PARDONED
My sentence had been for a period of fifteen years. Allowing for a
commutation for good conduct of two years and six months, I would
still have to serve twelve years and six months. Looking ahead, the
end of that period seemed long in the future. I did not dare to dwell
on my time. Constant brooding over their misfortune is what sends
so many prisoners to the insane asylum. I tried to spend my time in
much reading and a little writing, yet the time seemed endlessly
long. From five on a Saturday afternoon to six on Monday morning I
was locked in my cell. The ventilation was poor, as I have found it
so in all such places. The warden had once told me that it would do
me no good to go to church, and I seldom went. The character of the
chaplain had alienated me from thoughts of religion and I drifted
into the philosophy of the atheist. I read the books of the so-called
freethinkers, and in the reading assimilated some of their teachings. I
took much pains that my pals in the prison should know where I stood in
this matter of religion, and I was soon known among them as an atheist
of the first water. Strange to say, among the men in the different
prisons of my experience, I have seldom found an out-and-out atheist.
The great majority of them believe, and believe strongly, in their
Creator. It is one of the paradoxes of their nature. I am glad to say
that I myself am no exception.
One day there happened to fall into my hands an announcement of a
poetry contest that a certain newspaper was about to begin. I thought,
that possessing a little ability along these lines, I would try for
the prize of twenty-five dollars offered for the best verse. It was a
contest wherein the verse offered should show the value of the want
ads of the particular paper. I wrote a doggerel and sent my effort to
the paper. Some few days after, I received the welcome news that my
verse had won the prize. By reason of this there came into my life two
friendships that have molded my career into straight and legitimate
channels.
One of these men, to whom I am directly indebted to my liberty at this
moment, noticed my effort in the paper and came over to see me. I at
first hesitated to meet him. I wanted no friendships, I thought, from
men of the outside world. You see my nature had been so deadened by my
method of living that I wanted no companionship except that coming from
men of my own class. I knew the common type of the reformer and wanted
no dealings with men of that kind. I finally consented to see him. His
type of mind and sensible methods soon appealed to me. We saw each
other frequently and corresponded. In time he brought me my pardon.
There is a big spot in my heart for him.
My other friend is a minister. I have always been a little shy on
meeting preachers of the gospel. Why I do not know. But there was
always something in my make-up that ever made me lukewarm toward men
of that class. I had this against ministers, that the most of them
whom I had met lacked, for want of a better term, the strong masculine
personality all real men should possess. They appeared to me to have a
sort of sticky sense of goodness about them that seems unreal for men
of this life to have. They left the impression of feminism upon me.
I have thought, too, somehow, that the minister of the present does
not know life as it really is, that he spends too much of his time in
preaching and too little in doing. Of course I believe that as a class
they are all doing all they can toward a betterment of social and
industrial life, but I would rather they took their facts from life
than from books.
Have you ever met a man whose talk with you has left the impression
that it is a good thing, after all, to live? Such an impression did I
receive from my first talk with this minister. A man with masculinity
written all over him; a man of strong convictions, yet possessed of
a nature as broad as the Atlantic. He knows life as it is, not as it
is written of. A true follower of the majestic Christ, he takes his
religion seriously, and as of the seven-days-a-week kind, never happier
than when he is serving some one else. He has impressed me always as a
friend to tie to.