CHAPTER II

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:

[Pg 34]

"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[Pg 35] 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[Pg 36] 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.

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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[Pg 38] 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.

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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[Pg 40] 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[Pg 41] 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[Pg 42] 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[Pg 43] 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[Pg 44] 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,[Pg 45] 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.