Indeed, why shouldn't these attendants be brutal? In the first place, there is very little chance of a come-back, for who will believe men who have ever been shut up in an insane asylum? And very often these attendants themselves are unhinged mentally. To begin with, they are men of low intelligence, as is shown by the fact that they will work for eighteen dollars a month, and after they have associated with insane men for years they are apt to become delusional themselves. Taking care of idiots and maniacs is a strain on theintelligence of the best men. Is it any wonder that the ordinary attendant often becomes nervous and irascible, and will fly at a poor idiot who won't do dirty work or whose silly noises get on his nerves? I have noticed attendants who, after they had been in the asylum a few months, acquired certain insane characteristics, such as a jerking of the head from one side to the other, looking up at the sky, cursing some imaginary person, and walking with the body bent almost double.
Early in my stay at Matteawan I saw something that made me realize I was up against a hard joint. An attendant in the isolation ward had an incurable patient under him, whom he was in the habit of compelling to do his work for him, such as caning chairs and cleaning cuspidors. The attendants had two birds in his room, and he used to make Mickey, the incurable idiot, clean out the cage for him. One day Mickey put the cages under the boiling water, to clean them as usual. The attendant had forgot to remove the birds, and they were killed by the hot water. Another crank, who was in the bath room with Mickey, spied the dead pets, and he and Mickey began to eat them. Theywere picking the bones when the attendant and two others discovered them—and treated them as a golfer treats his golf-balls.
Another time I saw an insane epileptic patient try to prevent four attendants from playing cards in the ward on Sunday. He was delusional on religious subjects and thought the attendants were doing wrong. The reward he received for caring for the religious welfare of his keepers was a kick in the stomach by one of the attendants, while another hit him in the solar plexus, knocking him down, and a third jammed his head on the floor until the blood flowed. After he was unconscious a doctor gave him a hyperdermic injection and he was put to bed. How often, indeed, have I seen men knocked out by strong arm work, or strung up to the ceiling with a pair of suspenders! How often have I seen them knocked unconscious for a time or for eternity—yes—for eternity, for insane men sometimes do die, if they are treated too brutally. In that case, the doctor reports the patient as having died of consumption, or some other disease. I have seen insane men turned into incurable idiots by the beatings they have received from the attendants. Isaw an idiot boy knocked down with an iron pot because he insisted on chirping out his delusion. I heard a patient about to be beaten by four attendants cry out: "My God, you won't murder me?" and the answer was, "Why not? The Coroner would say you died of dysentery." The attendants tried often to force fear into me by making me look at the work they had done on some harmless lunatic. I could multiply instances of this kind. I could give scores of them, with names of attendants and patients, and sometimes even the dates on which these horrors occurred. But I must cut short this part of my narrative. Every word of it, as sure as I have a poor old mother, is true, but it is too terrible to dwell upon, and will probably not be believed. It will be put down as one of my delusions, or as a lie inspired by the desire of vengeance.
Certainly I made myself obnoxious to the authorities in the insane asylum, for I objected vigorously to the treatment of men really insane. It is as dangerous to object to the curriculum of a mad-house in the State of New York as it is to find fault with the running of the government in Russia. In stir I neversaw such brutality as takes place almost every day in the pipe house. I reported what I saw, and though I was plainly told to mind my own business, I continued to object every time I saw a chance, until soon the petty spite of the attendants was turned against me. I was reported continually for things I had not done, I had no privileges, not even opium or books, and was so miserable that I repeatedly tried to be transferred back to prison. A doctor once wrote a book calledTen Years in a Mad-House, in which he says "God help the man who has the attendants against him; for these demented brutes will make his life a living hell." Try as I might, however, I was not transferred back to stir, partly because of the sane stool-pigeons who, in order to curry favor with the attendants, invented lies about attempts on my part to escape. If I had not had such a poor opinion of the powers that be and had stopped finding fault I should no doubt have been transferred back to what was beginning to seem to me, by contrast, a delightful place—state's prison.
The all absorbing topic to me in the pipe house was paresis. I thought a great deal about it, and observed the cranks about mecontinually. I noticed that almost all insane persons are musical, that they can hum a tune after hearing it only once. I suppose the meanest faculty in the human brain is that of memory, and that idiots, lunatics and madmen learn music so easily because that part of the brain which is the seat of memory is the only one that is active; the other intellectual qualities being dead, so that the memory is untroubled by thought.
I was often saddened at the sight of poor George, who had been a good dip and an old pal of mine. When he first saw me in the pipe house he asked me about his girl. I told him she was still waiting, and he said: "Why doesn't she visit me then?" When I replied: "Wait awhile," he smiled sadly, and said: "I know." He then put his finger to his head, and, hanging his head, his face suddenly became a blank. I was helpless to do anything for him. I was so sorry for him sometimes that I wanted to kill him and myself and end our misery.
Another friend of mine thought he had a number of white blackbirds and used to talk to them excitedly about gold. This man had a finely shaped head. I have read in a bookof phrenology that a man's intelligence can be estimated by the shape of his head. I don't think this theory amounts to anything, for most of the insane men I knew had good heads. I have formed a little theory of my own (I am as good a quack as anybody else) about insanity. I used to compare a well shaped lunatic's head to a lady's beautiful jewel box from which my lady's maid had stolen the precious stones. The crank's head contained both quantity and quality of brains, but the grey matter was lacking. The jewel box and the lunatic's head were both beautiful receptacles, but the value had flown.
Another lunatic, a man named Hogan, thought that girls were continually bothering him. "Now go away, Liz, and leave me alone," he would say. One day a lady about fifty years old visited the hospital with Superintendent Allison, and came to the violent ward where Hogan and I were. She was not a bit afraid, and went right up to Hogan and questioned him. He exclaimed, excitedly, "Go away, Meg. You're disfigured enough without my giving you another sockdolager." She stayed in the ward a long while and asked many questions. She had as much nerve asany lady I ever saw. As she and Allison were leaving the ward, Hogan said: "Allison, chain her up. She is a bad egg." The next day I learned that this refined, delicate and courageous woman had once gone to war with her husband, a German prince, who had been with General Sherman on his memorable march to the sea. She was born an American, and belonged to the Jay family, but was now the Princess Salm-Salm.
The most amusing crank (if the word amusing can be used of an insane man) in the ward was an Englishman named Alec. He was incurably insane, but a good musician and mathematician. One of his delusions was that he was the sacred camel in the London Zoo. His mortal enemy was a lunatic named Jimmy White, who thought he was a mule. Jimmy often came to me and said: "You didn't give your mule any oats this morning." He would not be satisfied until I pretended to shoe him. Alec had great resentment for Jimmy because when Alec was a camel in the London Zoo Jimmy used to prevent the ladies and the kids from giving him sweets. When Jimmy said: "I never saw the man before," Alec replied indignantly, "I'm no man. I'm a sacred camel,and I won't be interfered with by an ordinary, common mule, like you."
There are divers sorts of insanity. I had an interview with a doctor, a high officer in the institution, which convinced me, perhaps without reason, that insanity was not limited to the patients and attendants. One day an insane man was struck by an attendant in the solar plexus. He threw his hands up in the air, and cried: "My God, I'm killed." I said to another man in the ward: "There's murder." He said: "How do you know?" I replied: "I have seen death a few times." In an hour, sure enough, the report came that the insane man was dead. A few days later I was talking with the doctor referred to and I said:
"I was an eye-witness of the assault on D——." And I described the affair.
"You have been reported to me repeatedly," he replied.
"By whom?" I asked, "attendants or patients?"
"By patients," he replied.
"Surely," I remarked, "you don't believe half what insane men tell you, do you? Doctor, these same patients (in reality sane stool-pigeons)that have been reporting me, have accused you of every crime in the calendar."
"Oh, but," he said, "I am an old man and the father of a family."
"Doctor," I continued, "do you believe that a man can be a respectable physician and still be insane?"
"What do you mean?" he said.
"In California lately," I replied, "A superintendent of an insane asylum has been accused of murder, arson, rape and peculation. This man, too, was more than fifty, had a mother, a wife and children, and belonged to a profession which ought to be more sympathetic with a patient than the church with its communicants. When a man will stoop to such crimes, is it not possible that there is a form of mental disease called partial, periodical paralysis of the faculty humane, and was not Robert Louis Stevenson right when he wroteDr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde?"
The doctor grabbed me by the wrist and shouted: "Don't you dare to tell anybody about this interview." I looked into his eyes and smiled, for I am positive that at that moment I looked into the eyes of a madman.
King Kelly, an attendant who had been onduty in insane asylums for many years, was very energetic in trying to get information from the stool-pigeons. The patients used to pass notes around among themselves, and the attendants were always eager to get hold of those notes, expecting to find news of beats (escapes) about to be attempted. I knew that King Kelly was eager to discover "beats" and as I, not being a stool-pigeon, was in bad odor with him, I determined to give him a jar. So one day I wrote him the following note:
"Mr. Kelly; You have been in this hospital for years. The socks and suspenders which should go to the patients are divided impartially between you and the other attendants. Of the four razors, which lately arrived for patients, two are in your trunk, one you sent to your brother in Ireland, and the fourth you keep in the ward for show, in case the doctor should be coming around."
That night when I was going to bed I slipped the note into the Kings hand and whispered: "There's going to be a beat tonight." The King turned pale, and hurriedly ordered the men in the ward to bed, so that he could read the note. Before reading it he handed it to a doctor, to be sure to get thecredit of stopping the beat as soon as possible. The doctor read it and gave the King the laugh. In the morning, when the doctor made his rounds, Mr. Kelly said to him: "We have one or two funny men in the ward who, instead of robbing decent people, could have made their fortunes at Tony Pastor's." The result was that the doctor put me down for three or four new delusions. Knowing the Celtic character thoroughly I used to crack many a joke on the King. I would say to another patient, as the King passed: "If it hadn't been for Kelly we should have escaped that time sure." That would make him wild. My gift of ridicule was more than once valuable to me in the mad-house.
But I must say that the King was pretty kind when a patient was ill. When I was so ill and weak that I didn't care whether I died or not, the old King used to give me extras,—milk, eggs and puddings. And in his heart the old man hated stool-pigeons, for by nature he was a dynamiter and believed in physical force and not mental treachery.
The last few months I served in the insane asylum was at Dannemora, where I was transferred from Matteawan. The conditions atthe two asylums are much the same. While at Dannemora I continued my efforts to be sent back to stir to finish my sentence, and used to talk to the doctors about it as often as I had an opportunity. A few months before I was released I had an interview with a Commissioner—the first one in three years, although I had repeatedly demanded to talk to one.
"How is it," I said, "that I am not sent back to stir?"
He turned to the ward doctor and asked: "What is this mans condition?"
"Imaginary wrongs," replied the doctor.
That made me angry, and I remarked, sarcastically: "It is curious that when a man tries to make a success at little things he is a dead failure."
"What do you mean?" asked the Superintendent, trying to feel me out for a new delusion.
I pointed to the doctor and said: "Only a few years ago this man was interlocutor in an amateur minstrel troupe. As a barn-stormer he was a failure. Since he has risen to the height of being a mad-house doctor he is a success."
Then I turned to the Commissioner andsaid: "Do you know what constitutes a cure in this place and in Matteawan?"
"I'd like to know," he replied.
"Well," I said, "when a man stoops to carrying tales on other patients and starts in to work cleaning cuspidors, then, and not till then, he is cured. Everybody knows that, in the eyes of attendants and doctors, the worst delusions in the asylum are wanting to go home, demanding more food, and disliking to do dirty work and bear tales."
I don't know whether my talk with the Commissioner had any effect or not, but a little while after that, when my term expired, I was released. I had been afraid I should not be, for very often a man is kept in the asylum long after his term expires, even though he is no more insane than I was. When the stool-pigeons heard that I was to be released they thought I must have been a rat under cover, and applied every vile name to me.
I had been in hell for several years; but even hell has its uses. When I was sent up for my third term, I thought I should not live my bit out, and that, as long as I did live, I should remain a grafter at heart. But the pipe house cured me, or helped to cure me, ofa vice which, if it had continued, would have made me incapable of reform, even if I had lived. I mean the opium habit. Before I went to the mad-house there had been periods when I had little opium, either because I could not obtain it, or because I was trying to knock it off. My sufferings in consequence had been violent, but the worst moral and physical torture that has ever fallen to my lot came to me after I had entered the pipe house; for I could practically get no opium. That deprivation, added to the horrors I saw every day, was enough to make any man crazy. At least, I thought so at the time. I must have had a good nervous system to have passed through it all.
Insufficient hop is almost as bad as none at all. During my first months in the madhouse, the doctor occasionally took pity on me and gave me a little of the drug, but taken in such small quantities it was worse than useless. He used to give me sedatives, however, which calmed me for a time. Occasionally, too, I would get a little hop from a trusty, who was a friend of mine, and I had smuggled in some tablets of morphine from stir; but the supply was soon exhausted, and I saw that theonly thing to do was to knock it off entirely. This I did, and made no more attempts to obtain the drug. For the last two years in the asylum I did not have a bit of it. I can not describe the agonies I went through. Every nerve and muscle in my body was in pain most of the time, my stomach was constantly deranged, my eyes and mouth exuded water, and I could not sleep. Thoughts of suicide were constant with me. Of course, I could never have given up this baleful habit through my own efforts alone. The pipe house forced me to make the attempt, and after I had held off for two years, I had enough strength to continue in the right path, although even now the longing for it returns to me. It does not seem possible that I can ever go back to it, for that terrible experience in the mad-house made an indelible impression. I shall never be able to wipe out those horrors entirely from my mind. When under the influence of opium I used frequently to imagine I smelled the fragrance of white flowers. I never smell certain sweet perfumes now without the whole horrible experience rushing before my mind. Life in a mad-house taught me a lesson I shall never forget.
I left Dannemora asylum for the criminal insane on a cold winter morning. I had my tickets to New York, but not a cent of money. Relatives or friends are supposed to provide that. I was happy, however, and I made a resolution, which this time I shall keep, never to go to stir or the pipe house again. I knew very well that I could never repeat such an experience without going mad in reality; or dying. The first term I spent in stir I had my books and a new life of beauty and thought to think about. Once for all I had had that experience. The thought of going through prison routine again—the damp cells, the poor food, the habits contracted, with the mad-house at the end—no, that could never be for me again. I felt this, as I heard the loons yelling good-bye to me from the windows. I looked at the gloomy building and said to myself: "I have left Hell, and I'll shovel coal before I go back. All the ideas that brought me here I will leave behind. Inthe future I will try to get all the good things out of life that I can—the really good things, a glimpse of which I got through my books. I think there is still sufficient grey matter in my brain for that."
I took the train for New York, but stopped off at Plattsburg and Albany to deliver some messages from the poor unfortunates to their relatives. I arrived in New York at twelve o'clock at night, having had nothing to eat all day. My relatives and friends had left the station, but were waiting up for me in my brother's house. This time I went straight to them. My father had died while I was in the pipe house, and now I determined that I would be at last a kind son to the mother who had never deserted me. I think she felt that I had changed and the tears that flowed from her eyes were not all from unhappiness. She told me about my father's last illness, and how cheerful he had been. "I bought him a pair of new shoes a month before he died," she said. "He laughed when he saw them and said: 'What extravagance! To buy shoes for a dying man!'"
Living right among them, I met again, of course, many of my old companions in crime,and found that many of them had thought I was dead. It was only the other day that I met "Al", driving a peddlers wagon. He, like me, had squared it. "I thought you died in the pipe house, Jim," he said. This has happened to me a dozen times since my return. I had spent so much time in stir that the general impression among the guns at home seemed to be that I had "gone up the escape."
As a general thing I found that guns who had squared it and become prosperous had never been very successful grafters. Some of the best box-men and burglars in the business are now bar-tenders in saloons owned by former small fry among the dips. There are waiters now in saloons and concert halls on the bowery who were far cleverer thieves than the men who employ them, and who are worth thousands. Hungry Joe is an instance. Once he was King of confidence men, and on account of his great plausibility got in on a noted person, on one occasion, for several thousand dollars. And now he will beg many a favor of men he would not look at in the old days.
A grafter is jealous, suspicious and vindictive. I had always known that, but neverrealized it so keenly as I have since my return from the mad-house. Above everything else a grafter is suspicious, whether he has squared it or not—suspicious of his pals and of everybody else. When my old pals saw that I was not working with them, they wondered what my private graft was. When I told them I was on the level and was looking for a job, they either laughed or looked at me with suspicion in their eyes. They saw I was looking good (well-dressed) and they could not understand it. They put me down, some of them, as a stool-pigeon. They all feel instinctively that I am no longer with them, and most of them have given me the frosty mit. Only the bums who used to be grafters sail up to me in the Bowery. They have not got enough sense left even for suspicion. The dips who hang out in the thieves' resorts are beginning to hate me; not because I want to injure them, for I don't, but because they think I do. I told one of them, an old friend, that I was engaged in some literary work. He was angry in an instant and said: "You door mat thief. You couldn't get away with a coal-scuttle."
One day I was taking the editor of this bookthrough the Bowery, pointing out to him some of my old resorts, when I met an old pal of mine, who gave me the glad hand. We had a drink, and I, who was feeling good, started in to jolly him a little. He had told me about an old pal of ours who had just fallen for a book and was confined in a Brooklyn jail. I took out a piece of "copy" paper and took the address, intending to pay a visit to him, for everybody wants sympathy. What a look went over that grafter's face! I saw him glance quickly at the editor and then at me, and I knew then he had taken alarm, and probably thought we were Pinkerton men, or something as bad. I tried to carry it off with a laugh, for the place was full of thieves, and told him I would get him a job on a newspaper. He answered hastily that he had a good job in the pool-room and was on the level. He started in to try to square it with my companion by saying that he "adored a man who had a job." A little while afterwards he added that he hated anybody who would graft after he had got an honest job. Then, to wind up his little game of squaring himself, he ended by declaring that he had recently obtained a very good position.
That was one of the incidents that queered me with the more intelligent thieves. He spread the news, and whenever I meet one of that gang on the Bowery I get the cold shoulder, a gun is so mighty quick to grow suspicious. A grafter who follows the business for years is a study in psychology, and his two most prominent characteristics are fear and suspicion. If some stool-pigeon tips him off to the police, and he is sent to stir, he invariably suspects the wrong person. He tells his friends in stir that "Al done him," and pretty soon poor Al, who may be an honest thief, is put down as a rat. If Al goes to stir very often the result is a cutting match between the two.
There are many convicts in prison who lie awake at night concocting stories about other persons, accusing them of the vilest of actions. If the prisoner can get hold of a Sunday newspaper he invariably reads the society news very carefully. He can tell more about the Four Hundred than the swells will ever know about themselves; and he tells very little good of them. Such stories are fabricated in prison and repeated out of it.
When I was in Auburn stir I knew a youngfellow named Sterling, as straight a thief as ever did time. He had the courage of a grenadier and objected to everything that was mean and petty. He therefore had many enemies in prison, and they tried to make him unpopular by accusing him of a horrible crime. The story reached my ears and I tried to put a stop to it, but I only did him the more harm. When Sterling heard the tale he knocked one of his traducers senseless with an iron bar. Tongues wagged louder than ever and one day he came to me and talked about it and I saw a wild look in his eyes. His melancholia started in about that time, and he began to suspect everybody, including me. His enemies put the keepers against him and they made his life almost unbearable. Generally the men that tip off keepers to the alleged violent character of some convict are the worst stool-pigeons in the prison. Even the Messiah could not pass through this world without arousing the venom of the crowd. How in the name of common sense, then, could Sterling, or I, or any other grafter expect otherwise than to be traduced? It was the politicians who were the cause of Christ's trials; and the politicians are the same to-day as they werethen. They have very little brains, but they have the low cunning which is the first attribute of the human brute. They pretend to be the people's advisers, but pile up big bank accounts. Even the convict scum that come from the lower wards of the city have all the requisites of the successful politician. Nor can one say that these criminals are of low birth, for they trace their ancestors back for centuries. The fact that convicts slander one another with glee and hear with joy of the misfortunes of their fellows, is a sign that they come from a very old family; from the wretched human stock that demanded the crucifixion of Christ.
This evil trait, suspiciousness, is something I should like to eliminate from my own character. Even now I am afflicted with it. Since my release I often have the old feeling come over me that I am being watched; and sometimes without any reason at all. Only recently I was riding on a Brooklyn car, when a man sitting opposite happened to glance at me two or three times. I gave him an irritated look. Then he stared at me, to see what was the matter, I suppose. That was too much, and I asked him, with my nerves onedge, if he had ever seen me before. He said "No", with a surprised look, and I felt cheap, as I always do after such an incident. A neighbor of mine has a peculiar habit of watching me quietly whenever I visit his family. I know that he is ignorant of my past but when he stares at me, I am rattled. I begin to suspect that he is studying me, wondering who I am. The other day I said to him, irritably: "Mr. K——, you have a bad habit of watching people." He laughed carelessly and I, getting hot, said: "Mr. K—— when I visit people it is not with the intention of stealing anything." I left the house in a huff and his sister, as I afterwards found, rebuked him for his bad manners.
Indeed, I have lost many a friend by being over suspicious. I am suspicious even of my family. Sometimes when I sit quietly at home with my mother in the evening, as has grown to be a habit with me, I see her look at me. I begin immediately to think that she is wondering whether I am grafting again. It makes me very nervous, and I sometimes put on my hat and go out for a walk, just to be alone. One day, when I was in stir, my mother visited me, as she always did when theygave her a chance. In the course of our conversation she told me that on my release I had better leave the city and go to some place where I was not known. "For," she said, "your character, my boy, is bad." I grabbed her by the arm and exclaimed: "Who is it that is circulating these d—— stories about me?" My poor mother merely meant, of course, that I was known as a thief, but I thought some of the other convicts had slandered me to her. It was absurd, of course, but the outside world cannot understand how suspicious a grafter is. I have often seen a man, who afterwards became insane, begin being queer through suspiciousness.
Well, as I have said, I found the guns suspicious of me, when I told them I had squared it, or when I refused to say anything about my doings. Of course I don't care, for I hate the Bowery now and everything in it. Whenever I went, as I did several times with my editor, to a gun joint, a feeling of disgust passed over me. I pity my old pals, but they no longer interest me. I look upon them as failures. I have seen a new light and I shall follow it. Whatever the public may think ofthis book, it has already been a blessing to me. For it has been honest work that I and my friend the editor have done together, and leads me to think that there may yet be a new life for me. I feel now that I should prefer to talk and associate with the meanest workingman in this city than with the swellest thief. For a long time I have really despised myself. When old friends and relatives look at me askance I say to myself: "How can I prove to them that I am not the same as I was in the past?" No wonder the authorities thought I was mad. I have spent the best years of my life behind the prison bars. I could have made out of myself almost anything I wanted, for I had the three requisites of success: personal appearance, health and, I think, some brains. But what have I done? After ruining my life, I have not even received the proverbial mess of pottage. As I look back upon my life both introspectively and retrospectively I do not wonder that society at large despises the criminal.
I am not trying to point a moral or pose as a reformer. I cannot say that I quit the old life because of any religious feeling. I am not one of those who have reformed by findingJesus at the end of a gas pipe which they were about to use as a black jack on a citizen, just in order to finger his long green. I only saw by painful experience that there is nothing in a life of crime. I ran up against society, and found that I had struck something stronger and harder than a stone wall. But it was not that alone that made me reform. What was it? Was it the terrible years I spent in prison? Was it the confinement in a mad-house, where I daily saw old pals of mine become drivelling idiots? Was it my reading of the great authors, and my becoming acquainted with the beautiful thoughts of the great men of the world? Was it a combination of these things? Perhaps so, but even that does not entirely explain it, does not go deep enough. I have said that I am not religious, and I am not. And yet I have experienced something indefinable, which I suppose some people might call an awakening of the soul. What is that, after all, but the realization that your way of life is ruining you even to the very foundation of your nature?
Perhaps, after all, I am not entirely lacking in religion; for certainly the character of Christ strongly appeals to me. I don't carefor creeds, but the personality of the Nazarene, when stripped of the aroma of divinity, appeals to all thinking men, I care not whether they are atheists, agnostics or sceptics. Any man that has understanding reveres the life of Christ, for He practiced what He preached and died for humanity. He was a perfect specimen of manhood, and had developed to the highest degree that trait which is lacking in most all men—the faculty humane.
I believe that a time comes in the lives of many grafters when they desire to reform. Some do reform for good and all, and I shall show the world that I am one of them; but the difficulties in the way are great, and many fall again by the wayside.
They come out of prison marked men. Many observers can tell an ex-convict on sight. The lock-step is one of the causes. It gives a man a peculiar gait which he will retain all his life. The convicts march close together and cannot raise their chests. They have to keep their faces turned towards the screw. Breathing is difficult, and most convicts suffer in consequence from catarrh, and a good many from lung trouble. Walking in lock-step is not good exercise, and makes the mennervous. When the convict is confined in his cell he paces up and down. The short turn is bad for his stomach, and often gets on his mind. That short walk will always have control of me. I cannot sit down now to eat or write, without jumping up every five minutes in order to take that short walk. I have become so used to it that I do not want to leave the house, for I can pace up and down in my room. I can take that small stretch all day long and not be tired, but if I walk a long straight distance I get very much fatigued. When I wait for a train I always begin that short walk on the platform. I have often caught myself walking just seven feet one way, and then turning around and walking seven feet in the opposite direction. Another physical mark, caused by a criminal life rather than by a long sojourn in stir, is an expressionless cast of countenance. The old grafter never expresses any emotions. He has schooled himself until his face is a mask, which betrays nothing.
A much more serious difficulty in the way of reform is the ex-convict's health which is always bad if a long term of years has been served. Moreover, his brain has often lost itsequilibrium and powers of discernment. When he gets out of prison his chance of being able to do any useful work is slight. He knows no trade, and he is not strong enough to do hard day labor. He is given only ten dollars, when he leaves stir, with which to begin life afresh. A man who has served a long term is not steady above the ears until he has been at liberty several months; and what can such a man do with ten dollars? It would be cheaper for the state in the end to give an ex-convict money enough to keep him for several months; for then a smaller percentage would return to stir. It would give the man a chance to make friends, to look for a job, and to show the world that he is in earnest.
A criminal who is trying to reform is generally a very helpless being. He was not, to begin with, the strongest man mentally, and after confinement is still less so. He is preoccupied, suspicious and a dreamer, and when he gets a glimpse of himself in all his naked realities, is apt to become depressed and discouraged. He is easily led, and certainly no man needs a good friend as much as the ex-convict. He is distrusted by everybody, is apt to be "piped off" wherever he goes, andfinds it hard to get work which he can do. There are hundreds of men in our prisons to-day who, if they could find somebody who would trust them and take a genuine interest in them, would reform and become respectable citizens. That is where the Tammany politician, whom I have called Senator Wet Coin is a better man than the majority of reformers. When a man goes to him and says he wants to square it he takes him by the hand, trusts and helps him. Wet Coin does not hand him a soup ticket and a tract nor does he hold on tight to his own watch chain fearing for his red super, hastily bidding the ex-gun to be with Jesus.
The life of the thief is at an end; and the life of the man and good citizen has begun. For I am convinced that Jim is strictly on the level, and will remain so. The only thing yet lacking to make his reform sure is a job. I, and those of my friends who are interested, have as yet failed to find anything for him to do that is, under the circumstances, desirable. The story of my disappointments in this respect is a long one, and I shall not tell it. I have learned to think that patience is the greatest of the virtues; and of this virtue an ex-gun needs an enormous amount. If Jim and his friends prove good in this way, the job will come. But waiting is hard, for Jim is nervous, in bad health, with an old mother to look after, and with new ambitions which make keen his sense of time lost.
One word about his character: I sometimes think of my friend the ex-thief as "Light-fingeredJim"; and in that name there lingers a note of vague apology. As he told his story to me, I saw everywhere the mark of the natural rogue, of the man grown with a roguish boy's brain. The humor of much of his tale seemed to me strong. I was never able to look upon him as a deliberate malefactor. He constantly impressed me as gentle and imaginative, impressionable and easily influenced, but not naturally vicious or vindictive. If I am right, his reform is nothing more or less than the coming to years of sober maturity. He is now thirty-five years old, and as he himself puts it: "Some men acquire wisdom at twenty-one, others at thirty-five, and some never."
FOOTNOTES[A]Summer of 1902[B]Sic.(Editor's Note.)
[A]Summer of 1902
[B]Sic.(Editor's Note.)
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EVERYMAN
The XVth Century morality play, with reproductions of old wood cuts. $1.00, postage paid or at your bookseller's. The first book to bear the imprint of Fox, Duffield & Company.
"In typography, in paper and in make-up the edition is admirable. It is a good beginning and sets a very high standard."
The Sun, New York.
"The best of the old moralities, easy to read and fair to look upon."
Evening Post, New York.
"The book is well done, and should find a place on the shelves and in the spirits of all who care for the best in life and art."
John Corbin, in
The New York Times.
"Everyman" in book form will be welcomed by the large number of people whose attention has been called to this ancient morality play by its admirable presentation in different cities."
The Outlook, New York.
"The first publication of (the new house) "Everyman," the fifteenth century morality play given in Boston this winter, is of artistic design and of handsome, agreeable type. The old woodcuts are reproduced from the first ancient edition of the play."
Boston Journal.
NEW YORKFOX, DUFFIELD & COMPANY,36 East 21st Street.