VOur relations having been for the time determined, Ann set about to reform me. She was really horrified at the isolated life I had been leading. That I took little interest in humanity, none at all in public life and only by chance knew who was mayor of the city, shocked her. Every evening, after her other patients had been settled for the night, she brought me the papers. There was no love-making—only one kiss—until she had read to me for half an hour. It bored me to extinction, but she insisted that it was good for me. I had to listen, because each evening she examined me on what she had read the night before. So I acquired a certain amount of unrelated information about millionaire divorces, murders and municipal politics.Her next step was to make me associate with the other patients."Bored?" she scolded. "It's a sin to be bored. They're people—human beings—just as good as you are. You're not interested in Mrs. Stickney's husband? You're not interested in Mr. Blake's business worries? Those are the two great facts of life. The woman half of the world is thinking about men. The man half is thinking about business. They are the two things which are really most interesting."She took my reformation so much to heart that I began to be interested in it myself. I familiarized myself with all the symptoms of a husband's dyspepsia. Mrs. Stickney's eye trouble seemed to have been caused by a too close application to cook books—in search for a dish her husband could digest. From Mr. Blake's peevish discourse I got a new insight into business and the big and little dishonesties which go to make it up. I sometimes wonder if he really was robbed during his illness as much as he expected to be. He was convinced that his chief competitor would buy his trade secrets from his head book-keeper. He did not seem angry at his rival nor at his employee for seizing this opportunity to cheat him, but at the fates which, by his sickness, offered them so great a temptation. He complained bitterly because no such lucky chances had ever come to him.But it was through the newspapers that I gained most."Want to hear about a millionaire socialist, who says that all judges and policemen ought to serve a year in jail before being eligible for office?""It sounds more hopeful than campaign speeches," I said submissively.It was Norman Benson. I recognized his quaint way of expressing things, before she came to his name."I know him," I laughed.I had to tell her all about our short acquaintance."Why don't you ask him to come up and see you?"I did not feel that I knew him well enough to bother him. I had not seen him nor heard from him for three years.The first thing in the morning, without letting me know, she telephoned him of my plight. About eleven o'clock, to my immense surprise, Miss Wright brought him to my room.Benson was the busiest man I have ever known. In later years when I roomed with him and was his most intimate friend, I could never keep track of half his activities. He was a sort of "consulting engineer" in advertising. Big concerns all over the country would send for him and pay well to have him attract the attention of the public to some new product. He could write the Spotless Town kind of verses while eating breakfast, and although he did not take art seriously, he drew some of the most successful advertisements of his time. One year he earned about thirty thousand dollars, above his inherited income of ten thousand. He did not spend more than five thousand a year on himself, but he was always hard up.He was director of half a hundred philanthropies—settlements, day-nurseries, immigrant homes, children's societies, and so forth. His pet hobby was the "Arbeiter Studenten Verein." When he did not entirely support these enterprises, he paid the yearly deficit. It was such expenses which pushed him into the advertising work he detested.It was a wonder to me how, in spite of these manifold activities, he found time for the thousand and one little kindnesses, the varied personal relations he maintained with all sorts and conditions of men. Once a week or so he dined at the University Club, more often at the settlement, and the other nights he took pot-luck on the top floor of some tenement with one of his Arbeiter Studenten. In the same way he found time to remember me and bring cheer into the hospital.That first morning, in speaking of the newspaper story, I asked him if he was a socialist."Hanged if I know," he said. "I never joined any socialist organization. I don't care much for these soap-box people. They talk about reconstructing our industrial institutions, and most of them don't know how to make change for a dollar. They talk about overthrowing Wall Street, and they don't know railroad-stock from live-stock. They don't begin to realize what a big thing it is—nor how unjust and crazy and top-heavy. But sometimes I think I must be a socialist. I can't open my mouth and say anything serious without everybody calling me a socialist. I don't know."The remaining weeks in the hospital gave me a great fund of things to ponder over. My mind works retrospectively. I have always sympathized with the cud-chewing habit of the cow. The impressions of the hour are never clear-cut with me. For an experience to become real, I must mull over it a long time; gradually it sinks into my consciousness and becomes a vital possession.Benson's sort of kindness was absolutely new to me. No one had ever done things for me as he did. And as it surprised me to have him take the trouble to send me a can of my favorite tobacco, so the affection, the intimate revelations of love, which Ann gave me, was a thing undreamed of. "Come with me, up on to a high mountain, and I will show you all the wonder of the world"—such was Ann's gift to me. Out of the horror of darkness, from the very bottom of the slough of despond, she led me up into the white light of the summit peaks of life.As I read back over these pages, I find that I have described Ann as a voice, as a person who thought and talked of serious things, who seemed principally absorbed in an ambition, which up to that time had borne no fruit. I would like to picture the woman who came to me in the darkness with a wealth of cheer and tenderness and love.Some day I hope our literature and our minds will be purified so that such things can be dealt with sanely and sweetly. But that time has not yet come and I must be content with the tools at hand. Ann brought to me in those desolate days all the wondrous womanly things—the quaint and gentle jests of love, the senseless sweet words and names which are caresses, the sudden gusts of self revelation, the strange and unexpected restraints—of which I may not write.I was not lonely any more—not even when Miss Wright was on duty—there was so much to ponder over.VIAt last the bandages were taken off. I recall the sudden painful glare of the darkened room, the three doctors in hospital costumes, who were consulting on different forms of torture. Especially I remember the mole on the forehead of the chief, a gray haired, spectacled man. It was the first things my eyes, startled out of their long sleep, fixed upon. The ordeal dragged along tragically. It seemed that they were intentionally slow. But the verdict when it came was acquittal. I was lucky. With care I might regain almost normal vision. But for months I must not try to read. Always, all my life, I must stop at the first hint of fatigue.So, having adjusted some smoked glasses, they sent me back to my room, to pack and go out into a new life. As I entered the corridor, I saw two nurses at the other end. My heart stopped with a jump and I was suddenly dizzy. Somehow I had not thought of Ann in terms of sight. She had come to me out of the darkness, revealed herself as a sound and a touch. I had no idea how she would look. They both came towards me. I could see very little through my dark glasses. I could not guess which was which."So. They've taken off the bandages? I'm very glad." It was Miss Wright's strenuous voice."I'm glad, too," Ann said.I tried to see her, but my eyes were full of tears."I'll show him his room," Ann said.When the door was closed on us, she threw her arms about my neck and cried as I had never seen a woman cry."Oh! beloved," she sobbed. "I'm so glad. I was afraid—afraid you were going to be blind."She had always been so cheerful, so professional, about my case—of course it would turn out all right—that I had not seen it from her point of view. It was a revelation to me that her bravery had been a sham."Oh. I was afraid—afraid!"I tried to comfort her but all the pent-up worry and fear of weeks had broken out. And I had not realized that her love had made my risk a personal tragedy for her.When she had quieted a little, I wanted her to stand away so that I might look at her. But no—she said—she did not want me to see her first when her eyes were swollen with tears. She clung to me tightly and would not show me her face.There was a knock at the door. I had not lived long enough to realize the seriousness of a woman's wet eyes, and, without thought of this, I said, "Come in." It was Benson."Miss Wright tells me—"He hesitated. He was looking at Ann. I turned too. She was making a brave effort to appear unconcerned, but her eyes were red past all hiding."Yes," she said, in her professional tone. "The news is very good. Better than we hoped.""Fine. I dropped in," Benson said, as though there was nothing to be embarrassed about, "to see how you came out and get you to spend the week-end with me if they let you go. I've got to visit my uncle and aunt—stupid old people—hypochondriacs. But they are going to Europe next week and I really must see them. I'll die of boredom if there isn't someone to talk to. Better come along—the sailing's good. I've got to run over to the club for a few minutes. Can you get your grip packed in half an hour? All right. So long."Ann was as nearly angry as I have ever seen her."At least you might have given me time to dry my eyes.""I don't believe he noticed anything. Men never see things like that," I said.But Ann laughed at this and so her good temper was restored.Her face, now that I saw it, was not at all what I had expected. It was serious, meagre, a bit severe. I had thought of her as blonde, but her hair was a rich, deep brown. Of course I am no judge of her looks. She had brought joy into my darkness. She could not but be beautiful for me.The expression is what counts most. About her face, emphasized by her nurse's uniform, was a definite air of sensibleness, of New England reliability. Perhaps under other circumstances she would not have attracted me. Her face in repose might not have inspired more than confidence. But when she put her hands on my shoulders and looked up into my face, with the light of love in her eyes, it seemed to me that a mystic halo of beauty shone about her. No other woman has ever looked to me as Ann did. And yet I know that most people would call her "plain."The hardest thing for me to accept about her was her height. I had thought her considerably shorter than Miss Wright. I had been misled of course by the relative size of their voices. Ann was above average height and Miss Wright hardly five feet.In the half hour before Benson returned, we had not discussed anything more concrete than opportunities to meet outside the hospital. She was free on alternate Saturdays from supper time till midnight. I was rather afraid that Benson, when we were alone, might ask some questions or make some joke about her, but he talked busily of other things.His uncle and aunt were a lonely old couple. Their children were established and they had little left to interest them except their illnesses, some of which, Benson said, were real. It was a beautiful house just out of Stamford on the Sound—rather dolefully empty now that the children had gone. I had never seen such luxury, such heavy silver, such ubiquitous servants.They were planning to live in Paris, near a daughter who had married a Frenchman. Their arrangements had been all made. But at the last moment their trained nurse had thrown them into confusion by deciding suddenly that she did not want to leave America. The aunt told us about it, querulously, at dinner. Ann's desire came to mind."How much free time would the nurse have?" I asked. "I know one who is anxious to live in Paris and study with Pasteur. She is very capable. Your nephew has seen her—Miss Barton—she was at the hospital. I liked her immensely."Benson shot a quick glance at me. It was the only sign he ever gave of having noticed any intimacy between us."My aunt expects to live permanently in Paris," he said. "She would not want to take any one who was not willing to stay indefinitely.""That, I think, would suit Miss Barton exactly."Benson immediately fell in with my suggestion and recommended Ann enthusiastically. I had to answer a string of questions. The aunt was one of those undecided persons who hate to make up their mind, but the uncle wanted to get started. We talked about it continually during the three Sunday meals, and on Monday morning they went in to see her, with a note of introduction from me.Ann, as I had foreseen, was delighted with the opportunity. She pleased them, and as soon as she could find a substitute, an easy matter, as her position was desirable, the arrangements were made.VIIAnn and I spent together the day before they sailed. We had planned an excursion to the sea-side, but it rained desperately and we found refuge in an hotel. We were too much interested in each other to care much about the weather or our surroundings. Any beauties of nature which might have distracted our attention would have seemed an impertinence.It was a day of never-to-be-forgotten delight. And yet it was not without a subtle alloy. By an unexpressed agreement, we lived up to Omar's philosophy, we discussed neither the past nor the future. I was afraid to stop and think, for fear it might seem wrong....Once she brought a cloud by some expressions of gratitude for my having, as she put it, given her this great opportunity to realize her dream of studying with Pasteur. And all the while, I knew it was not solely for her sake that I had picked up this chance, which the fates had thrown me. Despite the joy of her love there was this under-current of incertitude. I wanted to get far enough away from it, to judge it. It is hard to express what I mean, but I was happier, more light-hearted, that day, because I knew she was leaving the next.But these blurred moments were—only moments. We were young. It was the spring of life as it was of the year. The spirit of poesy, of the great Lyrics, was there in that tawdry hotel room....In the early morning, through the wet glistening streets we made our way across town towards the river. Of course I knew just where we were going, but somehow the entrance to the dock found me surprised and unprepared. For a moment we stood there, shaking hands as formally as might be. Suddenly tears sparkled in her eyes, she reached up and kissed me. Then she turned abruptly and walked into the bare, shadowy building. She had a firm step, she was sallying out to meet her destiny.I watched until she was out of sight. And then I surprised myself by a sigh of strange relief.VIIILater in the day I lunched with Benson at the University Club."What are your plans now?" he asked as we settled down to coffee and cigarettes."Find a job, I suppose.""You're in no condition to work nor to look for work—just out of the hospital.""But I've got to eat.""That's a fool superstition!" he exploded. "You don't have to work in order to eat. None of 'the best people' do. Half the trouble with the world is that so many idiots will sweat—just to eat. If they'd refuse to work for tripe-stews and demand box seats at the opera, it would do wonders. Why people will slave all their lives long for a chance to die in a tenement is beyond me. What kind of work do you want?"My ideas on that point were vague."How much money have you?"That I had figured out."One hundred and eighty-five dollars and ninety-three cents. And then my books—perhaps I could get a hundred more for them.""Of course if you are sufficiently unscrupulous that's a good start for a fortune. Lots of men have done it on less. But it's a bore to sit back and watch money grow. Did you ever see a hunk of shad-roe—all eggs? Money's a darn sight more prolific than fish. Impregnate a silver dollar with enough cynicism and you can't keep your expenses up with your income. Look how wealth has grown in this country in spite of all our thievery and waste! In the Civil War we burned money—threw millions after millions into the flames—we never noticed it. The nation was richer in '65 than in '60."But making money is a fool's ambition. Just think how many dubs succeed in earning a living. Anybody can do that. It isn't original. Look round for interesting work. Something that's worth doing aside from the wages. Take things easy. If you begin worrying, you'll grab the first job that offers and think you're lucky. Come down to the settlement—the board's seven a week. You can live three months on half your money. In that time you'll see a dozen openings. You'll be able to take your choice instead of snatching the first job you see."This conversation was typical of Benson. He nearly always started off with some generalized talk, but just when you began to think he had forgotten you and the issue, he would end up sharp, with a definite proposition. I accepted his advice and moved to the "Children's House."So my temporary blindness brought me into contact with two great facts of life I had hitherto ignored, women and want—the beauty of sex and the horror of misery. And these two things occupied my whole mind.One by one I picked out my memories of Ann and pondered them in all their implications. I tried to arrange them like beads on a thread, in some ordered unified design. Day by day she became a more real and concise personality.The effect of my encounter with Ann, I could then have found no word to describe. But a very modern term would explain my meaning to some. She opened my spirit to the "over-tones" of life. Last year I heard "Pelleas and Melisande." I sat through the first half hour unstirred. There was much sensuous appeal to the eyes, but the music seemed unsatisfactory. Suddenly appreciation came. Suddenly I understood with a rush what he was meaning to say. All the mystic harmony, the unwritten, unwritable wonder of it swept over me. And now Debussy seems to me the greatest of them all. "The Afternoon of the Faun" moves me more deeply than any other music. In fact, I think, we must invent some newer name than "music," for this more subtle perfume of sound.In a similar way Ann showed me the "over-tones" of life. Deeper significance, mystic meanings, I found in many things I had hardly noticed before. The sunsets held a richer wealth of colors. I had known Chaucer and his predecessors intimately, somewhat less thoroughly all the world's great poetry. It had interested me not only as a study of comparative philology, not only as a delicate game of prosody—of rhythm and rhyme and refrain. It had held for me a deeper charm than these mechanical elements—fascinating as they are. But somehow it all became new to me. I discovered in the old familiar lines things, which, alone in my study, I had never dreamed of. I began to see in all poetry—in all art—an effort to express these "overtones."On the other hand, my active life was spent in the appalling misery of the slums—a thing equally new to me. In those days the majority of our neighbors were Irish and German. Decade after decade the nationality of Stanton Street has changed. First the Germans disappeared, then the Russian and Hungarian Jews pushed out the Irish, now one hears as much Italian as Yiddish. The heart-rending poverty, the degradation of filth and drunkenness is not a matter of race. Wave after wave of immigration finds its native customs and morality insufficient to protect it from the contagion of the slum. And so it will be until we have the wisdom to blot out the crime of congestion and give our newcomers a decent chance.I try to force my mind back to its attitude in those first weeks in the "Children's House" and try to explain to myself how I became part of "The Settlement Movement." I fail. I think very few of the really important things in life are susceptible to a logical explanation.I have met some people, who from books alone have been impressed with the injustices of our social organization, and have left the seclusion of their studies to throw their lives into the active campaign for justice. Such mental processes are, I think, rare. Certainly it came about differently in my case.When Benson proposed that I should come to live in the settlement, I felt no "call" to social service. I was lonely, out of work, utterly adrift. The memory of the evening I had spent with him in the Children's House and the interesting people I had met was very pleasant. I had no suspicions that I was going there to stay. It appealed to me as sort of convalescent home, where I could rest up until I was able to go out and cope with the ordinary life of the world.At first the little circle of workers seemed incoherent. Here were half a dozen highly educated men and women, most of whom had left pleasant homes, living in the most abject neighborhood of the city. Why? What good were they doing? Around us roared the great fire of poverty. Here and there they were plucking out a brand, to be sure. But the fire was beyond their control. They did not even think they could stop it.I remember one night at dinner we had for guest, a professor of economics from one of the big universities. He prided himself on his cold scientific view-point, he regarded the settlement movement as sentimental, almost hysterical, and he had the ill-breeding to forget that what he scoffed at was a desperately serious thing to his hosts."This settlement movement reminds me of a story," he said. "Once upon a time a kind hearted old gentleman was walking down the street and found a man—drunk—in the gutter. He tried vainly to pull the unfortunate one up on the sidewalk and then losing courage, he said, 'My poor man, I can't help you, but I'll get down in the gutter beside you.'"He laughed heartily, but no one else did. The story fell decidedly flat. It was several minutes before anyone took up the challenge. At last, Rev. Mr. Dawn, the head worker, coughed slightly and replied. He had turned quite red and I saw that the joke had stung him."That is a very old story," he said, "it was current in Jerusalem a good many centuries ago. It was told with greateclatby a scribe and a pharisee who 'passed by on the other side.'""Oh, come, now!" our guest protested. "That's hardly a fair comparison. The Samaritan we are told really did some good to the poor devil. And besides the victim in that case was not a drunkard, but a person who had 'fallen among thieves.'""Thieves?" Benson asked, with a ring of anger in his voice. "Do you think there are no thieves but highway robbers?"—and then apparently realizing the uselessness of arguing with such a man, he smiled blandly and in a softer tone went on. "Besides some of us are foolish enough to imagine that we also can do some good. Let's not discuss that, we'd rather keep our illusions. Won't you tell us what you are teaching your classes about Marx's theory of surplus value? Of course I know that phrase is taboo. But what terms do you use to describe the proceeds of industrial robbery?"I could not make up my mind whether the professor realized that Benson was trying to insult him or whether he was afraid to tackle the question. At all events he turned to Mrs. Dawn and changed the conversation.This little tilt gave me a great deal to think of. I did not like the professor's attitude towards life. But after all, what good were these settlement workers doing? Again and again this question demanded an answer. Sometimes I went out with Mr. Dawn to help in burying the dead. I could see no adequate connection between his kindly words to the bereaved and the hideous dragon of tuberculosis which stalked through the crowded district. What good did Dawn's ministrations do? Sometimes I went out with Miss Bronson, the kindergartner and listened to her talk to uncomprehending mothers about their duties to their children. What could Miss Bronson accomplish by playing a few hours a day with the youngsters who had to go to filthy homes? They were given a wholesome lunch at the settlement. But the two other meals a day they must eat poorly cooked, adulterated food. Sometimes I went out with Miss Cole, the nurse, to visit her cases. It was hard for me to imagine anything more futile than her single-handed struggle against unsanitary tenements and unsanitary shops.I remember especially one visit I made with her. It was the crisis for me. The case was a child-birth. There were six other children, all in one unventilated room, its single window looked out on a dark, choked airshaft, and the father was a drunkard. I remember sitting there, after the doctor had gone, holding the next youngest baby on my knee, while Miss Cole was bathing the puny newcomer."Can't you make him stop crying for a minute?" Miss Cole asked nervously."No," I said with sudden rage. "I can't. I wouldn't if I could. Why shouldn't he cry? Why don't the other little fools cry! Do you want them to laugh?"She stopped working with the baby and offered me a flask of brandy from her bag. But brandy was not what I wanted. Of course I knew men sank to the very dregs. But I had never realized that some are born there.When she had done all she could for the mother and child, Miss Cole put her things back in the bag and we started home. It was long after midnight but the streets were still alive."What good does it do?" I demanded vehemently. "Oh, I know—you and the doctor saved the mother's life—brought a new one into the world and all that. But what good does it do? The child will die—it was a girl—let's get down on our knees right here and pray the gods that it may die soon—not grow up to want and fear—and shame." Then I laughed. "No, there's no use praying. She'll die all right! They'll begin feeding her beer out of a can before she's weaned. No. Not that. I don't believe the mother will be able to nurse her. She'll die of skimmed milk. And if that don't do the trick there's T.B. and several other things for her to catch. Oh, she'll die all right. And next year there'll be another. For God's sake, what's the use? What good does it do?" Abruptly I began to swear."You mustn't talk like that," Miss Cole said in a strained voice."Why shouldn't I curse?" I said fiercely, turning on her challengingly, trying to think of some greater blasphemy to hurl at the muddle of life. But the sight of her face, livid with weariness, her lips twisting spasmodically from nervous exhaustion, showed me one reason not to. The realization that I had been so brutal to her shocked me horribly."Oh, I beg your pardon," I cried.She stumbled slightly. I thought she was going to faint and I put my arm about her to steady her. She was almost old enough to be my mother, but she put her head on my shoulder and cried like a little child. We stood there on the sidewalk—in the glare of a noisy, loathsome saloon—like two frightened children. I don't think either of us saw any reason to go anywhere. But we dried our eyes at last and from mere force of habit walked blindly back to the children's house. On the steps she broke the long silence."I know how you feel—everyone's like that at first, but you'll get used to it. I can't tell 'why.' I can't see that it does much good. But it's got to be done. You mustn't think about it. There are things to do, today, tomorrow, all the time. Things that must be done. That's how we live. So many things to do, we can't think. It would kill you if you had time to think. You've got to work—work."You'll stay too. I know. You won't be able to go away. You've been here too long. You won't ever know 'why.' You'll stop asking if it does any good. And I tell you if you stop to think about it, it will kill you. You must work."She went to her room and I across the deserted courtyard and up to mine. But there was no sleep. It was that night that I first realized that I also must. I had seen so much I could never forget. It was something from which there was no escape. No matter how glorious the open fields, there would always be the remembered stink of the tenements in my nostrils. The vision of a sunken cheeked, tuberculosis ridden pauper would always rise between me and the beauty of the sunset. A crowd of hurrying ghosts—the ghosts of the slaughtered babies—would follow me everywhere, crying, "Coward," if I ran away. The slums had taken me captive.As I sat there alone with my pipe, the groans of the district's uneasy sleep in my ears, I realized more strongly than I can write it now the appalling unity of life. I sensed the myriad intricate filaments which bind us into an indivisible whole. I saw the bloody rack-rents of the tenements circulating through all business—tainting it—going even into the collection plates of our churches. I saw the pay drawn by the lyric poet, trailing back through the editorial bank account to the pockets of various subscribers who speculated in the necessities of life, who waxed fat off the hunger of the multitude. My own clothes were sweat-shop made.I could not put out the great fire of injustice. I could at least bind up the sores of some of my brothers who had fallen in—who were less lucky than I. My old prep. school ethics came back to me. "I want to live so that when I die, the greatest number of people will be glad I did live." In a way it did not seem to matter so much whether I could accomplish any lasting good. I must do what I could. Such effort seemed to me the only escape from the awful shame of complaisancy.Wandering in and out of the lives of the people of our neighborhood, I looked about for a field of activity. There were so many things to be done. I sought for the place where the need was greatest. It did not take me long to decide—a conclusion I have not changed—that the worst evils of our civilization come to a head in "The Tombs."The official name for that pile of stone and brick is "The Criminal Courts Building." But the people persist in calling it "The Tombs." The prison dated from the middle of the century and a hodge-podge of official architecture had been added, decade by decade, as the political bosses needed money. It housed the district attorney's office, the "police court," "special sessions" for misdemeanants, and "general sessions" for felons. One could study our whole penal practice in that building.I was first led into its grim shadow by a woman who came to the settlement. Her son, a boy of sixteen, had been arrested two months before and had been waiting trial in an unventilated cell, originally designed for a single occupant, with two others. His cell-mates had changed a dozen times. I recall that one had been an old forger, who was waiting an appeal, another was the keeper of a disorderly house and a third had been a high church curate, who had embezzled the foreign mission fund to buy flowers for a chorus girl. The lad was patently innocent. And this was the very reason he was held so long. The district attorney was anxious to make a high record of convictions. His term was just expiring and he was not calling to trial the men he thought innocent, these "technically" bad cases he was shoving over on his successor. At last, with the help of a charitable lawyer, named Maynard, of whom I will write more later, we forced the case on the calendar and the boy was promptly acquitted.In talking over this case with Benson, I found that he was already interested in the problems of Criminology. He was one of the trustees of "The Prisoner's Aid Society." The interview in the newspaper, which Ann had read to me at the hospital, had been an effort of his to draw attention to the subject and to infuse some life into the society."They're a bunch of fossils," he said. "Think they're a 'société savante.' They read books by foreign penologists and couldn't tell a crook from a carpet sweeper. We need somebody to study American crime. Not a dilettante—someone who will go into it solid."I told him I had thought a good deal about it and was ready to tackle the job if the ways and means could be arranged."I imagine I could get the society to pay you a living salary. But they are dead ones. If you did anything that wasn't in the books, it would scare them. I'll think it over."About a week later, I received a letter from the recently elected, not yet installed district attorney asking me to call on him. His name was Brace, his letter the result of Benson's thinking. I found him a typical young reform politician. A man of good family, he was filled with enthusiasm, and confidently expected to set several rivers on fire. There was going to be absolute, abstract justice under his regime. Benson had told him how the actual district attorney was shoving off the "bad cases" on him and he was righteously indignant. He wanted someone whose fidelity he could trust, who would keep an eye on the prison side of the Tombs. He was sure there were many abuses there to stop, and he was the man to do it. The only position he could offer me under the law was that of special county detective. The pay would be eighteen hundred a year."It is not exactly a dignified position," he said. "The county detectives are a low class,—but of course you won't have to associate with them."I was more than ready to take the place. With the rest of the new administration I was sworn in, and so entered on my life work. It was a far cry from my earlier ambition to be a Fellow at Oxford.BOOK IVI"Literary unity" can be secured in an autobiography only at the expense of all sense of reality. The simplest of us is a multiple personality, can be described only partially from any one point of view. The text book on physiology which I studied in school contained three illustrations. One of them pictured a human being as a structure of bones, a skeleton; another showed man as a system of veins and arteries; the third as a mass of interwoven muscles. None of them looked like any man I have ever seen. It is the same with most autobiographies, the writers, in order to center attention on one phase of their activities, have cut away everything which would make their stories seem life-like."The Memoirs" of Cassanova give us the picture of a lover. But he must have been something more than aroué. "The Personal Recollections" of General Grant portray the career of a soldier. But after all he was a man first, it was more or less by chance that he became a victory-machine. How fragmentary is the picture of his life, which Benvenuto Cellini gives us!I might accept these classic models and tell directly the story of my work in the Tombs. I might limit my narrative to that part of myself which was involved in friendship with Norman Benson. Or again, I might strip off everything else, ignore the flesh and bones and blood vessels, and write of myself as an "emotional system." In one of these ways I might more nearly approach a literary production. But certainly it would be at a sacrifice of verisimilitude. Perhaps some great writer will come who will unite the artistic form with an impression of actuality. But until genius has taught us the method we must choose between the two ideals. My choice is for reality rather than art.And life, as it has appeared to me, is episodal in form, unified only in the continual climaxes of the present moment. It is a string of incidents threaded on to the uninterrupted breathing of the same person. The facts of any life are related onlyde post facto, in that they influence the future course of the individual to whom they happen. The farther back we strive to trace these influences, which have formed us, the greater complexity we find. It is not only our bodies which have "family trees," that show the number of our ancestors, generation by generation, increasing with dizzy rapidity. It is the same with our thoughts and tastes. From an immensely diffuse luminosity the lens of life has focused the concentrated rays of light which are you and I.So—in telling of my life, as I see it—my narrative must break up into fragments. Unartistic as such a form may be, it seems to me the only one possible for autobiography. Incidents must be given, which, however unrelated they appear, seem to me to have been caught by the great lens and to have formed an integral part of the focal point, which sits here—trying to describe itself.IIFor some years I have been continually writing on the subject of criminology. I could not give, here in this narrative, a complete picture of the Tombs and its people, nor show in orderly sequence how one incident after another forced me into a definite attitude towards our penal system, without repeating what I have published elsewhere. But the atmosphere in which I have spent my working life has so definitely influenced me, has been so important a force in my experiment in ethics, that I must give it some space. I must try, at least, to give some illuminating examples of the sort of thing which did influence me and a brief statement of the attitude which has resulted from my work, for without this background the rest of my story would be meaningless.At first I found myself the object of universal hostility. The Tombs was a feudal domain of Tammany Hall. I was regarded as an enemy.The "spoils system" had given place to the evils of civil service. Municipal employees could not be displaced unless "charges" had been proven against them. The people of the Tombs did not worry much about the reform administration. They regarded it as an interruption in the even tenor of their ways, which happily would not last long. They were used to such moral spasms on the part of the electorate and knew how little they were worth. Some of the "Reform" officials tried earnestly to clean up their departments. Their efforts were defeated by unruly subordinates, men trained by and loyal to the machine.The way things went in the Tombs was typical. Brace had a conference with the new commissioner of correction and as a result some "Instructions for the guidance of prison keepers" were pasted up on the walls. But district attorneys change with every election, while the warden—protected by civil service—goes on forever. The sale of "dope" to the prisoners, forbidden by the "instructions" in capital letters, was not interrupted for a day. Within a week the screws had forgotten to make jokes about it.Having been appointed by the reformer Brace, I was naturally supposed to be his personal spy. I was saved from falling into so fatal a mistake by a queer old prison missionary called "General Jerry." He had lost an arm at Three Oaks, in the hospital at Andersonville he had found "religion." And as the Lord had visited him in prison, he had devoted what was left of his life to similar work. I think he had no income beyond his pension—he was always shabby. He had very little learning, but an immense amount of homely wisdom. If ever a man has won a right to a starry crown it was Jerry. He and the Father—each in his different way—were the most wholesouled Christians I have ever encountered. Such a noble dignity shone from the eyes of this humble old man that I felt it ever a privilege to sit at his feet and learn of him.First of all, from watching him, I found that a man who was sincere and honest could win the respect of the Tombs, in spite of such handicaps. Before long we became friends, and he gave me much shrewd advice."I come here to save souls," he said. "That's all I come for. I don't let nothin' else interest me. I ain't no district attorney. Sure, I see graft. Can't help it. Every year—onct—I talk to each one of the screws about his soul. 'Big Jim,' I says, 'you ain't right wid God. I ain't the only one as seed you take money from the mother of that dago what was hanged. I ain't the only one as heard you lie to that Jew woman, telling her how you'd help her husband out. I ain't the only one as knows the hotel you took her to. God sees! God hears! He knows! You'd better square it wid Him!' That's all I says. They knows I don't go round tellin' it. And they helps me wid my work. Just yesterday Big Jim comes to me. 'General,' he says, 'there's a guy up in 431 what's crying. I guess you'd better hand him a bit of Gospel.'"What do you come down here to the Tombs for? To help out the poor guys what they've got wrong. Well. Don't do nothin' else. The screws all think you're gum-shoein' for Brace. 'Jerry,' they says to me, 'who's the new guy? What's he nosin' around here for?' 'Don't know,' I says. 'Better keep your eye on him—same as I'm doin',' I says. 'After a while we'll know.'"I felt their eyes on me all the time. A couple of months later I sat down beside Jerry in the courtyard; he had a Bible on his knees and a cheese sandwich in his hand."I ain't no good sayin' Grace," he explained, "so I always reads a Psalm when I eat," .... "Say, young man," he went on, "I got a word to say to you. The screws ain't got you quite sized up yet—but most of 'em agrees you ain't nobody's damn fool. Now I just want to tell you something. You take this here Tombs all together—warden, screws, cops and lawyers, district attorneys and jedges—you can't never be friends wid all of 'em. They's too many what's hatin' each other. So you got to pick. You say you're going to stay by this job. Well, you just better figure out who's goin' to stick wid you. The jedges stay and the screws stay. But the district attorneys don't never stay more'n two years. Figure it out. That's what the good book means by 'Be ye wise as sarpents.'"Jerry's advice was good. I had already "figured out" that the favor of the judges was more important for me than that of the district attorney. I had to choose whom I would serve, and it was very evident that it was expedient—if I wished to accomplish anything—to make friends with the mammon of political unrighteousness. The reformers were not only pitifully weak, few of them commanded confidence. They had not been in office six weeks before it was evident that their reëlection was impossible. The best of them were rank amateurs in the business of politics and government. Much of their disaster was due no doubt to well intentioned ignorance. But very few of them stuck to the ship when it began to sink. It would furnish some sombre amusement to publish the figure about how many loud-mouthed reformers went into office again two years later—under the machine banner.Brace, my chief, as soon as he discovered that the walls of Tammany would not fall down at the sound of newspaper trumpets, lost heart. He had no further interest except to keep himself in the lime-light. Just like all his predecessors, he neglected the routine work of his office and gave all his attention to sensational trials which added to his newspaper notoriety.One of the big scandals of the preceding administration, which as much as anything else had stirred public indignation against ring politics, had centered about a man named Bateson. He called himself a "contractor" and got most of the work in grading the city streets. There was conclusive evidence to show that almost all the work he did was along the routes of the street car lines. The scandal had been discovered and worked up by one of the newspapers in a most exhaustive manner. The facts were clear. The engineer of the street car company would report to his superiors that such and such a street was too steep for the profitable operation of their cars. One of the directors would call in Bateson. Bateson would take up the matter with the mysterious powers on Fourteenth Street, the aldermen would vote an appropriation to grade the street; Bateson would get the contract and after being well paid by the city would get a tangible expression of appreciation from the street car company. The newspapers had already collected the evidence. The fraud was patent. Everyone expected Brace to call Bateson to trial at once. And it seemed inevitable that from the evidence given in this case, indictments could be drawn against both the "Old Man" on Fourteenth Street and the bribe giving directors of the street car company.Brace began on this case with a great flourish of trumpets. But one adjournment after another was granted by the Tammany judges. It trailed along for months. And when at last it was called, the bottom had, in some mysterious manner, dropped out of the prosecution. Bateson was acquitted. A few months later Brace resigned and became counsel for the notorious traction reorganization. Some recent magazine articles have exposed the kind of reform he stood for."Politics" has always seemed to me a very sorry sort of business. I found plenty of non-partisan misery to occupy all my time. Gradually I fitted myself into the life of the Tombs and became a fixture. When the new elections brought Tammany back to power, "civil service" protected me from the grafters, just as it had protected them from their enemies. And so—in that ill-smelling place—I have passed my life.To one who is unfamiliar with our juggernaut of justice it is surprising to find how much work there is which a person in my position can do, how many victims can be pulled from under the merciless wheels. First of all there are the poor, who have no money to employ an able lawyer, no means to secure the evidence of their innocence. Then there are the "greenhorn" immigrants who do not know the language and laws of this new country, who do not know enough to notify their consuls. Saddest of all—and most easily helped—are the youngsters. We did not have a children's court in those days. But most of my time, I think, has gone in trying to ease the lot of the innocent wives and children of the prisoners. Whether the man is guilty or not it is always the family which suffers most. And if there had been none of these things, I would have had my hands more than full with trying to help the men who were acquitted. Look over the report of the criminal court in your county and see what the average length of imprisonment whilewaiting trialis. It varies from place to place. It is seldom less than three weeks. And three weeks is a serious matter to the ordinary mechanic. About a third of all the people arrested are acquitted. They get no compensation for their footless imprisonment. Besides the loss of wages, it generally means a lost job.Two stories, which have been told elsewhere, are worth retelling, as examples of the varied work I found to do.It was in the summer of my first year in the Tombs that I got interested in the case of a redhaired Italian boy named Pietro Sippio. He was only fourteen years old and he had been indicted for premeditated murder.The prosecution fell to the lot of the most brilliant young lawyer on the district attorney's staff. The Sippio family was too poor to employ counsel and Judge Ryan, before whom the case was tried, had assigned to the defense a famous criminal lawyer. The trial became at once a tourney of wit between these two men. Little Pietro and his fate was a small matter in the duel for newspaper advertising.The principal witness for the state was Mrs. Casey, the mother of the little boy who had been killed. She was a widow, a simple, uneducated Irishwoman, who earned her living by washing. She told her story with every appearance of truthfulness. During the morning of the tragic day, she had had a quarrel with Pietro in the backyard of the tenement, where both families lived. Pietro had thrown some dirt on her washing and she had slapped him. Instead of crying as she thought an ordinary boy would have done, he had said he would "get even" with her.When she heard the noon whistles blow in the neighboring factories, she had gone out on the front sidewalk to get her baby for dinner. The youngster was sitting on the curbstone and as she stood in the doorway calling him, a brick, coming from the roof of the tenement, struck the baby on the head, killing him instantly. She rushed out and—she swore very solemnly—looked up and saw "the little divil's red head, jest as plain as I sees yer honor."The counsel for the defense was unable to shake her testimony in the least.Other witnesses swore that, on hearing Mrs. Casey's cry for help, they had rushed up to the roof and had met Mrs. Sippio coming down through the skylight with her two younger children, Felicia a girl of eight and Angelo, who was five. When they had asked her where Pietro was she said she had not seen him. But these witnesses were Irish and sided with Mrs. Casey. They testified that it was easy to pass from one roof to another. And it was evidently their theory that Pietro had escaped in this manner.A few minutes after the tragedy, Pietro had come whistling up the street and had walked into the arms of the police, who were just starting out to search for him.In his own defense Pietro testified that after quarreling with Mrs. Casey he had played about in the street for some time and then had gone down to the river with a crowd of boys for a swim. They had not left the water until the noon whistles had warned them of dinner time. They had all hurried into their clothes and gone home. He swore positively that he had not been on the roof during the morning. He evidently did not realize the seriousness of his position and was rather swaggeringly proud of being the center of so much attention.Two or three other boys testified that Pietro had been swimming with them and had not left the water until after the whistles blew. This was an important point as the baby had been killed a very few minutes after noon. But the district attorney, in a brutal, bullying cross-examination, succeeded in rattling one of the boys—a youngster of eleven—until he did not know his right hand from his left. He broke down entirely, and sobbingly admitted that perhaps Pietro had left before the whistles blew.Mrs. Sippio testified that she had not seen Pietro after breakfast. She had gone upon the roof about half past eleven to beat out some rugs. She had taken the two younger children with her. But Pietro had not been on the roof. She was a very timid woman, so frightened that she forgot most of her scant English. But she seemed to be telling the truth.After the testimony was in the counsel for the defense made an eloquent, if rather bombastic plea. He turned more often to the desk of the reporters than to the panel of jurymen. No one, he said, had given any testimony which even remotely implicated Pietro, except the grief-stricken and enraged Mrs. Casey. He made a peroration on the vengeful traits of the Irish. He almost wept over the prospect of eternal damnation which awaited Mrs. Casey's soul on account of her perjury. No reasonable man, he concluded, would condemn a fly on such unreliable testimony.The prosecutor commenced his summing up by referring to his position as attorney for the people of the state of New York. He said that his able opponent was technically called "The counsel for the defense," but that in reality he himself more truly deserved that title. He was engaged not in the defense of an individual offender, but in that of the whole community of law abiding citizens. And in the pursuance of this most serious function he could not allow his personal pity for the youthful murderer to deflect him from his public duty.He then gave a picturesque and blood curdling account of the Vendetta and Mafia. He called the jury's attention to the well known traditions of vengeance and murder among the Italians.As for Mrs. Sippio's testimony—despite his high regard for the sanctity of an oath—he could not find it in his heart to blame this mother who by perjury was endangering bar own soul to save her son. He was more stern in regard to the evidence of the boys. Their only excuse for perjury was their youth. They were members of a desperate gang, of which Pietro was the chief. They were corrupted by the false standards of loyalty to their leader, so common among boys of the street.The only testimony which deserved the serious attention of the jury was that of Mrs. Casey—the estimable woman, who had seen her babe foully murdered before her eyes. Her identification of Pietro had been absolute."I am sorry," he ended, "for this boy, who, by so hideous a crime, has ruined his life at the very outset. But you and I, gentlemen of the jury, are bound by oath to consider only the cold facts. The judge may, if he thinks it wise, be merciful in imposing sentence. But your sole function is to discover truth. Here is a boy of fiery disposition and revengeful race. He vowed vengeance. Some one must have thrown the brick. No one else had the motive. Either the defendant is guilty as charged in the indictment or the brick fell from heaven."The law explicitly states that a person charged with crime, must be given the benefit of any "reasonable doubt." In the face of the manifestly conflicting testimony, I think every one in court was surprised when the jury returned a verdict of "guilty."I had not then been long enough in the Tombs to get used to it. I had not become hardened. The tragedy of this case amazed me. A little boy of fourteen condemned of deliberate murder! But the thing which impressed me most was the way the lawyers in the court room rushed up to congratulate the prosecutor for having won so doubtful a case. It would be revolting enough to me if any one should congratulate me on having sent an adult to the gallows. But this little boy of fourteen....I went over the Bridge of Sighs and talked to Pietro in his cell. If ever a boy impressed me as telling a straightforward story he did. I was convinced that he had been at the riverside when the Casey baby was killed.After lunch I went up to the scene of the tragedy and my faith in Pietro's innocence was considerably shaken although not overthrown by my talk with Mrs. Casey. She was angry, of course, but she did not seem malicious or vindictive. As I talked with her in her squalid basement room, full of steam from the tubs of soiled clothing, I could not doubt her sincerity. She really believed that Pietro had killed her child. Wiping the suds from her powerful arms, she led me out on the sidewalk and showed me the place where the baby had been sitting and pointed out where she had seen the devilish red head above the coping.The idea flashed into my mind that a boy would have to be surprisingly clever to throw a brick from that height and hit a baby. With Mrs. Casey following me, I went upon the roof. The chimneys were in a dilapidated condition and a number of loose brick lay about. I was a fairly good ball player at college, but when I tried to hit a water plug on the curb stone, six stories below, I over shot at least eight feet. I asked Mrs. Casey to try and her brick lit in the middle of the street. I called up some of the boys, who were watching my operations from the street, and offered them a quarter if they could hit the water plug. Their attempts were no better than mine.A little further along the low coping some bricks were piled where children had evidently been building houses with them. I asked Mrs. Casey to push one of them over, easily as if by accident. It fell out a little way from the wall and crashed down fair on the curbing."Mrs. Casey," I said, "I don't think Pietro threw that brick. He couldn't have hit the baby if he had tried. Somebody pushed it over by accident."She stood for some seconds looking down over the wall, shaking her head uncertainly."Faith, and I'd think ye were right, sir," she said at last, "If I hadn't seen his red head, sir, jest as plain as I sees yours."And as we went down stairs, she kept repeating "I sure seen his red head." She was evidently convinced of it.I went to see Mrs. Sippio. She had moved to another tenement, because of the hostility of the Irish neighbors. I found Mr. Sippio at home taking care of his wife, she was half hysterical from the shame and her grief over Pietro's fate. But she told me her story just as simply and convincingly as had Mrs. Casey. Pietro had not been on the roof. There had been only Felicia and Angelo. I was on the point of leaving in discouragement. Apparently one of the women was lying. I could not guess which. I had gained nothing but a conviction that the brick could not have been thrown with an intent to kill. And that would be a very weak plea against the verdict of a jury. Just as I was getting up, there was a patter of feet in the hall-way. Mrs. Sippio's face lit up. "It is the children," she said. As they rushed noisily into the room the whole mystery was cleared up. It had not occurred to me—nor to any one—that there might be two redheaded boys in the same Italian family. But Angelo's hair was even more flaming than Pietro's.I took him up in my lap and amused him until I had won his confidence. And when he was thinking about other things, I suddenly asked him."Angelo, when that brick fell off the roof the other day, why didn't you tell your mother?"For a moment he was confused and then began to whimper. He had been afraid of being whipped. I gave a whoop and reassuring the family, I rushed down town and caught Judge Ryan, just as he was leaving his chambers. He listened to me eagerly, for he was as tenderhearted a man as I have ever known and he had been deeply horrified at the idea of having to sentence such a youngster for premeditated murder.The attorneys were summoned to the judge's chambers, and—I guess that the "pathos" writers of the newspapers were notified. For the next morning they attended court in force. The district attorney made a touching speech. He was grandiloquently glad to announce that new evidence had been discovered which cleared the defendant from all suspicion. The judge set aside the verdict of the jury. The district attorney said that Mrs. Casey had so evidently mistaken Angelo for his older brother that there was no use having a new trial and Pietro was discharged. In making a few remarks on the case, Judge Ryan mentioned my name and thanked me personally for my part in the matter. With increasing frequency he began to call on me for assistance in other cases and in time the other judges took notice of my existence. I found my hands more than full.Very often I was able in a similar manner to unearth evidence, which the defendants were too poor and ignorant or the lawyers too lazy to obtain.But it was in another class of cases that I proved of greatest utility to the judges. A large proportion of the prisoners plead guilty, without demanding a trial. If the whole matter is thrashed out before a jury, the trial judge hears all the evidence and so gets some idea of the motives of the crime, of the personality and environment of the accused. But when a prisoner pleads guilty, practically no details come out in court and unless the judge has some special investigation made he must impose sentence at haphazard. Ryan, almost always asked me to look into such cases. The other judges—with the exception of O'Neil—did so frequently. I would visit the prisoner in his cell and get his story, listen to what the police had to say, and then make a personal investigation to settle disputed points.As time went on Ryan came to rely more and more on my judgment. He felt, I think, that I was honest; that I could not be bribed and that I was more likely to err on the side of mercy than otherwise. His easy going kindliness was satisfied with this and he was only too glad to let his responsibilities slip on to my shoulders. In the last years before he was elevated to the Supreme Court, he practically let me sentence most of his men. Except in the cases where political influences intervened, my written reports determined the prisoner's fate.Of course I had to manage his susceptibilities. If I had presumed to suggest definitely what sentence he should impose he would have taken offense. He was very sensitive about his dignity. But I worked out a formal phraseology which did not ruffle his pride and accomplished what I intended. After stating the facts of the case I would end up with a sort of code phrase. If I wanted the judge to give the man another chance under a suspended sentence, I would say: "Under the circumstances, I believe that the defendant is deserving the utmost leniency. I am convinced that the arrest and the imprisonment which he has already suffered have taught him a salutary lesson which he will never forget." From that as the circumstances warranted I could go to the other extreme: "During my investigation of this case, which has been seriously limited because of lack of time, I have been able to find very little in this man's favor."Every time I had to present such a report as this I felt defeated. It meant that the prisoner was an old offender, hardened to a life of professional crime. And that I could see no hope of reformation. But if I had not accepted such defeats, when circumstances compelled them, the judges would very quickly have lost confidence in my pleas for mercy.I was valuable to the judges because I relieved them from worry. Whenever anyone approached them on behalf of a prisoner, they shrugged their shoulders and referred the suppliant to me. Now-a-days we have a probation law and such work as I have been describing is legalized. But in the early days, when I had no official sanction I found my position very embarrassing. Without having been in any way elected to office I was actually exercising a power which is supposed to be the gift of the voters. However—like so many things in our haphazard government—my position, extra-legal as it was, grew out of the sheer necessity of the case. The theory is that our judges shall be jurists. And a knowledge of the law does not fit one for the responsibility of deciding how we shall treat our criminals. In the old days when the law frankly punished offenders it was a simple matter and perhaps not too much to ask of judges. But today when we are beginning the attempt to reform those individuals who endanger society, the business of imposing sentence requires not so much a knowledge of law as familiarity with psychology, medicine and sociology. Although an expert in none of these lines, I was accepted as a makeshift. The law did not provide for the employment of specially trained men to assist the judges. I was informally permitted to entirely neglect the ordinary work of a county detective and give all my time to the courts.The danger in such happy-go-lucky arrangements is that of graft. I could have doubled or quadrupled my salary with impunity. The "shyster" lawyers, who infest the Tombs tried for several years to buy my intercession for their clients. I had to be constantly on my guard to keep them from fooling me. And when they found that they could not reach me in this manner, they tried industriously to discredit me, to trick me into some suspicious conditions so they could intimidate me. More than once they set women on my trail.The politicians also tried to use me. I received a letter one day from the "Old Man" asking me to intercede for a friend of his. I wrote back that I would investigate carefully. A couple of days later I sent another letter containing the prisoner's record, he had been twice in state prison and many times arrested. "Under the circumstances," I wrote "I cannot recommend mercy in this case."The next day one of the "Old Man's" lieutenants met me in the corridor and leading me into a corner, told me I was a fool. When what he called "reason" failed to shake me, he became abusive and threatened to have me "fired." I took the whole matter to Ryan. He told me not to worry, that he would talk it over with the "Old Man." I do not know what passed between them. But after that I had no more trouble from Fourteenth Street. Whenever I saw the "Old Man," he gave me a cordial nod. Frequently his runners would hand me one of his cards with a penciled note, "See what you can do for this friend of mine and oblige." But with one or two exceptions the "friend" turned out to be deserving. One day he sent word that he would like to see me personally. I called on him in Tammany Hall. He thanked me for "helping out" one of his friends and told me that the city, in some of its departments, or some of his "contracting friends" were always taking on new hands and that he would try to find a place for any man I sent him. This was an immense help to me in my work and a God-send to many a man who had lost his job because of a baseless arrest.So I gradually found a place of usefulness in the life of the Tombs.Another typical case happened years later. I would not have known how to handle it at first. The defendant was a Norwegian named Nora Lund. She was about seventeen and the sweetest, most beautiful young girl I have ever seen in the Tombs. She was employed in one of the smartest uptown stores. It had an established reputation as a dry goods house. The founder had died some years before, a stock company had taken it over and was developing it into a modern department store. Besides the old lines of goods they were carrying silverware, stationery, furniture and so forth. Their patrons were most of the very well to do classes.Just inside the main entrance was an especial show case, where a variety of specialties were exhibited. Nora presided over this display and it was her business to direct customers to the counters they sought and answer all manner of questions. She had been chosen for this post because of her beauty and her sweet, lady-like manners. If you asked her where the ribbons were for sale, you carried away with you a pleasing memory of her great blue eyes and her ready smile.
V
Our relations having been for the time determined, Ann set about to reform me. She was really horrified at the isolated life I had been leading. That I took little interest in humanity, none at all in public life and only by chance knew who was mayor of the city, shocked her. Every evening, after her other patients had been settled for the night, she brought me the papers. There was no love-making—only one kiss—until she had read to me for half an hour. It bored me to extinction, but she insisted that it was good for me. I had to listen, because each evening she examined me on what she had read the night before. So I acquired a certain amount of unrelated information about millionaire divorces, murders and municipal politics.
Her next step was to make me associate with the other patients.
"Bored?" she scolded. "It's a sin to be bored. They're people—human beings—just as good as you are. You're not interested in Mrs. Stickney's husband? You're not interested in Mr. Blake's business worries? Those are the two great facts of life. The woman half of the world is thinking about men. The man half is thinking about business. They are the two things which are really most interesting."
She took my reformation so much to heart that I began to be interested in it myself. I familiarized myself with all the symptoms of a husband's dyspepsia. Mrs. Stickney's eye trouble seemed to have been caused by a too close application to cook books—in search for a dish her husband could digest. From Mr. Blake's peevish discourse I got a new insight into business and the big and little dishonesties which go to make it up. I sometimes wonder if he really was robbed during his illness as much as he expected to be. He was convinced that his chief competitor would buy his trade secrets from his head book-keeper. He did not seem angry at his rival nor at his employee for seizing this opportunity to cheat him, but at the fates which, by his sickness, offered them so great a temptation. He complained bitterly because no such lucky chances had ever come to him.
But it was through the newspapers that I gained most.
"Want to hear about a millionaire socialist, who says that all judges and policemen ought to serve a year in jail before being eligible for office?"
"It sounds more hopeful than campaign speeches," I said submissively.
It was Norman Benson. I recognized his quaint way of expressing things, before she came to his name.
"I know him," I laughed.
I had to tell her all about our short acquaintance.
"Why don't you ask him to come up and see you?"
I did not feel that I knew him well enough to bother him. I had not seen him nor heard from him for three years.
The first thing in the morning, without letting me know, she telephoned him of my plight. About eleven o'clock, to my immense surprise, Miss Wright brought him to my room.
Benson was the busiest man I have ever known. In later years when I roomed with him and was his most intimate friend, I could never keep track of half his activities. He was a sort of "consulting engineer" in advertising. Big concerns all over the country would send for him and pay well to have him attract the attention of the public to some new product. He could write the Spotless Town kind of verses while eating breakfast, and although he did not take art seriously, he drew some of the most successful advertisements of his time. One year he earned about thirty thousand dollars, above his inherited income of ten thousand. He did not spend more than five thousand a year on himself, but he was always hard up.
He was director of half a hundred philanthropies—settlements, day-nurseries, immigrant homes, children's societies, and so forth. His pet hobby was the "Arbeiter Studenten Verein." When he did not entirely support these enterprises, he paid the yearly deficit. It was such expenses which pushed him into the advertising work he detested.
It was a wonder to me how, in spite of these manifold activities, he found time for the thousand and one little kindnesses, the varied personal relations he maintained with all sorts and conditions of men. Once a week or so he dined at the University Club, more often at the settlement, and the other nights he took pot-luck on the top floor of some tenement with one of his Arbeiter Studenten. In the same way he found time to remember me and bring cheer into the hospital.
That first morning, in speaking of the newspaper story, I asked him if he was a socialist.
"Hanged if I know," he said. "I never joined any socialist organization. I don't care much for these soap-box people. They talk about reconstructing our industrial institutions, and most of them don't know how to make change for a dollar. They talk about overthrowing Wall Street, and they don't know railroad-stock from live-stock. They don't begin to realize what a big thing it is—nor how unjust and crazy and top-heavy. But sometimes I think I must be a socialist. I can't open my mouth and say anything serious without everybody calling me a socialist. I don't know."
The remaining weeks in the hospital gave me a great fund of things to ponder over. My mind works retrospectively. I have always sympathized with the cud-chewing habit of the cow. The impressions of the hour are never clear-cut with me. For an experience to become real, I must mull over it a long time; gradually it sinks into my consciousness and becomes a vital possession.
Benson's sort of kindness was absolutely new to me. No one had ever done things for me as he did. And as it surprised me to have him take the trouble to send me a can of my favorite tobacco, so the affection, the intimate revelations of love, which Ann gave me, was a thing undreamed of. "Come with me, up on to a high mountain, and I will show you all the wonder of the world"—such was Ann's gift to me. Out of the horror of darkness, from the very bottom of the slough of despond, she led me up into the white light of the summit peaks of life.
As I read back over these pages, I find that I have described Ann as a voice, as a person who thought and talked of serious things, who seemed principally absorbed in an ambition, which up to that time had borne no fruit. I would like to picture the woman who came to me in the darkness with a wealth of cheer and tenderness and love.
Some day I hope our literature and our minds will be purified so that such things can be dealt with sanely and sweetly. But that time has not yet come and I must be content with the tools at hand. Ann brought to me in those desolate days all the wondrous womanly things—the quaint and gentle jests of love, the senseless sweet words and names which are caresses, the sudden gusts of self revelation, the strange and unexpected restraints—of which I may not write.
I was not lonely any more—not even when Miss Wright was on duty—there was so much to ponder over.
VI
At last the bandages were taken off. I recall the sudden painful glare of the darkened room, the three doctors in hospital costumes, who were consulting on different forms of torture. Especially I remember the mole on the forehead of the chief, a gray haired, spectacled man. It was the first things my eyes, startled out of their long sleep, fixed upon. The ordeal dragged along tragically. It seemed that they were intentionally slow. But the verdict when it came was acquittal. I was lucky. With care I might regain almost normal vision. But for months I must not try to read. Always, all my life, I must stop at the first hint of fatigue.
So, having adjusted some smoked glasses, they sent me back to my room, to pack and go out into a new life. As I entered the corridor, I saw two nurses at the other end. My heart stopped with a jump and I was suddenly dizzy. Somehow I had not thought of Ann in terms of sight. She had come to me out of the darkness, revealed herself as a sound and a touch. I had no idea how she would look. They both came towards me. I could see very little through my dark glasses. I could not guess which was which.
"So. They've taken off the bandages? I'm very glad." It was Miss Wright's strenuous voice.
"I'm glad, too," Ann said.
I tried to see her, but my eyes were full of tears.
"I'll show him his room," Ann said.
When the door was closed on us, she threw her arms about my neck and cried as I had never seen a woman cry.
"Oh! beloved," she sobbed. "I'm so glad. I was afraid—afraid you were going to be blind."
She had always been so cheerful, so professional, about my case—of course it would turn out all right—that I had not seen it from her point of view. It was a revelation to me that her bravery had been a sham.
"Oh. I was afraid—afraid!"
I tried to comfort her but all the pent-up worry and fear of weeks had broken out. And I had not realized that her love had made my risk a personal tragedy for her.
When she had quieted a little, I wanted her to stand away so that I might look at her. But no—she said—she did not want me to see her first when her eyes were swollen with tears. She clung to me tightly and would not show me her face.
There was a knock at the door. I had not lived long enough to realize the seriousness of a woman's wet eyes, and, without thought of this, I said, "Come in." It was Benson.
"Miss Wright tells me—"
He hesitated. He was looking at Ann. I turned too. She was making a brave effort to appear unconcerned, but her eyes were red past all hiding.
"Yes," she said, in her professional tone. "The news is very good. Better than we hoped."
"Fine. I dropped in," Benson said, as though there was nothing to be embarrassed about, "to see how you came out and get you to spend the week-end with me if they let you go. I've got to visit my uncle and aunt—stupid old people—hypochondriacs. But they are going to Europe next week and I really must see them. I'll die of boredom if there isn't someone to talk to. Better come along—the sailing's good. I've got to run over to the club for a few minutes. Can you get your grip packed in half an hour? All right. So long."
Ann was as nearly angry as I have ever seen her.
"At least you might have given me time to dry my eyes."
"I don't believe he noticed anything. Men never see things like that," I said.
But Ann laughed at this and so her good temper was restored.
Her face, now that I saw it, was not at all what I had expected. It was serious, meagre, a bit severe. I had thought of her as blonde, but her hair was a rich, deep brown. Of course I am no judge of her looks. She had brought joy into my darkness. She could not but be beautiful for me.
The expression is what counts most. About her face, emphasized by her nurse's uniform, was a definite air of sensibleness, of New England reliability. Perhaps under other circumstances she would not have attracted me. Her face in repose might not have inspired more than confidence. But when she put her hands on my shoulders and looked up into my face, with the light of love in her eyes, it seemed to me that a mystic halo of beauty shone about her. No other woman has ever looked to me as Ann did. And yet I know that most people would call her "plain."
The hardest thing for me to accept about her was her height. I had thought her considerably shorter than Miss Wright. I had been misled of course by the relative size of their voices. Ann was above average height and Miss Wright hardly five feet.
In the half hour before Benson returned, we had not discussed anything more concrete than opportunities to meet outside the hospital. She was free on alternate Saturdays from supper time till midnight. I was rather afraid that Benson, when we were alone, might ask some questions or make some joke about her, but he talked busily of other things.
His uncle and aunt were a lonely old couple. Their children were established and they had little left to interest them except their illnesses, some of which, Benson said, were real. It was a beautiful house just out of Stamford on the Sound—rather dolefully empty now that the children had gone. I had never seen such luxury, such heavy silver, such ubiquitous servants.
They were planning to live in Paris, near a daughter who had married a Frenchman. Their arrangements had been all made. But at the last moment their trained nurse had thrown them into confusion by deciding suddenly that she did not want to leave America. The aunt told us about it, querulously, at dinner. Ann's desire came to mind.
"How much free time would the nurse have?" I asked. "I know one who is anxious to live in Paris and study with Pasteur. She is very capable. Your nephew has seen her—Miss Barton—she was at the hospital. I liked her immensely."
Benson shot a quick glance at me. It was the only sign he ever gave of having noticed any intimacy between us.
"My aunt expects to live permanently in Paris," he said. "She would not want to take any one who was not willing to stay indefinitely."
"That, I think, would suit Miss Barton exactly."
Benson immediately fell in with my suggestion and recommended Ann enthusiastically. I had to answer a string of questions. The aunt was one of those undecided persons who hate to make up their mind, but the uncle wanted to get started. We talked about it continually during the three Sunday meals, and on Monday morning they went in to see her, with a note of introduction from me.
Ann, as I had foreseen, was delighted with the opportunity. She pleased them, and as soon as she could find a substitute, an easy matter, as her position was desirable, the arrangements were made.
VII
Ann and I spent together the day before they sailed. We had planned an excursion to the sea-side, but it rained desperately and we found refuge in an hotel. We were too much interested in each other to care much about the weather or our surroundings. Any beauties of nature which might have distracted our attention would have seemed an impertinence.
It was a day of never-to-be-forgotten delight. And yet it was not without a subtle alloy. By an unexpressed agreement, we lived up to Omar's philosophy, we discussed neither the past nor the future. I was afraid to stop and think, for fear it might seem wrong....
Once she brought a cloud by some expressions of gratitude for my having, as she put it, given her this great opportunity to realize her dream of studying with Pasteur. And all the while, I knew it was not solely for her sake that I had picked up this chance, which the fates had thrown me. Despite the joy of her love there was this under-current of incertitude. I wanted to get far enough away from it, to judge it. It is hard to express what I mean, but I was happier, more light-hearted, that day, because I knew she was leaving the next.
But these blurred moments were—only moments. We were young. It was the spring of life as it was of the year. The spirit of poesy, of the great Lyrics, was there in that tawdry hotel room....
In the early morning, through the wet glistening streets we made our way across town towards the river. Of course I knew just where we were going, but somehow the entrance to the dock found me surprised and unprepared. For a moment we stood there, shaking hands as formally as might be. Suddenly tears sparkled in her eyes, she reached up and kissed me. Then she turned abruptly and walked into the bare, shadowy building. She had a firm step, she was sallying out to meet her destiny.
I watched until she was out of sight. And then I surprised myself by a sigh of strange relief.
VIII
Later in the day I lunched with Benson at the University Club.
"What are your plans now?" he asked as we settled down to coffee and cigarettes.
"Find a job, I suppose."
"You're in no condition to work nor to look for work—just out of the hospital."
"But I've got to eat."
"That's a fool superstition!" he exploded. "You don't have to work in order to eat. None of 'the best people' do. Half the trouble with the world is that so many idiots will sweat—just to eat. If they'd refuse to work for tripe-stews and demand box seats at the opera, it would do wonders. Why people will slave all their lives long for a chance to die in a tenement is beyond me. What kind of work do you want?"
My ideas on that point were vague.
"How much money have you?"
That I had figured out.
"One hundred and eighty-five dollars and ninety-three cents. And then my books—perhaps I could get a hundred more for them."
"Of course if you are sufficiently unscrupulous that's a good start for a fortune. Lots of men have done it on less. But it's a bore to sit back and watch money grow. Did you ever see a hunk of shad-roe—all eggs? Money's a darn sight more prolific than fish. Impregnate a silver dollar with enough cynicism and you can't keep your expenses up with your income. Look how wealth has grown in this country in spite of all our thievery and waste! In the Civil War we burned money—threw millions after millions into the flames—we never noticed it. The nation was richer in '65 than in '60.
"But making money is a fool's ambition. Just think how many dubs succeed in earning a living. Anybody can do that. It isn't original. Look round for interesting work. Something that's worth doing aside from the wages. Take things easy. If you begin worrying, you'll grab the first job that offers and think you're lucky. Come down to the settlement—the board's seven a week. You can live three months on half your money. In that time you'll see a dozen openings. You'll be able to take your choice instead of snatching the first job you see."
This conversation was typical of Benson. He nearly always started off with some generalized talk, but just when you began to think he had forgotten you and the issue, he would end up sharp, with a definite proposition. I accepted his advice and moved to the "Children's House."
So my temporary blindness brought me into contact with two great facts of life I had hitherto ignored, women and want—the beauty of sex and the horror of misery. And these two things occupied my whole mind.
One by one I picked out my memories of Ann and pondered them in all their implications. I tried to arrange them like beads on a thread, in some ordered unified design. Day by day she became a more real and concise personality.
The effect of my encounter with Ann, I could then have found no word to describe. But a very modern term would explain my meaning to some. She opened my spirit to the "over-tones" of life. Last year I heard "Pelleas and Melisande." I sat through the first half hour unstirred. There was much sensuous appeal to the eyes, but the music seemed unsatisfactory. Suddenly appreciation came. Suddenly I understood with a rush what he was meaning to say. All the mystic harmony, the unwritten, unwritable wonder of it swept over me. And now Debussy seems to me the greatest of them all. "The Afternoon of the Faun" moves me more deeply than any other music. In fact, I think, we must invent some newer name than "music," for this more subtle perfume of sound.
In a similar way Ann showed me the "over-tones" of life. Deeper significance, mystic meanings, I found in many things I had hardly noticed before. The sunsets held a richer wealth of colors. I had known Chaucer and his predecessors intimately, somewhat less thoroughly all the world's great poetry. It had interested me not only as a study of comparative philology, not only as a delicate game of prosody—of rhythm and rhyme and refrain. It had held for me a deeper charm than these mechanical elements—fascinating as they are. But somehow it all became new to me. I discovered in the old familiar lines things, which, alone in my study, I had never dreamed of. I began to see in all poetry—in all art—an effort to express these "overtones."
On the other hand, my active life was spent in the appalling misery of the slums—a thing equally new to me. In those days the majority of our neighbors were Irish and German. Decade after decade the nationality of Stanton Street has changed. First the Germans disappeared, then the Russian and Hungarian Jews pushed out the Irish, now one hears as much Italian as Yiddish. The heart-rending poverty, the degradation of filth and drunkenness is not a matter of race. Wave after wave of immigration finds its native customs and morality insufficient to protect it from the contagion of the slum. And so it will be until we have the wisdom to blot out the crime of congestion and give our newcomers a decent chance.
I try to force my mind back to its attitude in those first weeks in the "Children's House" and try to explain to myself how I became part of "The Settlement Movement." I fail. I think very few of the really important things in life are susceptible to a logical explanation.
I have met some people, who from books alone have been impressed with the injustices of our social organization, and have left the seclusion of their studies to throw their lives into the active campaign for justice. Such mental processes are, I think, rare. Certainly it came about differently in my case.
When Benson proposed that I should come to live in the settlement, I felt no "call" to social service. I was lonely, out of work, utterly adrift. The memory of the evening I had spent with him in the Children's House and the interesting people I had met was very pleasant. I had no suspicions that I was going there to stay. It appealed to me as sort of convalescent home, where I could rest up until I was able to go out and cope with the ordinary life of the world.
At first the little circle of workers seemed incoherent. Here were half a dozen highly educated men and women, most of whom had left pleasant homes, living in the most abject neighborhood of the city. Why? What good were they doing? Around us roared the great fire of poverty. Here and there they were plucking out a brand, to be sure. But the fire was beyond their control. They did not even think they could stop it.
I remember one night at dinner we had for guest, a professor of economics from one of the big universities. He prided himself on his cold scientific view-point, he regarded the settlement movement as sentimental, almost hysterical, and he had the ill-breeding to forget that what he scoffed at was a desperately serious thing to his hosts.
"This settlement movement reminds me of a story," he said. "Once upon a time a kind hearted old gentleman was walking down the street and found a man—drunk—in the gutter. He tried vainly to pull the unfortunate one up on the sidewalk and then losing courage, he said, 'My poor man, I can't help you, but I'll get down in the gutter beside you.'"
He laughed heartily, but no one else did. The story fell decidedly flat. It was several minutes before anyone took up the challenge. At last, Rev. Mr. Dawn, the head worker, coughed slightly and replied. He had turned quite red and I saw that the joke had stung him.
"That is a very old story," he said, "it was current in Jerusalem a good many centuries ago. It was told with greateclatby a scribe and a pharisee who 'passed by on the other side.'"
"Oh, come, now!" our guest protested. "That's hardly a fair comparison. The Samaritan we are told really did some good to the poor devil. And besides the victim in that case was not a drunkard, but a person who had 'fallen among thieves.'"
"Thieves?" Benson asked, with a ring of anger in his voice. "Do you think there are no thieves but highway robbers?"—and then apparently realizing the uselessness of arguing with such a man, he smiled blandly and in a softer tone went on. "Besides some of us are foolish enough to imagine that we also can do some good. Let's not discuss that, we'd rather keep our illusions. Won't you tell us what you are teaching your classes about Marx's theory of surplus value? Of course I know that phrase is taboo. But what terms do you use to describe the proceeds of industrial robbery?"
I could not make up my mind whether the professor realized that Benson was trying to insult him or whether he was afraid to tackle the question. At all events he turned to Mrs. Dawn and changed the conversation.
This little tilt gave me a great deal to think of. I did not like the professor's attitude towards life. But after all, what good were these settlement workers doing? Again and again this question demanded an answer. Sometimes I went out with Mr. Dawn to help in burying the dead. I could see no adequate connection between his kindly words to the bereaved and the hideous dragon of tuberculosis which stalked through the crowded district. What good did Dawn's ministrations do? Sometimes I went out with Miss Bronson, the kindergartner and listened to her talk to uncomprehending mothers about their duties to their children. What could Miss Bronson accomplish by playing a few hours a day with the youngsters who had to go to filthy homes? They were given a wholesome lunch at the settlement. But the two other meals a day they must eat poorly cooked, adulterated food. Sometimes I went out with Miss Cole, the nurse, to visit her cases. It was hard for me to imagine anything more futile than her single-handed struggle against unsanitary tenements and unsanitary shops.
I remember especially one visit I made with her. It was the crisis for me. The case was a child-birth. There were six other children, all in one unventilated room, its single window looked out on a dark, choked airshaft, and the father was a drunkard. I remember sitting there, after the doctor had gone, holding the next youngest baby on my knee, while Miss Cole was bathing the puny newcomer.
"Can't you make him stop crying for a minute?" Miss Cole asked nervously.
"No," I said with sudden rage. "I can't. I wouldn't if I could. Why shouldn't he cry? Why don't the other little fools cry! Do you want them to laugh?"
She stopped working with the baby and offered me a flask of brandy from her bag. But brandy was not what I wanted. Of course I knew men sank to the very dregs. But I had never realized that some are born there.
When she had done all she could for the mother and child, Miss Cole put her things back in the bag and we started home. It was long after midnight but the streets were still alive.
"What good does it do?" I demanded vehemently. "Oh, I know—you and the doctor saved the mother's life—brought a new one into the world and all that. But what good does it do? The child will die—it was a girl—let's get down on our knees right here and pray the gods that it may die soon—not grow up to want and fear—and shame." Then I laughed. "No, there's no use praying. She'll die all right! They'll begin feeding her beer out of a can before she's weaned. No. Not that. I don't believe the mother will be able to nurse her. She'll die of skimmed milk. And if that don't do the trick there's T.B. and several other things for her to catch. Oh, she'll die all right. And next year there'll be another. For God's sake, what's the use? What good does it do?" Abruptly I began to swear.
"You mustn't talk like that," Miss Cole said in a strained voice.
"Why shouldn't I curse?" I said fiercely, turning on her challengingly, trying to think of some greater blasphemy to hurl at the muddle of life. But the sight of her face, livid with weariness, her lips twisting spasmodically from nervous exhaustion, showed me one reason not to. The realization that I had been so brutal to her shocked me horribly.
"Oh, I beg your pardon," I cried.
She stumbled slightly. I thought she was going to faint and I put my arm about her to steady her. She was almost old enough to be my mother, but she put her head on my shoulder and cried like a little child. We stood there on the sidewalk—in the glare of a noisy, loathsome saloon—like two frightened children. I don't think either of us saw any reason to go anywhere. But we dried our eyes at last and from mere force of habit walked blindly back to the children's house. On the steps she broke the long silence.
"I know how you feel—everyone's like that at first, but you'll get used to it. I can't tell 'why.' I can't see that it does much good. But it's got to be done. You mustn't think about it. There are things to do, today, tomorrow, all the time. Things that must be done. That's how we live. So many things to do, we can't think. It would kill you if you had time to think. You've got to work—work.
"You'll stay too. I know. You won't be able to go away. You've been here too long. You won't ever know 'why.' You'll stop asking if it does any good. And I tell you if you stop to think about it, it will kill you. You must work."
She went to her room and I across the deserted courtyard and up to mine. But there was no sleep. It was that night that I first realized that I also must. I had seen so much I could never forget. It was something from which there was no escape. No matter how glorious the open fields, there would always be the remembered stink of the tenements in my nostrils. The vision of a sunken cheeked, tuberculosis ridden pauper would always rise between me and the beauty of the sunset. A crowd of hurrying ghosts—the ghosts of the slaughtered babies—would follow me everywhere, crying, "Coward," if I ran away. The slums had taken me captive.
As I sat there alone with my pipe, the groans of the district's uneasy sleep in my ears, I realized more strongly than I can write it now the appalling unity of life. I sensed the myriad intricate filaments which bind us into an indivisible whole. I saw the bloody rack-rents of the tenements circulating through all business—tainting it—going even into the collection plates of our churches. I saw the pay drawn by the lyric poet, trailing back through the editorial bank account to the pockets of various subscribers who speculated in the necessities of life, who waxed fat off the hunger of the multitude. My own clothes were sweat-shop made.
I could not put out the great fire of injustice. I could at least bind up the sores of some of my brothers who had fallen in—who were less lucky than I. My old prep. school ethics came back to me. "I want to live so that when I die, the greatest number of people will be glad I did live." In a way it did not seem to matter so much whether I could accomplish any lasting good. I must do what I could. Such effort seemed to me the only escape from the awful shame of complaisancy.
Wandering in and out of the lives of the people of our neighborhood, I looked about for a field of activity. There were so many things to be done. I sought for the place where the need was greatest. It did not take me long to decide—a conclusion I have not changed—that the worst evils of our civilization come to a head in "The Tombs."
The official name for that pile of stone and brick is "The Criminal Courts Building." But the people persist in calling it "The Tombs." The prison dated from the middle of the century and a hodge-podge of official architecture had been added, decade by decade, as the political bosses needed money. It housed the district attorney's office, the "police court," "special sessions" for misdemeanants, and "general sessions" for felons. One could study our whole penal practice in that building.
I was first led into its grim shadow by a woman who came to the settlement. Her son, a boy of sixteen, had been arrested two months before and had been waiting trial in an unventilated cell, originally designed for a single occupant, with two others. His cell-mates had changed a dozen times. I recall that one had been an old forger, who was waiting an appeal, another was the keeper of a disorderly house and a third had been a high church curate, who had embezzled the foreign mission fund to buy flowers for a chorus girl. The lad was patently innocent. And this was the very reason he was held so long. The district attorney was anxious to make a high record of convictions. His term was just expiring and he was not calling to trial the men he thought innocent, these "technically" bad cases he was shoving over on his successor. At last, with the help of a charitable lawyer, named Maynard, of whom I will write more later, we forced the case on the calendar and the boy was promptly acquitted.
In talking over this case with Benson, I found that he was already interested in the problems of Criminology. He was one of the trustees of "The Prisoner's Aid Society." The interview in the newspaper, which Ann had read to me at the hospital, had been an effort of his to draw attention to the subject and to infuse some life into the society.
"They're a bunch of fossils," he said. "Think they're a 'société savante.' They read books by foreign penologists and couldn't tell a crook from a carpet sweeper. We need somebody to study American crime. Not a dilettante—someone who will go into it solid."
I told him I had thought a good deal about it and was ready to tackle the job if the ways and means could be arranged.
"I imagine I could get the society to pay you a living salary. But they are dead ones. If you did anything that wasn't in the books, it would scare them. I'll think it over."
About a week later, I received a letter from the recently elected, not yet installed district attorney asking me to call on him. His name was Brace, his letter the result of Benson's thinking. I found him a typical young reform politician. A man of good family, he was filled with enthusiasm, and confidently expected to set several rivers on fire. There was going to be absolute, abstract justice under his regime. Benson had told him how the actual district attorney was shoving off the "bad cases" on him and he was righteously indignant. He wanted someone whose fidelity he could trust, who would keep an eye on the prison side of the Tombs. He was sure there were many abuses there to stop, and he was the man to do it. The only position he could offer me under the law was that of special county detective. The pay would be eighteen hundred a year.
"It is not exactly a dignified position," he said. "The county detectives are a low class,—but of course you won't have to associate with them."
I was more than ready to take the place. With the rest of the new administration I was sworn in, and so entered on my life work. It was a far cry from my earlier ambition to be a Fellow at Oxford.
BOOK IV
I
"Literary unity" can be secured in an autobiography only at the expense of all sense of reality. The simplest of us is a multiple personality, can be described only partially from any one point of view. The text book on physiology which I studied in school contained three illustrations. One of them pictured a human being as a structure of bones, a skeleton; another showed man as a system of veins and arteries; the third as a mass of interwoven muscles. None of them looked like any man I have ever seen. It is the same with most autobiographies, the writers, in order to center attention on one phase of their activities, have cut away everything which would make their stories seem life-like.
"The Memoirs" of Cassanova give us the picture of a lover. But he must have been something more than aroué. "The Personal Recollections" of General Grant portray the career of a soldier. But after all he was a man first, it was more or less by chance that he became a victory-machine. How fragmentary is the picture of his life, which Benvenuto Cellini gives us!
I might accept these classic models and tell directly the story of my work in the Tombs. I might limit my narrative to that part of myself which was involved in friendship with Norman Benson. Or again, I might strip off everything else, ignore the flesh and bones and blood vessels, and write of myself as an "emotional system." In one of these ways I might more nearly approach a literary production. But certainly it would be at a sacrifice of verisimilitude. Perhaps some great writer will come who will unite the artistic form with an impression of actuality. But until genius has taught us the method we must choose between the two ideals. My choice is for reality rather than art.
And life, as it has appeared to me, is episodal in form, unified only in the continual climaxes of the present moment. It is a string of incidents threaded on to the uninterrupted breathing of the same person. The facts of any life are related onlyde post facto, in that they influence the future course of the individual to whom they happen. The farther back we strive to trace these influences, which have formed us, the greater complexity we find. It is not only our bodies which have "family trees," that show the number of our ancestors, generation by generation, increasing with dizzy rapidity. It is the same with our thoughts and tastes. From an immensely diffuse luminosity the lens of life has focused the concentrated rays of light which are you and I.
So—in telling of my life, as I see it—my narrative must break up into fragments. Unartistic as such a form may be, it seems to me the only one possible for autobiography. Incidents must be given, which, however unrelated they appear, seem to me to have been caught by the great lens and to have formed an integral part of the focal point, which sits here—trying to describe itself.
II
For some years I have been continually writing on the subject of criminology. I could not give, here in this narrative, a complete picture of the Tombs and its people, nor show in orderly sequence how one incident after another forced me into a definite attitude towards our penal system, without repeating what I have published elsewhere. But the atmosphere in which I have spent my working life has so definitely influenced me, has been so important a force in my experiment in ethics, that I must give it some space. I must try, at least, to give some illuminating examples of the sort of thing which did influence me and a brief statement of the attitude which has resulted from my work, for without this background the rest of my story would be meaningless.
At first I found myself the object of universal hostility. The Tombs was a feudal domain of Tammany Hall. I was regarded as an enemy.
The "spoils system" had given place to the evils of civil service. Municipal employees could not be displaced unless "charges" had been proven against them. The people of the Tombs did not worry much about the reform administration. They regarded it as an interruption in the even tenor of their ways, which happily would not last long. They were used to such moral spasms on the part of the electorate and knew how little they were worth. Some of the "Reform" officials tried earnestly to clean up their departments. Their efforts were defeated by unruly subordinates, men trained by and loyal to the machine.
The way things went in the Tombs was typical. Brace had a conference with the new commissioner of correction and as a result some "Instructions for the guidance of prison keepers" were pasted up on the walls. But district attorneys change with every election, while the warden—protected by civil service—goes on forever. The sale of "dope" to the prisoners, forbidden by the "instructions" in capital letters, was not interrupted for a day. Within a week the screws had forgotten to make jokes about it.
Having been appointed by the reformer Brace, I was naturally supposed to be his personal spy. I was saved from falling into so fatal a mistake by a queer old prison missionary called "General Jerry." He had lost an arm at Three Oaks, in the hospital at Andersonville he had found "religion." And as the Lord had visited him in prison, he had devoted what was left of his life to similar work. I think he had no income beyond his pension—he was always shabby. He had very little learning, but an immense amount of homely wisdom. If ever a man has won a right to a starry crown it was Jerry. He and the Father—each in his different way—were the most wholesouled Christians I have ever encountered. Such a noble dignity shone from the eyes of this humble old man that I felt it ever a privilege to sit at his feet and learn of him.
First of all, from watching him, I found that a man who was sincere and honest could win the respect of the Tombs, in spite of such handicaps. Before long we became friends, and he gave me much shrewd advice.
"I come here to save souls," he said. "That's all I come for. I don't let nothin' else interest me. I ain't no district attorney. Sure, I see graft. Can't help it. Every year—onct—I talk to each one of the screws about his soul. 'Big Jim,' I says, 'you ain't right wid God. I ain't the only one as seed you take money from the mother of that dago what was hanged. I ain't the only one as heard you lie to that Jew woman, telling her how you'd help her husband out. I ain't the only one as knows the hotel you took her to. God sees! God hears! He knows! You'd better square it wid Him!' That's all I says. They knows I don't go round tellin' it. And they helps me wid my work. Just yesterday Big Jim comes to me. 'General,' he says, 'there's a guy up in 431 what's crying. I guess you'd better hand him a bit of Gospel.'
"What do you come down here to the Tombs for? To help out the poor guys what they've got wrong. Well. Don't do nothin' else. The screws all think you're gum-shoein' for Brace. 'Jerry,' they says to me, 'who's the new guy? What's he nosin' around here for?' 'Don't know,' I says. 'Better keep your eye on him—same as I'm doin',' I says. 'After a while we'll know.'"
I felt their eyes on me all the time. A couple of months later I sat down beside Jerry in the courtyard; he had a Bible on his knees and a cheese sandwich in his hand.
"I ain't no good sayin' Grace," he explained, "so I always reads a Psalm when I eat," .... "Say, young man," he went on, "I got a word to say to you. The screws ain't got you quite sized up yet—but most of 'em agrees you ain't nobody's damn fool. Now I just want to tell you something. You take this here Tombs all together—warden, screws, cops and lawyers, district attorneys and jedges—you can't never be friends wid all of 'em. They's too many what's hatin' each other. So you got to pick. You say you're going to stay by this job. Well, you just better figure out who's goin' to stick wid you. The jedges stay and the screws stay. But the district attorneys don't never stay more'n two years. Figure it out. That's what the good book means by 'Be ye wise as sarpents.'"
Jerry's advice was good. I had already "figured out" that the favor of the judges was more important for me than that of the district attorney. I had to choose whom I would serve, and it was very evident that it was expedient—if I wished to accomplish anything—to make friends with the mammon of political unrighteousness. The reformers were not only pitifully weak, few of them commanded confidence. They had not been in office six weeks before it was evident that their reëlection was impossible. The best of them were rank amateurs in the business of politics and government. Much of their disaster was due no doubt to well intentioned ignorance. But very few of them stuck to the ship when it began to sink. It would furnish some sombre amusement to publish the figure about how many loud-mouthed reformers went into office again two years later—under the machine banner.
Brace, my chief, as soon as he discovered that the walls of Tammany would not fall down at the sound of newspaper trumpets, lost heart. He had no further interest except to keep himself in the lime-light. Just like all his predecessors, he neglected the routine work of his office and gave all his attention to sensational trials which added to his newspaper notoriety.
One of the big scandals of the preceding administration, which as much as anything else had stirred public indignation against ring politics, had centered about a man named Bateson. He called himself a "contractor" and got most of the work in grading the city streets. There was conclusive evidence to show that almost all the work he did was along the routes of the street car lines. The scandal had been discovered and worked up by one of the newspapers in a most exhaustive manner. The facts were clear. The engineer of the street car company would report to his superiors that such and such a street was too steep for the profitable operation of their cars. One of the directors would call in Bateson. Bateson would take up the matter with the mysterious powers on Fourteenth Street, the aldermen would vote an appropriation to grade the street; Bateson would get the contract and after being well paid by the city would get a tangible expression of appreciation from the street car company. The newspapers had already collected the evidence. The fraud was patent. Everyone expected Brace to call Bateson to trial at once. And it seemed inevitable that from the evidence given in this case, indictments could be drawn against both the "Old Man" on Fourteenth Street and the bribe giving directors of the street car company.
Brace began on this case with a great flourish of trumpets. But one adjournment after another was granted by the Tammany judges. It trailed along for months. And when at last it was called, the bottom had, in some mysterious manner, dropped out of the prosecution. Bateson was acquitted. A few months later Brace resigned and became counsel for the notorious traction reorganization. Some recent magazine articles have exposed the kind of reform he stood for.
"Politics" has always seemed to me a very sorry sort of business. I found plenty of non-partisan misery to occupy all my time. Gradually I fitted myself into the life of the Tombs and became a fixture. When the new elections brought Tammany back to power, "civil service" protected me from the grafters, just as it had protected them from their enemies. And so—in that ill-smelling place—I have passed my life.
To one who is unfamiliar with our juggernaut of justice it is surprising to find how much work there is which a person in my position can do, how many victims can be pulled from under the merciless wheels. First of all there are the poor, who have no money to employ an able lawyer, no means to secure the evidence of their innocence. Then there are the "greenhorn" immigrants who do not know the language and laws of this new country, who do not know enough to notify their consuls. Saddest of all—and most easily helped—are the youngsters. We did not have a children's court in those days. But most of my time, I think, has gone in trying to ease the lot of the innocent wives and children of the prisoners. Whether the man is guilty or not it is always the family which suffers most. And if there had been none of these things, I would have had my hands more than full with trying to help the men who were acquitted. Look over the report of the criminal court in your county and see what the average length of imprisonment whilewaiting trialis. It varies from place to place. It is seldom less than three weeks. And three weeks is a serious matter to the ordinary mechanic. About a third of all the people arrested are acquitted. They get no compensation for their footless imprisonment. Besides the loss of wages, it generally means a lost job.
Two stories, which have been told elsewhere, are worth retelling, as examples of the varied work I found to do.
It was in the summer of my first year in the Tombs that I got interested in the case of a redhaired Italian boy named Pietro Sippio. He was only fourteen years old and he had been indicted for premeditated murder.
The prosecution fell to the lot of the most brilliant young lawyer on the district attorney's staff. The Sippio family was too poor to employ counsel and Judge Ryan, before whom the case was tried, had assigned to the defense a famous criminal lawyer. The trial became at once a tourney of wit between these two men. Little Pietro and his fate was a small matter in the duel for newspaper advertising.
The principal witness for the state was Mrs. Casey, the mother of the little boy who had been killed. She was a widow, a simple, uneducated Irishwoman, who earned her living by washing. She told her story with every appearance of truthfulness. During the morning of the tragic day, she had had a quarrel with Pietro in the backyard of the tenement, where both families lived. Pietro had thrown some dirt on her washing and she had slapped him. Instead of crying as she thought an ordinary boy would have done, he had said he would "get even" with her.
When she heard the noon whistles blow in the neighboring factories, she had gone out on the front sidewalk to get her baby for dinner. The youngster was sitting on the curbstone and as she stood in the doorway calling him, a brick, coming from the roof of the tenement, struck the baby on the head, killing him instantly. She rushed out and—she swore very solemnly—looked up and saw "the little divil's red head, jest as plain as I sees yer honor."
The counsel for the defense was unable to shake her testimony in the least.
Other witnesses swore that, on hearing Mrs. Casey's cry for help, they had rushed up to the roof and had met Mrs. Sippio coming down through the skylight with her two younger children, Felicia a girl of eight and Angelo, who was five. When they had asked her where Pietro was she said she had not seen him. But these witnesses were Irish and sided with Mrs. Casey. They testified that it was easy to pass from one roof to another. And it was evidently their theory that Pietro had escaped in this manner.
A few minutes after the tragedy, Pietro had come whistling up the street and had walked into the arms of the police, who were just starting out to search for him.
In his own defense Pietro testified that after quarreling with Mrs. Casey he had played about in the street for some time and then had gone down to the river with a crowd of boys for a swim. They had not left the water until the noon whistles had warned them of dinner time. They had all hurried into their clothes and gone home. He swore positively that he had not been on the roof during the morning. He evidently did not realize the seriousness of his position and was rather swaggeringly proud of being the center of so much attention.
Two or three other boys testified that Pietro had been swimming with them and had not left the water until after the whistles blew. This was an important point as the baby had been killed a very few minutes after noon. But the district attorney, in a brutal, bullying cross-examination, succeeded in rattling one of the boys—a youngster of eleven—until he did not know his right hand from his left. He broke down entirely, and sobbingly admitted that perhaps Pietro had left before the whistles blew.
Mrs. Sippio testified that she had not seen Pietro after breakfast. She had gone upon the roof about half past eleven to beat out some rugs. She had taken the two younger children with her. But Pietro had not been on the roof. She was a very timid woman, so frightened that she forgot most of her scant English. But she seemed to be telling the truth.
After the testimony was in the counsel for the defense made an eloquent, if rather bombastic plea. He turned more often to the desk of the reporters than to the panel of jurymen. No one, he said, had given any testimony which even remotely implicated Pietro, except the grief-stricken and enraged Mrs. Casey. He made a peroration on the vengeful traits of the Irish. He almost wept over the prospect of eternal damnation which awaited Mrs. Casey's soul on account of her perjury. No reasonable man, he concluded, would condemn a fly on such unreliable testimony.
The prosecutor commenced his summing up by referring to his position as attorney for the people of the state of New York. He said that his able opponent was technically called "The counsel for the defense," but that in reality he himself more truly deserved that title. He was engaged not in the defense of an individual offender, but in that of the whole community of law abiding citizens. And in the pursuance of this most serious function he could not allow his personal pity for the youthful murderer to deflect him from his public duty.
He then gave a picturesque and blood curdling account of the Vendetta and Mafia. He called the jury's attention to the well known traditions of vengeance and murder among the Italians.
As for Mrs. Sippio's testimony—despite his high regard for the sanctity of an oath—he could not find it in his heart to blame this mother who by perjury was endangering bar own soul to save her son. He was more stern in regard to the evidence of the boys. Their only excuse for perjury was their youth. They were members of a desperate gang, of which Pietro was the chief. They were corrupted by the false standards of loyalty to their leader, so common among boys of the street.
The only testimony which deserved the serious attention of the jury was that of Mrs. Casey—the estimable woman, who had seen her babe foully murdered before her eyes. Her identification of Pietro had been absolute.
"I am sorry," he ended, "for this boy, who, by so hideous a crime, has ruined his life at the very outset. But you and I, gentlemen of the jury, are bound by oath to consider only the cold facts. The judge may, if he thinks it wise, be merciful in imposing sentence. But your sole function is to discover truth. Here is a boy of fiery disposition and revengeful race. He vowed vengeance. Some one must have thrown the brick. No one else had the motive. Either the defendant is guilty as charged in the indictment or the brick fell from heaven."
The law explicitly states that a person charged with crime, must be given the benefit of any "reasonable doubt." In the face of the manifestly conflicting testimony, I think every one in court was surprised when the jury returned a verdict of "guilty."
I had not then been long enough in the Tombs to get used to it. I had not become hardened. The tragedy of this case amazed me. A little boy of fourteen condemned of deliberate murder! But the thing which impressed me most was the way the lawyers in the court room rushed up to congratulate the prosecutor for having won so doubtful a case. It would be revolting enough to me if any one should congratulate me on having sent an adult to the gallows. But this little boy of fourteen....
I went over the Bridge of Sighs and talked to Pietro in his cell. If ever a boy impressed me as telling a straightforward story he did. I was convinced that he had been at the riverside when the Casey baby was killed.
After lunch I went up to the scene of the tragedy and my faith in Pietro's innocence was considerably shaken although not overthrown by my talk with Mrs. Casey. She was angry, of course, but she did not seem malicious or vindictive. As I talked with her in her squalid basement room, full of steam from the tubs of soiled clothing, I could not doubt her sincerity. She really believed that Pietro had killed her child. Wiping the suds from her powerful arms, she led me out on the sidewalk and showed me the place where the baby had been sitting and pointed out where she had seen the devilish red head above the coping.
The idea flashed into my mind that a boy would have to be surprisingly clever to throw a brick from that height and hit a baby. With Mrs. Casey following me, I went upon the roof. The chimneys were in a dilapidated condition and a number of loose brick lay about. I was a fairly good ball player at college, but when I tried to hit a water plug on the curb stone, six stories below, I over shot at least eight feet. I asked Mrs. Casey to try and her brick lit in the middle of the street. I called up some of the boys, who were watching my operations from the street, and offered them a quarter if they could hit the water plug. Their attempts were no better than mine.
A little further along the low coping some bricks were piled where children had evidently been building houses with them. I asked Mrs. Casey to push one of them over, easily as if by accident. It fell out a little way from the wall and crashed down fair on the curbing.
"Mrs. Casey," I said, "I don't think Pietro threw that brick. He couldn't have hit the baby if he had tried. Somebody pushed it over by accident."
She stood for some seconds looking down over the wall, shaking her head uncertainly.
"Faith, and I'd think ye were right, sir," she said at last, "If I hadn't seen his red head, sir, jest as plain as I sees yours."
And as we went down stairs, she kept repeating "I sure seen his red head." She was evidently convinced of it.
I went to see Mrs. Sippio. She had moved to another tenement, because of the hostility of the Irish neighbors. I found Mr. Sippio at home taking care of his wife, she was half hysterical from the shame and her grief over Pietro's fate. But she told me her story just as simply and convincingly as had Mrs. Casey. Pietro had not been on the roof. There had been only Felicia and Angelo. I was on the point of leaving in discouragement. Apparently one of the women was lying. I could not guess which. I had gained nothing but a conviction that the brick could not have been thrown with an intent to kill. And that would be a very weak plea against the verdict of a jury. Just as I was getting up, there was a patter of feet in the hall-way. Mrs. Sippio's face lit up. "It is the children," she said. As they rushed noisily into the room the whole mystery was cleared up. It had not occurred to me—nor to any one—that there might be two redheaded boys in the same Italian family. But Angelo's hair was even more flaming than Pietro's.
I took him up in my lap and amused him until I had won his confidence. And when he was thinking about other things, I suddenly asked him.
"Angelo, when that brick fell off the roof the other day, why didn't you tell your mother?"
For a moment he was confused and then began to whimper. He had been afraid of being whipped. I gave a whoop and reassuring the family, I rushed down town and caught Judge Ryan, just as he was leaving his chambers. He listened to me eagerly, for he was as tenderhearted a man as I have ever known and he had been deeply horrified at the idea of having to sentence such a youngster for premeditated murder.
The attorneys were summoned to the judge's chambers, and—I guess that the "pathos" writers of the newspapers were notified. For the next morning they attended court in force. The district attorney made a touching speech. He was grandiloquently glad to announce that new evidence had been discovered which cleared the defendant from all suspicion. The judge set aside the verdict of the jury. The district attorney said that Mrs. Casey had so evidently mistaken Angelo for his older brother that there was no use having a new trial and Pietro was discharged. In making a few remarks on the case, Judge Ryan mentioned my name and thanked me personally for my part in the matter. With increasing frequency he began to call on me for assistance in other cases and in time the other judges took notice of my existence. I found my hands more than full.
Very often I was able in a similar manner to unearth evidence, which the defendants were too poor and ignorant or the lawyers too lazy to obtain.
But it was in another class of cases that I proved of greatest utility to the judges. A large proportion of the prisoners plead guilty, without demanding a trial. If the whole matter is thrashed out before a jury, the trial judge hears all the evidence and so gets some idea of the motives of the crime, of the personality and environment of the accused. But when a prisoner pleads guilty, practically no details come out in court and unless the judge has some special investigation made he must impose sentence at haphazard. Ryan, almost always asked me to look into such cases. The other judges—with the exception of O'Neil—did so frequently. I would visit the prisoner in his cell and get his story, listen to what the police had to say, and then make a personal investigation to settle disputed points.
As time went on Ryan came to rely more and more on my judgment. He felt, I think, that I was honest; that I could not be bribed and that I was more likely to err on the side of mercy than otherwise. His easy going kindliness was satisfied with this and he was only too glad to let his responsibilities slip on to my shoulders. In the last years before he was elevated to the Supreme Court, he practically let me sentence most of his men. Except in the cases where political influences intervened, my written reports determined the prisoner's fate.
Of course I had to manage his susceptibilities. If I had presumed to suggest definitely what sentence he should impose he would have taken offense. He was very sensitive about his dignity. But I worked out a formal phraseology which did not ruffle his pride and accomplished what I intended. After stating the facts of the case I would end up with a sort of code phrase. If I wanted the judge to give the man another chance under a suspended sentence, I would say: "Under the circumstances, I believe that the defendant is deserving the utmost leniency. I am convinced that the arrest and the imprisonment which he has already suffered have taught him a salutary lesson which he will never forget." From that as the circumstances warranted I could go to the other extreme: "During my investigation of this case, which has been seriously limited because of lack of time, I have been able to find very little in this man's favor."
Every time I had to present such a report as this I felt defeated. It meant that the prisoner was an old offender, hardened to a life of professional crime. And that I could see no hope of reformation. But if I had not accepted such defeats, when circumstances compelled them, the judges would very quickly have lost confidence in my pleas for mercy.
I was valuable to the judges because I relieved them from worry. Whenever anyone approached them on behalf of a prisoner, they shrugged their shoulders and referred the suppliant to me. Now-a-days we have a probation law and such work as I have been describing is legalized. But in the early days, when I had no official sanction I found my position very embarrassing. Without having been in any way elected to office I was actually exercising a power which is supposed to be the gift of the voters. However—like so many things in our haphazard government—my position, extra-legal as it was, grew out of the sheer necessity of the case. The theory is that our judges shall be jurists. And a knowledge of the law does not fit one for the responsibility of deciding how we shall treat our criminals. In the old days when the law frankly punished offenders it was a simple matter and perhaps not too much to ask of judges. But today when we are beginning the attempt to reform those individuals who endanger society, the business of imposing sentence requires not so much a knowledge of law as familiarity with psychology, medicine and sociology. Although an expert in none of these lines, I was accepted as a makeshift. The law did not provide for the employment of specially trained men to assist the judges. I was informally permitted to entirely neglect the ordinary work of a county detective and give all my time to the courts.
The danger in such happy-go-lucky arrangements is that of graft. I could have doubled or quadrupled my salary with impunity. The "shyster" lawyers, who infest the Tombs tried for several years to buy my intercession for their clients. I had to be constantly on my guard to keep them from fooling me. And when they found that they could not reach me in this manner, they tried industriously to discredit me, to trick me into some suspicious conditions so they could intimidate me. More than once they set women on my trail.
The politicians also tried to use me. I received a letter one day from the "Old Man" asking me to intercede for a friend of his. I wrote back that I would investigate carefully. A couple of days later I sent another letter containing the prisoner's record, he had been twice in state prison and many times arrested. "Under the circumstances," I wrote "I cannot recommend mercy in this case."
The next day one of the "Old Man's" lieutenants met me in the corridor and leading me into a corner, told me I was a fool. When what he called "reason" failed to shake me, he became abusive and threatened to have me "fired." I took the whole matter to Ryan. He told me not to worry, that he would talk it over with the "Old Man." I do not know what passed between them. But after that I had no more trouble from Fourteenth Street. Whenever I saw the "Old Man," he gave me a cordial nod. Frequently his runners would hand me one of his cards with a penciled note, "See what you can do for this friend of mine and oblige." But with one or two exceptions the "friend" turned out to be deserving. One day he sent word that he would like to see me personally. I called on him in Tammany Hall. He thanked me for "helping out" one of his friends and told me that the city, in some of its departments, or some of his "contracting friends" were always taking on new hands and that he would try to find a place for any man I sent him. This was an immense help to me in my work and a God-send to many a man who had lost his job because of a baseless arrest.
So I gradually found a place of usefulness in the life of the Tombs.
Another typical case happened years later. I would not have known how to handle it at first. The defendant was a Norwegian named Nora Lund. She was about seventeen and the sweetest, most beautiful young girl I have ever seen in the Tombs. She was employed in one of the smartest uptown stores. It had an established reputation as a dry goods house. The founder had died some years before, a stock company had taken it over and was developing it into a modern department store. Besides the old lines of goods they were carrying silverware, stationery, furniture and so forth. Their patrons were most of the very well to do classes.
Just inside the main entrance was an especial show case, where a variety of specialties were exhibited. Nora presided over this display and it was her business to direct customers to the counters they sought and answer all manner of questions. She had been chosen for this post because of her beauty and her sweet, lady-like manners. If you asked her where the ribbons were for sale, you carried away with you a pleasing memory of her great blue eyes and her ready smile.