CHAPTER XII

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 ?sthetic 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[Pg 229] 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[Pg 230] 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[Pg 231] 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.

[Pg 232]

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,[Pg 233] 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 [Pg 234]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[Pg 235] 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[Pg 236] 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[Pg 237] 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[Pg 238] 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[Pg 239] 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[Pg 240] 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.

[Pg 241]

"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.[Pg 242] 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[Pg 243] 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[Pg 244] 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[Pg 245] 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.

    [Pg 246]

    "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[Pg 247] 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 [Pg 248]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[Pg 249] 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[Pg 250] 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 [Pg 251]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.[Pg 252] 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[Pg 253] 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.