THE CHAPEL.
The chapel is the place where prisoners get most of their public instruction aside from what is obtained in the library. It is not often that they have the privilege of attending educational lectures as if they were attending a college or public school; however, in our better prisons steps are being taken to give the well-behaved prisoners advantages on this line occasionally. The general meetings on Sunday are held in the chapel, to which the prisoners are marched in regular order, where several hundred are in weekly attendance. The chaplain generally conducts the regular services or has ministers from the city to take their turns in preaching to them. Prison evangelists are often given the privilege of talking to the prisoners or visiting them at their cells for the welfare of their souls. There are prisons where all visitors and gospel workers are admitted free, while other prisons charge twenty-five cents admission fee. Aside from what isknown as the regular chapel services, the prisoners who desire to meet before that hour or remain after, in a social religious prayer-service or Bible class, can have the privilege of doing so. All prisoners are allowed to sing at the general services, although they generally have a select choir. One man in giving a report of the prison choir said: “At one time we had two horse thieves, two rapists—one with a sentence of forty years—three murderers, two hog thieves, and several others with equally villainous records.” It would be difficult at such a place to select a choir that had a clean past record. While these men were criminals when incarcerated, some of them will doubtless always remain criminals, while others have so reformed as to be worthy of a better name.
Many prisoners during their confinement actually get a real experience of salvation, and those desiring to be baptized by immersion go from the chapel to the laundry, and there in a well-filled tank or long troughlike tub receive the ordinance of baptism. The chapel does not have stained-glass windows nor the finery of many modern church buildings; nevertheless the place is supposed to have everything neat and in order, and the men are to observe the strictest decorum and reverence while in attendance.