Now, as I could have matched his score with cases of injustice, as my heart, too, had been wrung with pity, when he realized that I believed him and felt with him the last barrier between us was melted.
There were at that time few persons in my world who felt as I did on the prison question, but in this heart suddenly opened to me I found many of my own thoughts and feelings reflected,and we stood as friends on the common ground of sympathy for suffering humanity.
Another surprise was awaiting me when I changed the subject by asking Bryan what he was reading. It seemed that his starving heart had been seeking sympathy and companionship in books. He had turned first to the Greek philosophers, and in their philosophy and stoicism he seemed to have found some strength for endurance; but it was in the great religious teachers, those lovers of the poor, those pitiers of the oppressed, Jesus Christ and Buddha, that he had found what he was really seeking. He had been reading Renan's "Jesus," also Farrar's "Life of Christ," as well as the New Testament.
"Buddha was great and good and so were some of the other religious teachers," he said, "but Jesus Christ is better than all the rest." And with that Friend of the friendless I left him.
Strange indeed it seemed how the criminal life appeared to have fallen from him as a garment, and yet in our prison administration this man stood as the very type of the "incorrigible." What his course of action would have been had Bryan been given his freedom I should not care to predict. Physically he was absolutelyincapable of supporting himself honestly, and he might have agreed with another who said to me: "Any man of self-respect would rather steal than beg." There are those to whom no bread is quite so bitter as the bread of charity. But I am certain that the John Bryan who revealed himself to me in that last interview was therealman, the man who was going forward, apparently without fear, to meet the judgment of his Maker.
A noted preacher once said to me: "Oh, give up this prison business. It's too hard on you, too wearing and depressing." And I replied: "Not all the preachers in the land could teach me spiritually what these convicts are teaching me, or give me such faith in the ultimate destiny of the human soul." Perhaps my experience has been exceptional, but it was the older criminals, the men who had sowed their wild oats and come to their senses, who most deepened my faith in human nature.
I am glad to quote in this connection the words of an experienced warden of a large Eastern penitentiary, who says: "I have yet to find a case where I believe that crime has been taught by older criminals to younger ones. I believe, on the contrary, that the usual advice of the oldcriminal to the boys is: 'See what crime has brought me to, and when you get out of here behave yourselves.'"
My whole study of "old-timers" verifies this statement; moreover, I am inclined to believe that in very many instances the criminal impulses exhaust themselves shortly after the period of adolescence, when the fever of antagonism to all restraint has run its course, so to say; and I believe the time is coming when this branch of the subject will be scientifically studied.
It is greatly to be regretted that the juvenile courts, now so efficient in rescuing the young offender from the criminal ranks, had not begun their work before the second or third offence had blotted hope from the future of so many of the younger men in our penitentiaries; for the indeterminate sentence under the board of pardons has done little to mitigate the fate of those whose criminal records show previous convictions.
Hitherto we have been dealing with crimes. But the time is at hand when we shall deal with men.[5]
FOOTNOTES:[3]We instinctively visualize "confirmed criminals" with faces corresponding to their crimes. But our prejudices are often misleading. I once handed to a group of prison commissioners the newspaper picture of a crew of a leading Eastern university. The crew were in striped suits and were assumed to be convicts, with the aid of a little suggestion. It was interesting to see the confidence of the commissioners as they pronounced one face after another "the regular criminal type." The fact is that with one or two exceptions my "habituals," properly clothed, might have passed as church members, some of them even as theological students.[4]I seldom heard the terms "habitual" or "incorrigible" used by men of his class, but the "professionals" seemed to have a certain standing with each other.[5]For full discussion of this matter the reader is referred to "Individualism in Punishment," by M. Salielles, one of the most valuable contributions yet made to the study of penology. Also Sir James Barr's "The Aim and Scope of Eugenics" demands the recognition of theindividualin the criminal.
[3]We instinctively visualize "confirmed criminals" with faces corresponding to their crimes. But our prejudices are often misleading. I once handed to a group of prison commissioners the newspaper picture of a crew of a leading Eastern university. The crew were in striped suits and were assumed to be convicts, with the aid of a little suggestion. It was interesting to see the confidence of the commissioners as they pronounced one face after another "the regular criminal type." The fact is that with one or two exceptions my "habituals," properly clothed, might have passed as church members, some of them even as theological students.
[3]We instinctively visualize "confirmed criminals" with faces corresponding to their crimes. But our prejudices are often misleading. I once handed to a group of prison commissioners the newspaper picture of a crew of a leading Eastern university. The crew were in striped suits and were assumed to be convicts, with the aid of a little suggestion. It was interesting to see the confidence of the commissioners as they pronounced one face after another "the regular criminal type." The fact is that with one or two exceptions my "habituals," properly clothed, might have passed as church members, some of them even as theological students.
[4]I seldom heard the terms "habitual" or "incorrigible" used by men of his class, but the "professionals" seemed to have a certain standing with each other.
[4]I seldom heard the terms "habitual" or "incorrigible" used by men of his class, but the "professionals" seemed to have a certain standing with each other.
[5]For full discussion of this matter the reader is referred to "Individualism in Punishment," by M. Salielles, one of the most valuable contributions yet made to the study of penology. Also Sir James Barr's "The Aim and Scope of Eugenics" demands the recognition of theindividualin the criminal.
[5]For full discussion of this matter the reader is referred to "Individualism in Punishment," by M. Salielles, one of the most valuable contributions yet made to the study of penology. Also Sir James Barr's "The Aim and Scope of Eugenics" demands the recognition of theindividualin the criminal.
Alfred Allen was one of my early acquaintances among prisoners, having had the good fortune to receive his sentence on a second conviction before the habitual-criminal act was in force in Illinois. Our introduction happened in this way: in one of my interviews with a young confidence man, who did not hesitate to state that he had always been studying how to sell the imitation for the genuine, to get something for nothing, my attention was diverted by his suddenly branching off into a description of his cell-mate.
"Alfred is the queerest sort of a chap," the man began. "He's a professional burglar, and the most innocent fellow I ever knew; always reading history and political economy, and just wild to get into the library to work. He hasn't a relative that he knows and never has a visit nor a letter, and I wish you'd ask to see him."
On this introduction I promised to interview Alfred Allen the next evening. The wardenallowed me the privilege of evening interviews with prisoners, the time limited only by the hour when every man must be in his cell for the night.
It was an unprecedented event for Alfred to be called out to see a visitor, and he greeted me with a broad smile and two outstretched hands. With that first hand-clasp we were friends, for the door of that starved and eager heart was thrown generously open and all his soul was in his big dark eyes. I understood instantly what the other man meant by calling Alfred "innocent," for a more direct and guileless nature I have never known. The boy, for he was not yet twenty-one, had so many things to say. The flood-gates were open at last. I remember his suddenly pausing, then exclaiming: "Why, how strange this is! Ten minutes ago I'd never seen you, and now I feel as if I'd known you all my life."
In reply to my inquiries he rapidly sketched the main events in his history. Of Welsh parentage he had learned to read before he was five years old, when his mother died. While yet a child he lost his father, and when ten years old, a homeless waif, morally and physically starving, in the struggle for existence he was a bootblack, newsboy, and sometimes thief. "To get somethingto eat, clothes to cover me, and a place to sleep was my only thought; these things I must have. Often in the day I looked for a place where the sun had warmed the sidewalk beside barrels, and I'd go there to sleep at night."
At last, when about thirteen years old, he found a friendly, helping hand. A man whose boots he had blacked several times, who doubtless sized up Alfred as to ability, took the boy to his house, fed him well, and clothed him comfortably. Very anxiously did the older man, who must havefeltAlfred's intrinsic honesty, unfold to the boy the secret of his calling and the source from which he garnered the money spent for the comfort of the street waif. And Alfred had small scruple in consenting to aid his protector by wriggling his supple young body through small apertures into buildings which he had no right to enter. And so he was drifted into the lucrative business of store burglary.[6]After the strain and stress and desperate scramble for existence of the lonely child, one can imagine how easily he embraced this new vocation. It was a kind of life, too, which had its fascination for his adventurous spirit; it even enabled him to indulge in what wasto him the greatest of luxuries, the luxury of giving. His own hardships had made him keenly sensitive to the suffering of others. But Alfred was not of the stuff from which successful criminals are made, for at eighteen he was in prison for the second time and was classed with the incorrigible.
It was during this last imprisonment that thought and study had developed his dominant trait of generosity into a broader altruism. He now realized that he could serve humanity better than by stealing money to give away. He was studying the conditions of the working and of the criminal classes, the needs of the side of society from which he was an outgrowth. The starting-point of this change was an Englishman's report of a visit to this country as "A place where each lived for the good of all." (?) "When I read that," said Alfred, "I stopped and asked myself: 'Have I been living for the good of all?' And I saw how I had been an enemy to society, and that I must start again in the opposite direction." It was not the cruelty of social conditions which he accused for his past. His good Welsh conscience came bravely forward and convicted him of his own share in social wrong-doing. "Now that I'mgoing to be a good man," Alfred continued, "I suppose I must be a Christian"—reversing the usual order of "conversion"—"and so I've been studying religion also lately. I've been hard at work trying to understand the Trinity." Alfred did not undertake things by halves.
I advised him not to bother with theology, but to content himself with the clear and simple working principles of Christianity, which would really count for something in his future battle with life.
When we touched upon books I was surprised to find this boy perfectly at home with his Thackeray and his Scott, and far more deeply read in history and political economy than I. He said that he had always read, as a newsboy at news-stands, at mission reading-rooms, wherever he could lay his hands on a book. He talked fluently, picturesquely, with absolute freedom from self-consciousness.
In Alfred's physiognomy—his photograph lies before me—there was no trace of the so-called criminal type; his face was distinctively that of the student, the thinker, the enthusiast. His fate seemed such a cruel waste of a piece of humanity of fine fibre, with a brain that would have madea brilliant record in any university. But the moral and physical deprivations from which his boyhood suffered had wrought havoc with his health and undermined his constitution.
This November interview resulted immediately in a correspondence, limited on Alfred's side to the rule allowing convicts to write but one letter a month. On my part, the letters were more frequent, and magazines for the Sundays were regularly sent. Alfred was a novice in correspondence, probably not having written fifty letters in his life. I was surprised at the high average of his spelling and the uniform excellency of his handwriting. In order to make the most of the allotted one leaf of foolscap paper he left no margins and soon evolved a small, upright writing, clear and almost as fine as magazine type.
In using Alfred's letters I wish I might impart to others the power to read between the lines that was given me through my acquaintance with the writer. I could hear the ring in his voice and often divine the thought greater than the word. But in letting him speak for himself he will at least have the advantage of coming directly in contact with the mind of the reader. The first extracts are taken from one of his earliest letters.
"My Dear Friend:"On coming back to my cell the day after Christmas, I saw a letter, a magazine and a book lying on my bed. I knew from the handwriting that they came from you. After looking at my present and reading the sunshiny letter I tried to eat my dinner. But there was a lump in my throat that would not let me eat, and before I knew what was up I was crying over my dear friend's remembrance. I was once at a Mission Christmas tree where I received a box of candy. But yours was my first individual gift. It is said that the three most beautiful words in the English language are Mother, Home and Heaven. I have never known any of them. My first remembrance is of being in a room with the dead body of my mother. All my life it seems as if everybody I knew belonged to some one; they had mother, brother, sister, some one. But I belonged to no one, and I never could repress the longing in my heart to belong to somebody. I have my God, but a human heart cannot help longing for human as well as divine sympathy."
"My Dear Friend:
"On coming back to my cell the day after Christmas, I saw a letter, a magazine and a book lying on my bed. I knew from the handwriting that they came from you. After looking at my present and reading the sunshiny letter I tried to eat my dinner. But there was a lump in my throat that would not let me eat, and before I knew what was up I was crying over my dear friend's remembrance. I was once at a Mission Christmas tree where I received a box of candy. But yours was my first individual gift. It is said that the three most beautiful words in the English language are Mother, Home and Heaven. I have never known any of them. My first remembrance is of being in a room with the dead body of my mother. All my life it seems as if everybody I knew belonged to some one; they had mother, brother, sister, some one. But I belonged to no one, and I never could repress the longing in my heart to belong to somebody. I have my God, but a human heart cannot help longing for human as well as divine sympathy."
In a similar vein in another letter he writes:
"I've sometimes wondered if I should havebeen a different boy if circumstances in my childhood had been better. I have seen little but misery in life. In prison and out it has been my fate to belong to the class that gets pushed to the wall. I have walked the streets of Chicago to keep myself from freezing to death. I have slept on the ground with the rain pouring down upon me. For two years I did not know what bed was, while more than once I have only broken the fast of two or three days through the kindness of a gambler or a thief. This was before I had taken to criminal life as a business.... Still when I think it over I don't see how I could have kept in that criminal life. I remember the man who taught me burglary as a fine art told me I would never make a good burglar because I was too quick to feel for others."
Only once again did Alfred refer to the bitter experiences of his childhood and that was in a conversation. He had many other things to write about, and his mind was filled with the present and the future. Four years of evenings in a cell in a prison with a good library give one a chance to read and think, although an ill-lighted, non-ventilated four-by-seven cell, after a day of exhausting work, is not conducive to intellectualactivity. The godsend this prison library was to Alfred is evident through his letters.
"All my life," he writes, "I have had a burning desire to study and educate myself, and I do not believe that a day has passed when I have not gone a little higher. Some time ago I determined to read a chapter in the new testament every night, though I expected it would be tedious. But behold! The first thing I knew I was so interested that I was reading four or five chapters every night. The Chaplain gave me a splendid speller and I'm going to study hard until I know every word in it."
Proof that Alfred was a genuine book-lover runs through many of his letters. He tells me:
"Much as I hate this place if I could be transferred to the library from the shop I should be the happiest boy in the State. I'd be willing to stay an additional year in the prison. Twice when they needed an extra man in the library they sent me. It was a joy just to handle the books and to read their titles and I felt as if they knew that I loved them.... Thank you for theScribner Magazine. But the leaves were uncut. I want all the help and friendship you can spare me. I am glad to have any magazine you arethrough with. But you must not buy new ones just for me. TheEclecticandHarperswere most welcome.Man versus the Statewas a splendid article, also,Education as a Factor in Prison Reform, and Prof. Ely on the Railroad Problem. The magazines you send will do yoeman service they are passed on to every man my cell-mate or I know."[7]
Alfred was devoted to the writings of John Draper and devoured everything within his reach on sociology, especially everything relating to the labor problems. He had theories of his own on many lines of public welfare, but no taint of anarchy or class hatred distorts his ideals of justice for all. He always advocates constructive rather than destructive measures.
Occasionally Alfred refers to the poets. He enjoys Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Lowell is an especial favorite; while delighting in the "Biglow Papers," he quotes with appreciation from Lowell's more serious poetry. The companionship of Thackeray, Dickens, and Scott brightened and mellowed many dark, hard hours for Alfred. "Sir Walter Scott's novels broke my taste fortrashy stuff," he writes. Naturally, Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables" absorbed and thrilled him. "Shall I ever forget Jean Valjean, the galley slave; or Cosette? While reading the story I thought such a character as the Bishop impossible. I was mistaken." Of Charles Reade he says: "One cannot help loving Reade. He has such a dashing, rollicking style. And then he hardly ever wrote except to denounce some wrong or sham." Even in fiction his preference follows the trend of his burning love and pity for the desolate and oppressed. How he would have worshipped Tolstoi!
Complaint or criticism of the hardships of convict life forms small part of the thirty letters written me by Alfred while in prison. He takes this stand: "I ought not to complain because I brought this punishment upon myself." "I am almost glad if anyone does wrong to me because I feel that it helps balance my account for the wrongs I have done others." Shall we never escape from that terrible idea of the moral necessity of expiation, even at the cost of another?
Nevertheless, Alfred feels the hardships he endures and knows how to present them. And heis not "speaking for the gallery" but to his one friend when he writes:
"Try to imagine yourself working all day on a stool, not allowed to stand even when your work can be better done that way. If you hear a noise you must not look up. You are within two feet of a companion but you must not speak. You sit on your stool all day long and work. Nothing but work. Outside my mind was a pleasure to me, in here it is a torture. It seems as if the minutes were hours, the hours days, the days centuries. A man in prison is supposed to be a machine. So long as he does ten hours' work a day—don't smile, don't talk, don't look up from his work, does work enough to suit the contractors and does it well and obeys the long number of unwritten rules he is all right. The trouble with the convicts is that they can't get it out of their heads that they are human beings and not machines. The present system may be good statesmanship. It is bad Christianity. But I doubt if it is good statesmanship to maintain a system that makes so many men kill themselves, go crazy, or if they do get out of the Shadow alive go out hating the State and their fellowmen. As a convict said to me, 'It's funny that in this ageof enlightenment they have not found out that to brutalize a man will never reform him. I have not been led to reform by prison life. It has made me more bitter at times than I thought I ever could be. One cannot live in a prison without seeing and hearing things to make one's blood boil....'
"Times come to me here when it seems as if I could not stand the strain any longer. Then again, even in this horrid old shop I have some very happy times, thinking of your friendship and building castles in the air. My favorite air castle is built on the hope that when my time is out I can get into a printing office and in time work up to be an editor. And perhaps do a little something to help the poor and to aid the cause of progress. Shall I succeed in my dream? Do we ever realize our ideals?"
"I wonder if ever a sculptor wroughtTill the cold stone warmed to his ardent heart;Or if ever a painter with light and shadeThe dream of his inmost heart portrayed."
"I wonder if ever a sculptor wroughtTill the cold stone warmed to his ardent heart;Or if ever a painter with light and shadeThe dream of his inmost heart portrayed."
"I wonder if ever a sculptor wroughtTill the cold stone warmed to his ardent heart;Or if ever a painter with light and shadeThe dream of his inmost heart portrayed."
"I wonder if ever a sculptor wrought
Till the cold stone warmed to his ardent heart;
Or if ever a painter with light and shade
The dream of his inmost heart portrayed."
"I did have doubts as to whether Spring was really here till the violets came in your letter. Now I am no longer an unbeliever. I am afraidthat I love all beautiful things too much for my own comfort. If a convict cares for beauty that sensitiveness can only give him pain while in prison. I love music and at times I have feelings that it seems to me can only be expressed through music; and I hope I shall be able to take piano lessons some time."
I discovered later that there was a strain of the old Welsh minstrel in Alfred's blood, but small prospect there was at that time of his ever realizing the hope of studying music. For all this while the boy was steadily breaking down under the strain of convict life, the "nothing but work" on a stool for ten hours a day on the shoe contract. Physical exhaustion was evident in the handwriting of the shorter letters in which he tells me of nature's revolt against the prison diet, and how night after night he "dreams of things to eat." "I sometimes believe I am really starving to death," he writes. But the trouble was not so much the prison food as that the boy was ill.
I went to see him at about this time and was startled by the gaunt and famished face, the appeal of the hungry eyes that looked into mine. I felt as if starvation had thrust its fangs into myown body, and all through the night, whether dreaming or awake, that horror held me. Fortunately: for well I knew there would be no rest for me until forces were set in motion to bring about a change for the better in Alfred.
In the general routine of prison life, if the prison doctor pronounces a convict able to work the convict must either work or be punished until he consents to work; or——? In the case of Alfred or in any case I should not presume to assign individual responsibility, but as soon as the case was laid before the warden Alfred was given change of work and put on special diet with most favorable results as to health.
Alfred's imprisonment lasted about two years after I first met him, this break in health occurring in the second year. As the day of release drew near his hopes flamed high, breaking into words in his last letter.
"Next month I shall be a free man! Think of it! A free man. Free to do everything that is right, free to walk where I please on God's green earth, free to breathe the pure air, andto help the cause of social progressinstead of retarding it as I have done."
Now, I had in Chicago a Heaven-sent friendwhose heart and hand were always open to the needs of my prisoners, indeed to the needs of all humanity. This friend was a Welsh preacher. He called upon me in Chicago one November afternoon when I had just returned from a visit to the penitentiary. I was tingling with interest in the Welsh prisoner whom I had met for the first time the evening before. Sure of my listener's sympathy I gave myself free rein in relating the impression that Alfred made upon me. I felt as if I had clasped the hand of Providence itself—and had I not?—when my friend said:
"Your Welsh boy is a fellow countryman of mine. If you will send him to me when released I think I can open a way for him." This prospect of a good start in freedom was invaluable to Alfred, giving courage for endurance and a moral incentive for the rest of his prison term.
Every man when released from prison in my State is given a return ticket to the place from which he was sent, ten dollars in cash, and a suit of clothing. These suits are convict-made, and while not distinctive to the ordinary observer, they are instantly recognizable to the police all over the State. Half-worn suits I had no difficulty in obtaining through my own circle offriends. So when Alfred's day of freedom came a good outfit of business clothing was awaiting him and before evening no outward trace of his convict experience remained.
According to previous arrangement Alfred went directly to the Welsh preacher. This minister was more than true to his promise, for he entertained the boy at his own home over night, then sent him up to a small school settlement in an adjoining State where employment and a home for the winter had been secured, the employer knowing Alfred's story.
And there for the first time in his life Alfred had some of the right good times that seem the natural birthright of youth in America. Here is his own account:
"I had a splendid time Thanksgiving. All the valley assembled in the little chapel, every one bringing baskets of things to eat. There were chickens, geese and the never-forgotten turkey, pies of every variety of good things known to mortal man. In the evening we boys and girls filled two sleighs full of ourselves and went for a sleigh-ride. You could have heard our laughing and singing two miles off. We came back to the school house where apples, nuts, and candy werepassed round, and bed time that night was twelve o'clock."
It was not the good times that counted so much to Alfred as the chance for education. He began school at once, and outside of school hours he worked hard, not only for his board but picking up odd jobs in the neighborhood by which he could earn money for personal expenses. He carried in his vest pocket lists of words to be memorized while working, and still wished "that one did not have to sleep but could study all night." The moral influences were all healthful as could be. The people among whom he lived were industrious, intelligent, and high-minded. Among his studies that winter was a course in Shakespeare, and the whole mental atmosphere was most stimulating. Within a few months a chance to work in a printing-office was eagerly accepted and it really seemed as if some of his dreams might come true. But while the waves on the surface of life were sparkling, beneath was the perilous undertow of disease. Symptoms of tuberculosis appeared, work in the printing-office had to be abandoned after a few weeks, and Alfred's doctor advised him to work his way toward the South before cold weather set in; asanother severe Northern winter would probably be fatal. After consultation with his friends this course was decided upon; and, confident in the faith that he could surely find transient work with farmers along the line, he fared forth toward the South, little dreaming of the test of moral fibre and good resolutions that lay before him. The child had sought refuge from destitution in criminal life from which his soul had early revolted; but the man was now to encounter the desperate struggle of manhood for a foothold in honest living.
For the first month all went fairly well, then began hard luck both in small towns and the farming country.
"The farmers have suffered two bad seasons; there seems to be no money, and there's hardly a farm unmortgaged," he wrote me, and then: "When I had used the last penny of my earnings I went without food for one day, when hunger getting the best of me, I sold some of my things. After that I got a weeks work and was two dollars ahead. I aimed for St. Louis, one hundred miles away and walked the whole distance. What a walk it was! I never passed a town without trying for work. The poverty through thereis amazing. I stuck to my determination not to beg. I must confess that I never had greater temptation to go back to my old life; and I think if I can conquer temptation as I did that day when I wassohungry I need have no fears for the future.
"I reached St. Louis with five cents in my pocket. For three days I walked the streets of the City trying to get work but without success. I scanned the papers for advertisements of men wanted, but for every place there were countless applicants. My heart hurt me as I walked the streets to see men and women suffering for the bare necessaries of existence. The third night I slept on the stone steps of a Baptist Church. Then I answered an advertisement for an extra gang of men to be shipped out to work on railroad construction somewhere in Arkansas. A curious crew it was all through; half the men were tramps who had no intention of working, several were well-dressed men who could find nothing else to do, some were railroad men who had worked at nothing else. When one of the brakesmen found where we were bound for he said, 'That place! You'll all be in the hospital or dead, in two months.'
"The second evening we stopped at the little town where we now are. The work is terrible, owing to the swamps and heat. Out of the twenty five who started only eight are left. Yesterday I fainted overcome by the heat, but if it kills me I shall stick to the work until I find something better."
The work did not kill Alfred, but malarial fever soon turned the workmen's quarters into a sort of camp hospital where Alfred, while unable to work, developed a talent for nursing those who were helpless. His letters at this time were filled with accounts of sickness and the needs of the sick. He had never asked me for money; it seemed to be almost a point of honor among my prison friendsnotto ask me for money; but "if you could send me something to get lemons for some of the boys who haven't a cent" was his one appeal; to which I gladly responded.
Better days were on the way, however. Cooler weather was at hand, and during the winter Alfred found in a lumber mill regular employment, interrupted occasionally by brief illnesses. On the whole, the next year was one of prosperity. Life had resolved itself into the simple problem of personal independence, and with a right goodwill Alfred took hold of the proposition, determined to make himself valuable to his employer. That he accomplished this I have evidence in a note of unqualified recommendation from his employer.
When the family with whom he had boarded for a year were about to leave town he was offered the chance to buy their small cottage for two hundred and fifty dollars, on monthly payments; and by securing a man and his wife as tenants he was able to do this.
"At last, I am in my own house," he writes me. "I went out on the piazza to-day and looked over the valley with a feeling of pride that I was under my own roof. I have reserved the pleasant front room for myself, and I have spent three evenings putting up shelves and ornamenting them and trying to make the room look pretty. I shall get some nice mouldings down at the mill to make frames for the pictures you sent me. And I'm going to have a little garden and raise some vegetables."
But the agreeable sense of ownership of a home and pleasure in the formation of social relations were invaded by haunting memories of the past. The brighter possibilities opened to his fancyseemed but to emphasize his sense of isolation. Outward conditions could not alter his own personality or obliterate his experiences. It was a dark hour in which he wrote:
"How wretched it all is, this tangled web of my life with its suffering, its sin and its retribution. It is with me still. I can see myself now standing inside the door of my prison cell, looking up to the little loop-hole of a window across the corridor, trying to catch a glimpse of the blue heavens or of a star, longing for pure air and sunshine, longing for freedom....
"Strong as is my love for woman, much as I long for someone to share my life, I don't see how I can ever ask any woman to take into her life half of that blackened and crime-stained page of my past. I must try to find happiness in helping others."
But nature was too much for Alfred. Not many months later he tells me that he is going to be married and that his sweetheart, a young widow, "is kind and motherly. When I told her all of my past she said, 'And so you were afraid I would think the less of you? Not a bit. It only hurts me to think of all you have been through.'"
The happy letters following this marriage give evidence that the tie of affection was strong between the two. Here we have a glimpse of the early married days:
"I have been making new steps to our house, putting fancy wood work on the porch and preparing to paint both the inside and the outside of the house next month."—Alfred was night-watch at the lumber mill.—"It is four o'clock in the afternoon; I am writing by an open window where I can look out and see my wife's flowers in the garden. I can look across the valley to the ridge of trees beyond, while the breeze comes in bringing the scent of the pines. Out in the kitchen I can hear my wife singing as she makes some cake for our supper. But my old ambition to own a printing office has not left me. I am still looking forward to that."
Just here I should like to say: "And they lived happy ever after." But life is not a fairy-story; to many it seems but a crucible through which the soul is passed. But the vicissitudes that followed in Alfred's few remaining years were those of the common lot. In almost every letter there were indications of failing health, causing frequent loss of time in work. Three years afterhis marriage, in the joy of fatherhood, Alfred writes me of the baby, of his cunning ways and general dearness; and of what he did when arrayed in some little things I had sent him. Then, when the child was a year old came an anxious letter telling of Baby Alfred's illness, and then:
"My Dear Friend:"My baby is dead. He died last night."Alfred."
"My Dear Friend:
"My baby is dead. He died last night.
"Alfred."
This tearing of the heart-strings was a new kind of suffering, more acute than any caused by personal hardship. Wrapped in grief he writes me: "To think of those words, 'My baby's grave.' I knew I loved him dearly, but how dearly I did not know until he was taken away. It isn't the same world since he died. Poor little dear! The day after he was taken sick he looked up in my face and crowed to me and clapped his little hands and called me 'da-da,' for the last time. Oh! my God! how it hurts me. It seems at times as though my heart must break....
"Since the baby died night watching at the lumber mill has become torture to me. In the long hours of the night my baby's face comesbefore me with such vividness that it is anguish to think of it."
The end of it all was not far off; from the long illness that followed Alfred did not recover, though working when able to stand; the wife, too, had an illness, and the need of earnings was imperative. Alfred writes despairingly of his unfulfilled dreams, and adds: "I seem to have succeeded only in reforming myself," but even in the last pencilled scrawl he still clings to the hope of being able to work again.
I can think of Alfred only as a good soldier through the battle of life. As a child, fighting desperately for mere existence, defeated morally for a brief period by defective social conditions; later depleted physically through the inhumanity of the prison-contract system; then drawing one long breath of happiness and freedom through the kindness of the Welsh preacher; but only to plunge into battle with adverse economic conditions; and all this time striving constantly against the most relentless of foes, the disease which finally overcame him. His was, indeed, a valiant spirit.
Of those who may study this picture of Alfred's life will it be the "habitual criminals" who willclaim the likeness as their own, or will the home-making, tender-hearted men and women feel the thrill of kinship?
Truly Alfred was one with all loving hearts who are striving upward, whether in prison or in palace.
FOOTNOTES:[6]Alfred never entered private houses.[7]Mrs. Burnett's charming little story, "Editha's Burglar," went the rounds among the burglars in the prison till it was worn to shreds.
[6]Alfred never entered private houses.
[6]Alfred never entered private houses.
[7]Mrs. Burnett's charming little story, "Editha's Burglar," went the rounds among the burglars in the prison till it was worn to shreds.
[7]Mrs. Burnett's charming little story, "Editha's Burglar," went the rounds among the burglars in the prison till it was worn to shreds.
An habitual criminal of the pronounced type was my friend Dick Mallory. I have no remembrance of our first meeting, but he must have been thirty years old at the time, was in the penitentiary for the third time, and serving a fourteen-year sentence. Early in our acquaintance I asked him to write for me a detailed account of his childhood and boyhood, the environment and influences which had made him what he was, and also his impression of the various reformatories and minor penal institutions of which he had been an inmate. This he was allowed to do by special permission, and the warden of the penitentiary gave his indorsement as to the general reliability of his statements. The following brief sketch of his youth is summarized from his own accounts.
One cannot hold Dick Mallory as a victim of social conditions, neither was he of criminal parentage. One of his grandfathers was a farmer, the other a mechanic. His father was aworking-man, his mother a big-hearted woman, thoroughly kindly and to the last devoted to her son. There must have been some constitutional lack of moral fibre in Dick, who was the same wayward, unmanageable boy known to heart-broken mothers in all classes of life. Impulsive, generous, with an overflowing sociability of disposition, he won his way with convicts and guards in the different penal institutions included in his varied experience. I hate to put it into words, but Dick was undeniably a thief; and his career as a thief began very early. When seven years of age he was sent to a parish school, and there, he tells me, "A tough set of boys they were, including myself. There I received my first lessons in stealing. We would go through all the alley ways on our way to and from school, and break into sheds and steal anything we could sell for a few cents, using the money to get into cheap theatres."
This early lawlessness led to more serious misdemeanors until the boy at thirteen was sent to the reform school. This reform-school experience—in the late seventies—afforded the best possible culture for all the evil in his nature. This reform school was openly designated a "hotbed of crime" for the State. InevitablyDick left it a worse boy than at his entrance. Another delinquency soon followed, for which he was sent to jail for a month, the mother hoping that this would "teach him a lesson." "It did.But oh, what a lesson.Oh! but it was a hard place for a boy! There were from three to seven in each cell, some of them boys younger than I, some hardened criminals. We were herded together in idleness, learning only lessons in crime. In less than six months I was there a second time. Then mother moved into another neighborhood, but alas, for the change. That same locality has turned out more thieves than any other portion of Chicago, that sin-begrimed city. From the time I became acquainted in that neighborhood I was a confirmed thief, and a constant object of suspicion to the police.
"One evening I was arrested on general principles, taken into the police station and paraded before the whole squad of the police, the captain saying, 'This is the notorious Dick Mallory, take a good look at him, and bring him in night or day, wherever you may find him.'" This completed his enmity to law and order.
Soon after followed an experience in the house of correction of which he says: "This was my firsttime there and a miserable time it was. Sodom and Gomorrah in their palmiest days could not hold a candle to it. You know that by this time I was no spring chicken, but the place actually made me sick; it was literally swarming with vermin, the men half starved and half clad." This workhouse experience was repeated several times and was regarded afterward as the lowest depth of moral degradation of his whole career. "I did not try to obtain work in these intervals of liberty, because I was arrested every time I was met by a policeman who had seen me before."
Thoroughly demoralized Dick Mallory sought the saloons, at first for the sake of sociability, then for the stimulant which gave temporary zest to life, until the habit of drinking was confirmed and led to more serious crimes.
Perhaps neither our modern juvenile courts nor our improved methods in reform school and house of correction would have materially altered the course of Dick Mallory's life, although a thorough course of manual training might have turned his destructive tendencies into constructive forces and the right teaching might have instilled into him some principles of good citizenship. Be that as it may, the fact remained thatbefore this boy had reached his majority his imprisonment had become a social necessity; he had become the very type against whom our most severe legislation has been directed.
But this was not the Dick Mallory whom I came to know so well ten years later, and who was for two years or more my guide and director in some of the best work I ever accomplished for prisoners. Strange to say, this man, utterly irresponsible and lawless as he had heretofore been, was a model prisoner. He fell into line at once, learned his trade on the shoe contract rapidly, became an expert workman, earning something like sixty dollars a year by extra work. He was cheerful, sensible, level-headed; and settled down to convict life with the determination to make the best of it, and the most of the opportunity to read and study evenings. The normal man within him came into expression. His comparison between the house of correction and the penitentiary was wholly in favor of the latter. He recognized the necessity of a strict discipline for men like himself; he appreciated the difficulties of the warden's position and his criticisms of the institutions were confined mostly to the abuses inherent in the contract system. Never cominginto contact with the sick or disabled, himself blessed with the irrepressible buoyancy of the sons of Erin, physically capable of doing more than all the work required of him, his point of view of convict life and prison administration was at that time altogether different from that of John Bryan. He plunged into correspondence with me with an ardor that never flagged, covering every inch of the writing-paper allotted him, treasuring every line of my letters, and re-reading them on the long Sunday afternoons in his cell. For years he had made the most of the prison libraries. His reading was mainly along scientific lines; Galton, Draper, and Herbert Spencer he treasured especially. His favorite novel was M. Linton's "Joshua Davidson," a striking modern paraphrase of the life of Jesus. His good nature won him many small favors and privileges from the prison guards, and the time that I knew him as a prisoner was unquestionably the happiest period of his life.
We always had some young prisoner on hand, whom we were trying to rescue from criminal life. It was usually a cell-mate of Dick's with whom he had become thoroughly acquainted. And on the outside was Dick's mother alwaysready to help her boy set some other mother's boy on his feet. Our first mutual experiment along this line was in the beginning somewhat discouraging. The following extract from one of Dick's letters speaks for itself, not only of ourprotégé, Harry, but of Dick's attitude in this and similar cases.
"My brother wrote me that Harry had burnt his foot and was unable to work for a month, during which time a friend of mine paid his board. On recovering he went back to work for a few days, drew his pay and left the city, leaving my friend out of pocket. Now I would like to make this loss good because I feel responsible for Harry. I have never lost confidence in him; and what makes me feel worst of all is that I am unable to let him know that I am not angry with him. I would give twenty dollars this minute if I knew where a letter would reach him.
"I have never directly tried to bring any man down to my own level, and if I never succeed in elevating myself much above my present level I would like to be the means of elevating others." However, Harry did not prove altogether a lost venture and Dick was delighted to receive better news of him later.
We had better luck next time when Ned Triscom, a young cell-mate of Dick's, was released. Dick had planned for this boy's future for weeks, asking my assistance in securing a situation and arranging for an evening school, the bills guaranteed by Dick. Our plans carried even better than we hoped. Ned proved really the right sort, and when I afterward met him in Chicago my impressions more than confirmed Dick's favorable report. But Ned was Dick'sfind, and Dick must give his own report.
"I want to thank you for what you have done for my friend Ned. He has written me every week since he left, and it does me good to know that he is on the high road to success. As soon as you begin to receive news from your friends who have met him you will hear things that will make your heart glad. He is enthusiastic in his praise of Miss Jane Addams, has spent some evenings at the Hull House, and goes often to see my mother. He is doing remarkably well with his work and earned twenty-four dollars last week. He has no relative nearer than an aunt, whom he will visit in his vacation. I never asked himanything about his past, and he never told me anything. I simply judged of him by what I saw ofhim. I always thought him out of place here and now I wonder how he ever happened to get here."
I liked Dick for never having asked Ned anything about his past. Now through Dick's interest in the boy Ned was placed at once in healthy moral environment in Chicago, and he was really a very interesting and promising young man with exceedingly good manners. He called on me one evening in Chicago and seemed as good as anybody, with the right sort of interests, and he kept in correspondence with me as long as I answered his letters.
Mrs. Mallory was as much interested in Dick's philanthropic experiments as I was, and several men fresh from the penitentiary spent their first days of freedom in the sunshine of her warm welcome and under the shelter of her hospitable roof. Thus Dick Mallory, his mother, and I formed a sort of first aid to the ex-convict society.
Another of Mallory's protégés was Sam Ellis, whose criminal sowing of wild oats appeared to be the expression of a nature with an insatiable appetite for adventure. The adventure of lawlessness appealed to him as a game, the very hazards involved luring him on, as "the red gameof war" has lured many a young man and the game of high finance has ensnared many an older one.
But Sam Ellis indulged in mental adventures also—in the game of making fiction so convincing as to be accepted as fact, for Sam was born a teller of stories. Perhaps I ought to have regarded Sam as a plain liar, but I never could so regard him, for he frankly discussed this faculty as he might have discussed any other talent; and he told me that he found endless fascination in making others believe the pure fabrications of his imagination. I always felt that as a writer of fiction he would have found his true vocation and made a success. He had a feeling for literature, too, and I think he has happily expressed what companions books may be to a prisoner in the following extract from one of his letters:
"I have been fairly devouring Seneca, Montaigne, Saadi, Marcus Aurelius, Rochefoucauld, Bacon, Sir Thomas More, Shelley, Schopenhauer, Clodd, Clifford, Huxley, Spencer, Fiske, Emerson, Ignatius Donnelly, Bryan, B. O. Flower, J. K. Hosmer, and a host of lesser lights." Of Emerson he says: "We are friends. It was a great rise for me and a terrible come-down for him. I'vedone nothing but read, think, talk, and dream Emerson for two weeks, and familiarity only cements our friendship the stronger. It must have taken some extraordinary high thinking to create such pure and delightful things. He uplifts one into a higher atmosphere and carries the thought along on broad and liberal lines. Instead of making one look down into the gutter to see the reflection of the sky, he has us look up into the sky itself." In hours of depression this man sought the companionship of Marjorie Fleming. Truly he understood the value of the old advice: "To divert thyself from a troublesome fancy 'tis but to run to thy bookes." And to think of that dear Pet Marjorie winging her way through the century and across the sea to cheer and brighten the very abode of gloom and despair! No desire had this man to read detective stories—he lived them—his life out of prison was full of excitement and escapade. When seasons of reflection came he turned to something entirely different; and were not the forces working upward within him as vital and active as the downward tendencies?
However that may be, neither Dick Mallory nor I succeeded in getting any firm grip on thatmercurial being; but he never tried to impose on either of us, was always responsive to my interest in him, and found a chance to do me a good turn before he disappeared from my horizon in a far western mining district where doubtless other adventures awaited him. Dick Mallory always regarded Sam with warm affection, and his clear-cut personality has left a vivid picture in my memory.
I find that Dick Mallory was the centre from which radiated more of my acquaintances in the prison than from any one other source. His mind was always on the alert regarding the men around him, and he was always on the lookout for means of helping them. In one of our interviews his greeting to me was:
"There are two Polish boys here that you must see; and you must do something for them."
"Not another prisoner will I get acquainted with, Dick," was my reply. "I've more men on my list now than I can do justice to. I've not time for another one."
"It makes no difference whether you have time or not, these boys ought to be out of here and there's nobody to get them out but you," said Dick in a tone of finality.
I saw instantly that not only was the fate of the Polish boys involved, but my standing in the opinion of Mallory; for between us two was the unspoken understanding that we could count on each other, and Dick knew perfectly well that I could not fail him. Nothing in all my prison experience so warms my heart as the thought of our Polish boys. Neither of them was twenty years of age; they were working boys of good general character, and yet they were serving a fifteen-year sentence imposed because of some technicality in an ill-framed law.
My interview with the younger of the boys was wholly satisfactory. I found him frank and intelligent and ready to give me every point in his case. But with the older one it was different; he listened in silence to all my questions, refusing any reply. At last I said: "You must answer my questions or I shall not be able to do anything for you." Then he turned his great black velvet eyes upon me and said only: "You mean to do me some harm?" What a comment on the boy's experience in Chicago courts! He simply could not conceive of a stranger seeking him with any but a harmful motive. And we made no further progress that time, but when I came again therewas welcome in the black velvet eyes, and with the greeting, "I know now that you are my friend," he gave me his statement and answered all my questions.
Now it seemed impossible that such a severe sentence could have been passed on those boys without some just cause. But I had faith in Dick Mallory's judgment of them, and my own impressions were altogether favorable; furthermore, my good friend the warden was convinced that grave injustice had been done.
It was two years before I had disentangled all the threads and marshalled all my evidence and laid the case before the governor. The governor looked the papers over carefully, and then said:
"If I did all my work as thoroughly as this has been done I should not be criticised as I am now. What would you like me to do for these boys?"
Making one bold dash for what I wanted I answered: "I should like you to give me two pardons that I can take to the boys to-morrow."
The governor rang for his secretary, to whom he said: "Make out two pardons for these Polish boys." And ten minutes later, with the two pardons in my hand, I left the governor's office.And so it came to pass that I was indebted to Dick Mallory for one of the very happiest hours of my life.
When I reached the prison next day the good news had preceded me. One of the officers met me at the door and clasped both my hands in welcome, saying:
"There isn't an officer or a convict in this prison who will not rejoice in the freedom of those boys, and every convict will know of it."
As for the Polish boys themselves, the blond, a dear boy, was expecting good news; but the black velvet eyes of the dark one were bewildered by the unbelievable good fortune. I stood at the door and shook hands with them as they entered into freedom, and afterward received letters from both giving the details of their homecoming. And so the purpose of Mallory was accomplished.
These are but few of the many who owed a debt of gratitude to this man. Only last year a man now dying in England, in one of his letters to me, referred gratefully to assistance given him by Mallory on his release from prison many years ago. Mallory's letters are all the record of a helping hand. Through them all runs the silverthread of human kindness, the traces of benefits conferred and efforts made on behalf of others.
And what of Dick Mallory's own life after his release from prison? He had always lacked faith in himself and in his future, and now the current of existence seemed set against him. He was thirty-two years old and more than half his life had been spent in confinement, under restraint. In his ambition to earn money for himself while working on prison contracts, he had drawn too heavily on both physical and nervous resources. In his own words: "I did not realize at all the physical condition I was in. If I could only have gone to some place where I could have recuperated under medical attention! But no! I only wanted to get to work.All I knew was work."
The hard times of '93 came on, a man had to take what work he could get, and Mallory could not do the work that came in his way. His mother died and the home was broken up. He again resorted to the sociability of the saloon, and with the renewal of old associations and under the influences of stimulants the reckless lawlessness of his boyhood again broke out into some action that resulted in a term in another prison.
The man was utterly crushed. His old criminalrecord was brought to light and he found himself ensnared in the toils of his past. He was bitterly humiliated—he was in no position to earn a penny, and no channel for the generous impulses still strong within him was now open. The old buoyancy of his nature still flickered occasionally from the dying embers, but gradually darkened into a dull despair as far as his own life was concerned. But his interest in others survived, and the only favors he ever asked of me were on behalf of "the boys" whom he could no longer help. He still wrote me freely and his letters tell their own story:
"At one time in our friendship I really believed that everything was possible in my future. I never meant to deceive you— And when I realized my broken promises my heart broke too. I have never been the same man since and can never be again. I cannot help looking on the dark side for life has been so hard for me. Ah! it is a hard place when you reach the stage where the future seems so hopeless as it does to me."
And hopeless it truly was; imprisonment and dissipation had done their work and his death came shortly after his release from this prison.Since his life had proved a losing game it was far better that it should end. But was not Robert Louis Stevenson right in his belief that all our moral failures do not lessen the value of our good qualities and our good deeds? The good that Mallory did was positive and enduring; and surely his name should be written among those who loved their fellow men.
To me the very most cruel stroke in the fate of Dick Mallory was this: that in the minds of many his history may seem to justify the severity of legislation against habitual criminals. With all his efforts to save others, himself he could not save—and well as he knew the injustice resulting from life sentences for "habituals," the sum of his life counted against clemency for this class.
Dick Mallory himself was given the maximum sentence of fourteen years for larceny under the habitual-criminal act; and he did not resent the sentence in his own case because he found life in the penitentiary on the whole as satisfactory as it had been on the outside; and when I met him he had become deeply interested in the other prisoners. But he resented the fact that the "habitual act" was applied without discrimination to any one convicted of a second offence. He was doing some study on his own account of the individual men called "habituals." I never understood how Dick Mallory contrived to know as much about individual convicts as he did know; but he was a keen observer and quick-witted, and the guards and foremen often gave him bits of information. He admitted, however, that his real knowledge of the men under the "habitual act" was meagre, and asked me to make some personal observations. To this end he gave me a list of some half-dozen menwhom I promised to interview, and in this way began my acquaintance with Peter Belden, an acquaintance destined to continue many years after Dick Mallory had passed beyond the reach of earthly courts.
Peter Belden was then a man something over thirty years of age, stunted in growth, somewhat deaf, with his right arm paralyzed through some accident in the prison shop. His hair, eyes, and complexion were much of a color, but his good, strong features expressed intelligence. He wore the convict stripes, which had the effect of blotting individuality throughout the prison.
Notwithstanding these physical disadvantages, a criminal record and a lifetime of unfavorable environment, some inherent force and manliness in his nature made itself felt. He took it for granted that I would not question his sincerity, neither did I. He said nothing of his own hardships, made no appeal to my sympathy, but discussed the habitual-criminal act quite impersonally and intelligently; assuming at once the attitude of one ready to assist me in any effort for the benefit of the criminal class to which he belonged.
But while he was talking about others I wasthinking about him, and when I inquired what I could do for him personally he asked me to obtain the warden's permission to have a pencil and a writing-tablet in his cell, as he liked to work at mathematical problems in his cell. This was the only favor the man asked of me while he was in prison, and to this day I do not know if he thought his fourteen-year sentence was unjust. As he was quite friendless, and neither received nor wrote letters, he was only too glad to correspond with me. I was surprised on receiving his first letter to find his left-handed writing regular and clear, with only an occasional slip in spelling or in correct English.
Always interested in the origin and in the formative influences which had resulted in the criminal life of these men, I asked Belden to write for me the story of his youth; and I give it from his own letters, now before me, in his own words as far as possible:
"I have often thought that the opportunities of life have been pretty hard with me, still I have tried always to make the best of it. I know there are many who have fared worse than I, and in my pity towards them I have managed to find the hard side of life easier than otherwise.
"I was born on an island off the coast of England. My father and mother were of Irish descent, but we all spoke both English and French, and I was in school for four years before I was twelve. My studies were French and English, history, grammar and spelling; but I put everything aside for arithmetic and other branches of mathematics: as long as I can remember I had a greedy taste for figures; I earned my school expenses by doing odd jobs for a farmer, for we were very poor. My father was a hard drinker and there were fourteen of us in the family. There were days when we did not have but a meal or two, and some days when we had nothing at all to eat."
The boy's mother was ambitious for his education; she had relatives in one of our western States, and when Peter was twelve years old he was sent to this country with the understanding that he was to be kept in school.
"But instead of going to school as I had expected I was knocked and kicked about here and everywhere. My cousin would say, 'It's schoolin' ye want is it? I'll give ye schoolin',' and her schoolin' was always given with a club or a kick. 'Learnin' and educatin'? It's too muchof thim ye have already; go out and mind the cow.'"
The boy endured this life for several months, "dreading this cousin so much that sometimes I'd stay out all night, sleeping in the near-by woods." Then, in an hour of desperation, he decided to run away, and after two or three temporary places where he worked for his board he drifted into the lumber regions of Michigan. There his ambition for an education was gratified in an unlooked-for and most curious fashion.
During the seventies various rumors of immoral houses in connection with these lumber regions were afloat, and later measures were taken which effectually dispersed the inmates. One of these houses was kept by a college graduate from the East, who had been educated for the ministry but had deflected from the straight and narrow path into the business of counterfeiting; in consequence he spent five years in prison and afterward sought refuge from his past in the wilds of Michigan.
Chance or fate led Peter Belden, a boy of thirteen, into the circle of this man's dominion, where, strangely enough, the higher side of the boy's nature found some chance of development. Peterwas given employment at this "Rossman's" as caretaker to the dogs and as general-errand boy. The man, Rossman, studied the boy, and discovering his passion for learning cemented a bond between them by the promise of an equivalent to a course in college.
It seemed, indeed, like falling into the lap of good fortune for Peter to be clothed and fed and given a room of his own "with college books on the shelves" open to his use at any time; "and there was, besides, a trunk full of books—all kinds of scientific books."
And here, to his heart's content, the boy revelled in the use of books. Study was his recreation: and true to his word Rossman gave him daily instruction, taking him through algebra, trigonometry, and the various branches of higher mathematics, not omitting geography and history and—Bible Studyevery Sunday. Who can fathom the heights and depths, the mysterious complexities of Rossman's nature? This is Peter's tribute to the man:
"I was with him for three years; I always thought he was very kind, not only to me but to all the girls in the house and to every one."
In this morally outlawed community Petergrew to be sixteen years old, attracting to him by some magnetism in his own nature the best elements in his unfavorable environment. And here the one romance in his life occurred; on his part at least it seems to have been as idyllic as was Paul's feeling for Virginia. The girl, young and pretty, was a voluntary member of "Rossman's." She, too, had a history. Somewhat strictly reared by her family, she had been placed in a convent school, where she found the repression and restraint unbearable. In her reckless desire for freedom, taking advantage of a chance to escape from the convent school, she found refuge in the nearest city, and while there was induced to join the Rossman group with no knowledge of the abyss into which she was plunging. She was still a novice in this venture when she became interested in Peter Belden, the young student. Together they worked at problems in figures, their talk often wandering from the problems in books to the problems of life, especially their own lives, until the day came when Peter told her that he could not live without her.
Then the two young things laid their plans to leave that community, be honestly married, and to work out the problem of life together.However, this was not to be—for death claimed the wayward girl and closed the brief chapter of romance in Belden's life. And the man, near sixty years old now, still keeps this bit of springtime in his heart, and "May"—so aptly named—through the distillation of time and the alchemy of memory appears to him now an angel of light, the one love of his life.
Other changes were now on the wing. "Rossman's" was no longer to be tolerated, and the proprietor was obliged to disband his group and leave that part of the country. It was then that the truly baleful influence of Rossman asserted itself, blighting fatally the young life now bound to him by ties of gratitude and habit, and even turning the development of his mathematical gift into a curse. Forced to abandon the disreputable business in which he had been engaged, Rossman opened a gambling-house in Chicago, initiating Belden into all the ways that are dark and all the artful dodges practised in these gambling-hells. Here Belden's natural gift for calculation and combination of numbers, reinforced by mathematical training, came into play. The fascination of the game for its own sake has even crept into one of Belden's letters to me, whereseveral pages are devoted to proving how certain results can be obtained by scientific manipulation of the cards. But again Rossman's business fell under the ban of the law, and soon after, for some overt act of dishonesty, Belden was sent to the penitentiary.
A year later an ex-convict with power of resistance weakened by the rigidity of prison discipline, with no trade, the ten dollars given by the State invested in cheap outer clothing to replace the suit, recognizable at a glance by the police, which the State then bestowed upon the ex-convict, Belden returned to Chicago. Friendless, penniless, accustomed to live by his wits, Belden was soon "in trouble" again, was speedily convicted under the habitual-criminal act and given the maximum sentence of fourteen years. Three years of this sentence Belden served after the beginning of our acquaintance. He had met with the accident resulting in the paralysis of his arm, and his outlook was hopeless and dreary. However, after the loss of the use of his right hand he immediately set to work learning to write with his left hand, and this he speedily accomplished. The tablet granted by the warden at my request was soon covered with abstruse mathematicalproblems; differential calculus was of course meaningless to the guards, but a continuous supply of tablets was allowed as a safe outlet for a mind considered "cracked" on the subject of figures. Owing to his infirmities Belden's prison tasks were light; his devotion to Warden McClaughrey, who treated him with kindness, kept him obedient to prison rules, while his obliging disposition won the friendly regard of fellow prisoners. And so the time drifted by until his final release. This time he left the prison clad in a well-fitting second-hand suit sent by a friend. Dick Mallory, who was then a free man, welcomed him in Chicago, saw him on board the train for another city in which I had arranged for his entrance into a "home," and with hearty good will speeded his departure from criminal ranks. This was in the year 1893; from that day forward Peter Belden has lived an honest life.