that freedom would bring
increased strength; but he was too ill to work. The doctor whom he
consulted spoke encouragingly, but urged the necessity of rest and
Minnesota air. I therefore sent him a pass to Minneapolis, and the route
was by way of my own home.
Life was hard on Wilson, but it gave him one day of happiness apart
from poverty or crime, when he felt himself a welcome guest in the home
of a friend. When his train arrived from Chicago I was at the station to
meet him, and before driving home we called on my physician that I might
know what to anticipate. The doctor commended the plan for the climate
of Minnesota, and spoke encouragingly to Wilson, but to me privately he
gave the fiat, "No hope."
Wilson spent the rest of that day in the library of my home, and all the
afternoon he was smiling. My face reflected his smiles, but I could not
forget the shadow of death in the background. We talked of many things
that afternoon; the breadth and fairness of his opinions on prison
matters, the impersonal way in which he was able to consider the
subject, surprised me, for his individual experience had been
exceptionally severe.
When weariness came into his eyes and his voice I suggested a little
music. The gayer music did not so much appeal to him, but I shall never
forget the man's delight in the sweet and restful cadences of
Mendelssohn. After a simple tea served Wilson in the library we took a
drive into the country, where the invalid enjoyed the lovely view of
hills and valleys wrapped in the glow of the summer sunset; and then I
left him for the night at a comfortable hotel.
The next morning Wilson was radiantly happy, notwithstanding "a hard
night"; and it happened to be one of the days when summer does her best
to keep us in love with life. All the forenoon we spent under a great
maple-tree, with birds in the branches and blue sky overhead, Wilson
abandoning himself to the simple joy of living and resting. Wilson was a
fine-looking man in citizen's dress, his regular features refined and
spiritualized by illness.
There were preparations to be made for Minnesota and the suit-case to be
repacked, and what value Wilson placed upon the various articles I
contributed! I think it was the cake of scented soap--clearly a
luxury--that pleased him most, but he was interested in every single
thing, and his heart was warmed by the cordial friendliness of my
mother, who added her own contribution to his future comfort. His one
regret was that he had nothing to give us in return.
But time was on the wing, and the morning slipped by all too rapidly, as
the hours of red-letter days always do, and the afternoon brought the
parting at the train for Minneapolis. Wilson lingered beside me while
there was time, then looking gravely into my eyes, he said: "Good-by; I
hope that we shall meet again--_on this side_." A moment later the
moving train carried him away toward the north, which to him meant the
hope of health.
Exhausted by the journey to Minneapolis, he at once applied for
admission to a Catholic hospital, and here I will let him speak for
himself, through the first letter that I received after he left me.
"DEAR FRIEND:
"I am now in the hospital, and I am so sleepy when I try to write
that I asked one of the sisters to write for me.
"I felt quite weak when I first came here, but now I take beef-tea,
and I feel so much stronger, I think I will be very much better by
the end of this month.
"The Mother Superior is most kind and calls me her boy and thinks
she will soon have me quite well again. I have a fine room to
myself, and I feel most happy as I enjoy the beautiful fresh air
from the Mississippi River, which runs quite near me.
"Dear friend, I wish you were here to enjoy a few days and see how
happy I am."
And scrawled below, in a feeble but familiar handwriting, were the
words:
"I tried to write, but failed."
Under the influence of the sisters Wilson was led back to the church
into which he had been baptized, and although he did not accept its
limitations he found great comfort in the sense of protection that it
gave him. Rest and nursing and the magical air of Minnesota effected
such an improvement in his health that before many weeks Wilson was
discharged from the hospital.
After a short period of outdoor work, in which he tested his strength,
he went into a printing-office, where, for a month, he felt himself a
man among men. But it was an overambitious and unwise step--confinement
and close air of the office were more than he could endure, and with
great regret he gave up the situation.
Winter was setting in and he found no work that he could do, and yet
thought himself too well to again seek admission to a hospital. The
outlook of life darkened, for there seemed to be no place for him
anywhere. He did not write to me during that time of uncertainty, and
one day, after having spent three nights in a railroad station, as a
last resort he asked to be sent to the county home and was received
there; after that he could not easily obtain admission to a hospital.
Western county homes were at that time hard places; in some respects
existence there was harder than in the prison, where restraint and
discipline are in a measure a protection, securing a man undisturbed
possession of his inner life and thoughts, during working hours at
least. The ceaselessly intrusive life of the home, with the lack of
discipline and the unrestrained intercourse of inmates, with the
idleness and the dirt, is far more demoralizing; crime itself does not
sap self-respect like being an idle pauper among paupers. All this could
be read between the lines of Wilson's letters.
And now a new dread was taking hold of him. All his hope and ambition
had centred in the desire to be good for this life. He had persistently
shut out the thought of death as the one thing that would prevent his
realizing this desire. Nature and youth clung passionately to life, and
all the strength of his will was nerved to resist the advance of
disease. But day by day the realization that life was slipping from him
forced itself deeper into his consciousness; even for the time
discouraging him morally. His high resolves seemed of no avail. It was
all of no use. He must die a pauper with no chance to regain his lost
manhood; life seemed indeed a hopeless failure. I had supplied Wilson
with paper and envelopes, stamped and addressed, that I might never fail
of hearing from him directly or through others; but there came an
interval of several weeks when I heard nothing, although writing
regularly. Perplexed, as well as anxious, in my determination to break
the silence at all hazards, I wrote a somewhat peremptory letter. The
answer came by return mail, but it was the keeper of the county home who
wrote that Wilson had written regularly and that he was very unhappy
over my last letter, adding:
"He says that if this room was filled with money it would not tempt him
to neglect his best friend; and when I told him that this room was
pretty big and would hold a lot of money he said that didn't make any
difference."
I could not be reconciled to Wilson's dying in that place, and when the
spring days came he was sent to Chicago, where his entrance to a
hospital had been arranged. It was an April afternoon when I found him
in one of the main wards of the hospital, a large room flooded with
sunshine and fresh air. Young women, charming in their nurses' uniform,
with skilled and gentle hands, were the ministering spirits there; the
presiding genius a beautiful Philadelphian whose gracious tranquillity
was in itself a heavenly benediction to the sick and suffering among
whom she lived. On a table beside Wilson's bed trailing arbutus was
filling the air with fragrance and telling the story of spring.
Wilson was greatly altered; but his face was radiant in the gladness of
our meeting. For weeks previous he had not been able to write me of his
thoughts or feelings, and I do not know when the change came. But it was
clearly evident that, as death approached, he had turned to meet it; and
had found, as so many others have found, that death no longer seemed an
enemy and the end of all things, but a friend who was leading the way to
fuller life; he assumed that I understood all this; he would have found
it difficult to express it in words; but he had much to tell me of all
those around him, and wished to share with me the friendships he had
formed in the hospital; and I was interested in the way the _quality of
the man's nature_ had made itself felt among nurses and patients alike.
One of the patients who had just been discharged came to the bedside to
bid him good-by; Wilson grasped his hand and in a few earnest words
reminded him of promises given in a previous conversation. With broken
voice the man renewed his promises, and left with his eyes full of
tears. He was unable to utter the good-by he had come to give.
At the close of my visit Wilson insisted upon giving me the loveliest
cluster of his arbutus; while Miss Alden, the Philadelphian, sanctioned
with a smile his sharing of her gift with another.
As Miss Alden went with me to the door she told me of her deep interest
in Wilson, and of the respect and affection he had won from all who had
come in contact with him. "The nurses consider it a pleasure to do
anything for one who asks so little and is so grateful," she said.
Though knowing that he had been in prison, Miss Alden was surprised to
learn that Wilson was not a man of education. His use of English, the
general tone of his thoughts and conversation, had classed him as a man
familiar with good literature and refined associations. She, too, had
felt in him a certain spiritual strength, and was touched by his loyalty
to me, which seemed never obscured by his gratitude to others. She
believed that only the strength of his desire to see me once again had
kept him in this world for the previous week.
The next morning Wilson was visibly weaker; the animation caused by the
excitement of seeing me the day before was gone; but the spiritual peace
and strength which had come to him were the more evident.
At his dictation I wrote a last message to Newton, and directions as to
the disposal of his clothing, to be given to patients whose needs he had
discovered. He expressed a wish to leave some little remembrances for
each of the nurses; there were six to whom he felt particularly
indebted. There was Miss Stevens, "who has been so very kind at night";
every one had her special claim, and I promised that each should receive
some token of his gratitude.
Afterward he spoke of the new life before him as naturally and easily as
he spoke of the hospital. He seemed already to have crossed the border
of the new life. His heart had found its home in God; there he could
give himself without reserve. Life and eternity were gladly offered to
the One in whom he had perfect trust.
"Tell me," I said, "what is your thought of heaven, now that it is so
near? What do you expect?"
How full of courage and trust and honesty was his answer! "I do not
expect happiness; at least not at once. God is too just for that, after
the life I have lived." Imprisonment, sickness, poverty, all the evils
that we most dread, had been endured for years, but counted for nothing
to him when weighed against his ruined life. But the thought of
suffering brought no fear. The justice of God was dearer to him than
personal happiness. I left that feeling undisturbed. He was nearer than
I to the light of the perfect day, and I could see that, unconsciously,
he had ceased to look to any one "on this side" for light.
Wilson was sleeping when I saw him again, but the rapid change which had
taken place was apparent at a glance. When he opened his eyes and saw me
standing beside him he looked at me silently for a moment. With an
effort he gathered strength for what he evidently wished to say; and all
the gratitude and affection that he had never before attempted to
express to me directly were revealed in a few simple words. He would
have no good-by; the loss of the supreme friendship of his life formed
no part of his idea of death. Then he spoke of the larger life of
humanity for which he had learned to feel so deeply, and his final words
to me were: "Be to others what you have been to me. We are all brothers
and sisters." The last thought between us was not to be of an exclusive,
individual friendship, but of that universal tie which binds each to
all.
Before midnight the earthly life had ended, peacefully and without fear.
The stem of Easter lilies that I carried to the hospital next day was
placed in the hands folded in the last sleep, and Wilson clasped in
death the symbol of new life and heavenly purity.
Wilson was one of the men behind the bars; but it is as man among men
that I think of him; and his last words to me, "We are all brothers and
sisters," sum up the truth that inspires every effort the round world
over to answer the call of those who are desolate or oppressed--whether
the cry comes from little children in the mine, the workshop, or the
tenement, or from those who are in slavery, in hospital, or in prison.