“Why, Will! surely you won't think to leave me in this strait? Why three of us are hardly able for the work, and how can I make head against this plague with only the poor sav—with only Jacky, that is first-rate at light work till he gets to find it dull—but can't lift a sheep and fling her into the water, as the like of us can?”
“Well, ye see,” said Abner, doggedly, “I have got the offer of a place with Mr. Meredith, and he won't wait for me more than a week.”
“He is a rich man, Will, and I am a poor one,” said George in a faint, expostulating tone. Abner said nothing, but his face showed he had already considered this fact from his own point of view.
“He could spare you better than I can; but you are right to leave a falling house that you have helped to pull down.”
“I don't want to go all in a moment. I can stay a week till you get another.”
“A week! how can I get a shepherd in this wilderness at a week's notice? You talk like a fool.”
“Well, I can't stay any longer. You know there is no agreement at all between us, but I'll stay a week to oblige you.”
“You'll oblige me, will you?” said George, with a burst of indignation; “then oblige me by packing up your traps and taking your ugly face out of my sight before dinner-time this day. Stay, my man, here are your wages up to twelve o'clock to-day, take 'em and out of my sight, you dirty rascal. Let me meet misfortune with none but friends by my side. Away with you, or I shall forget myself and dirty my hands with your mean carcass.”
The hireling slunk off, and as he slunk George stormed and thundered after him, “And wherever you may go, may sorrow and sickness—no!”
George turned to Jacky, who sat coolly by, his eyes sparkling at the prospect of a row. “Jacky!” said he, and then he seemed to choke, and could not say another word.
“Suppose I get the make-thunder, then you shoot him.”
“Shoot him! what for?”
“Too much bungality,* shoot him dead. He let the sheep come that have my two fingers so on their backs;” here Jacky made a V with his middle and forefinger, “so he kill the other sheep—yet still you not shoot him—that so stupid I call.”
“Oh Jacky, hush! don't you know me better than to think I would kill a man for killing my sheep. Oh fie! oh fie! No, Jacky, Heaven forbid I should do the man any harm; but when I think of what he has brought on my head, and then to skulk and leave me in my sore strait and trouble, me that never gave him ill language as most masters would; and then, Jacky, do you remember when he was sick how kind you and I were to him—and now to leave us. There, I must go into the house, and you come and call me out when that man is off the premises—not before.”
At twelve o'clock selfish Abner started to walk thirty miles to Mr. Meredith's. Smarting under the sense of his contemptibleness and of the injury he was doing his kind, poor master, he shook his fist at the house and told Jacky he hoped the scab would rot the flock, and that done fall upon the bipeds, on his own black hide in particular. Jacky only answered with his eye. When the man was gone he called George.
George's anger had soon died. Jacky found him reading a little book in search of comfort, and when they were out in the air Jacky saw that his eyes were rather red.
“Why you cry?” said Jacky. “I very angry because you cry.”
“It is very foolish of me,” said George, apologetically, “but three is a small company, and we in such trouble; I thought I had made a friend of him. Often I saw he was not worth his wages, but out of pity I wouldn't part with him when I could better have spared him than he me, and now—there—no more about it. Work is best for a sore heart, and mine is sore and heavy, too, this day.”
Jacky put his finger to his head, and looked wise. “First you listen me—this one time I speak a good many words. Dat stupid fellow know nothing, and so because you not shoot him a good way* behind—you very stupid. One,” counted Jacky, touching his thumb, “he know nothing with these (pointing to his eyes). Jacky know possum,** Jacky know kangaroo, know turkey, know snake, know a good many, some with legs like dis (four fingers), some with legs like dis (two flngers)—dat stupid fellow know nothing but sheep, and not know sheep, let him die too much. Know nothing with 'um eyes. One more (touching his forefinger). Know nothing with dis (touching his tongue). Jacky speak him good words, he speak Jacky bad words. Dat so stupid—he know nothing with dis.
** Opossum.
“One more. You do him good things—he do you bad things; he know nothing with these (indicating his arms and legs as the seat of moral action), so den because you not shoot him long ago now you cry; den because you cry Jacky angry. Yes, Jacky very good. Jacky a little good before he live with you. Since den very good—but when dat fellow know nothing, and now you cry at the bottom* part Jacky a little angry, and Jacky go hunting a little not much direckly.”
With these words the savage caught up his tomahawk and two spears, and was going across country without another word, but George cried out in dismay, “Oh, stop a moment! What! to-day, Jacky? Jacky, Jacky, now don't ye go to-day. I know it is very dull for the likes of you, and you will soon leave me, but don't ye go to-day; don't set me against flesh and blood altogether.”
“I come back when the sun there,” pointing to the east, “but must hunt a little, not much. Jacky uncomfortable,” continued he, jumping at a word which from its size he thought must be of weight in any argument, “a good deal uncomfortable suppose I not hunt a little dis day.”
“I say no more, I have no right—goodby, take my hand, I shall never see you any more.
“I shall come back when the sun there.”
“Ah! well I daresay you think you will. Good-by, Jacky; don't you stay to please me.”
Jacky glided away across country. He looked back once and saw George watching him. George was sitting sorrowful upon a stone, and as this last bit of humanity fell away from him and melted away in the distance his heart died within him. “He thinks he will come back to me, but when he gets in the open and finds the track of animals to hunt he will follow them wherever they go, and his poor shallow head won't remember this place nor me; I shall never see poor Jacky any more!”
The black continued his course for about four miles until a deep hollow hid him from George. Arrived here he instantly took a line nearly opposite to his first, and when he had gone about three miles on this tack he began to examine the ground attentively and to run about like a hound. After near half an hour of this he fell upon some tracks and followed them at an easy trot across the country for miles and miles, his eye keenly bent upon the ground.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
OUR story has to follow a little way an infinitesimal personage.
Abner, the ungratefulish one, with a bundle tied up in a handkerchief, strode stoutly away toward Mr. Meredith's grazing ground. “I am well out of that place,” was his reflection. As he had been only once over the ground before, he did not venture to relax his pace lest night should overtake him in a strange part. He stepped out so well that just before the sun set he reached the head of a broad valley that was all Meredith's. About three miles off glittered a white mansion set in a sea of pasture, studded with cattle instead of sails. “Ay! ay!” thought the ungratefulish one, no fear of the scab breaking up this master—“I'm all right now.” As he chuckled over his prospects a dusky figure stole noiselessly from a little thicket—an arm was raised behind him—crosssh! a hard weapon came down on his skull, and he lay on his face with the blood trickling from his mouth and ears.
CHAPTER XL.
HE who a few months ago was so lighthearted and bright with hope now rose at daybreak for a work of Herculean toil as usual, but no longer with the spirit that makes labor light. The same strength, the same dogged perseverance were there, but the sense of lost money, lost time, and invincible ill-luck oppressed him; then, too, he was alone—everything had deserted him but misfortune.
“I have left my Susan and I have lost her—left the only friend I had or ever shall have in this hard world.” This was his constant thought, as doggedly but hopelessly he struggled against the pestilence. Single-handed and leaden-hearted he had to catch a sheep, to fling her down, to hold her down, to rub the ointment into her, and to catch another that had been rubbed yesterday and take her to the pool and fling her in and keep her in till every part of her skin was soaked.
Four hours of this drudgery had George gone through single-handed and leaden-hearted, when as he knelt over a kicking, struggling sheep, he became conscious of something gliding between him and the sun; he looked up and there was Jacky grinning.
George uttered an exclamation: “What, come back! Well, now that is very good of you I call. How do you do?” and he gave him a great shake of the hand.
“Jacky very well, Jacky not at all uncomfortable after him hunt a little.”
“Then I am very glad you have had a day's sport, leastways a night's, I call it, since it has made you comfortable, Jacky.”
“Oh! yes, very comfortable now,” and his white teeth and bright eye proclaimed the relief and satisfaction his little trip had afforded his nature.
“There, Jacky, if the ointment is worth the trouble it gives me rubbing of it in, that sheep won't ever catch the scab, I do think. Well, Jacky, seems to me I ought to ask your pardon—I did you wrong. I never expected you would leave the kangaroos and opossums for me once you were off. But I suppose fact is you haven't quite forgotten Twofold Bay.”
“Two fool bay!” inquired Jacky, puzzled.
“Where I first fell in with you. You made one in a hunt that day, only instead of hunting you was hunted and pretty close, too, and if I hadn't been a good cricketer and learned to fling true—Why, I do declare I think he has forgotten the whole thing, shark and all!”
At the word shark a gleam of intelligence came to the black's eye; it was succeeded by a look of wonder. “Shark come to eat me—you throw stone—so we eat him. I see him now a little—a very little—dat a long way off—a very long way off. Jacky can hardly see him when he try a good deal. White fellow see a long way off behind him back—dat is very curious.”
George colored. “You are right, lad—it was a long while ago, and I am vexed for mentioning it. Well, any way you are come back and you are welcome. Now you shall do a little of the light work, but I'll do all the heavy work because I'm used to it;” and indeed poor George did work and slave like Hercules; forty times that day he carried a full-sized sheep in his hands a distance of twenty yards and flung her into the water and splashed in and rubbed her back in the water.
The fourth day after Jacky's return George asked him to go all over the ground and tell him how many sheep he saw give signs of the fatal disorder.
About four o'clock in the afternoon Jacky returned driving before him with his spear a single sheep. The agility of both the biped and quadruped were droll; the latter every now and then making a rapid bolt to get back to the pasture and Jacky bounding like a buck and pricking her with a spear.
For the first time he found George doing nothing. “Dis one scratch um back—only dis one.”
“Then we have driven out the murrain and the rest will live. A hard fight! Jacky, a hard fight! but we have won it at last. We will rub this one well; help me put her down, for my head aches.”
After rubbing her a little George said, “Jacky, I wish you would do it for me, for my head do ache so I can't abide to hold it down and work, too.”
After dinner they sat and looked at the sheep feeding. “No more dis,” said Jacky gayly, imitating a sheep rubbing against a tree.
“No! I have won the day; but I haven't won it cheap. Jacky, that fellow, Abner, was a bad man—an ungrateful man.”
These words George spoke with a very singular tone of gravity.
“Never you mind you about him.”
“No! I must try to forgive him; we are all great sinners; is it cold to-day?”
“No! it is a good deal hot
“I thought it must, for the wind is in a kindly quarter. Well, Jacky, I am as cool as ice.”
“Dat very curious.”
“And my head do ache so I can hardly bear myself.”
“You ill a little—soon be well.”
“I doubt I shall be worse before I am better.”
“Never you mind you. I go and bring something I know. We make it hot with water, den you drink it; and after dat you a good deal better.”
“Do, Jacky. I won't take doctor's stuff; it is dug out of the ground and never was intended for man's inside. But you get me something that grows in sight and I'll take that; and don't be long, Jacky—for I am not well.”
Jacky returned toward evening with a bundle of simples. He found George shivering over a fire. He got the pot and began to prepare an infusion. “Now you soon better,” said he.
“I hope so, Jacky,” said George very gravely, “thank you, all the same. Jacky, I haven't been not to say dry for the last ten days with me washing the sheep, and I have caught a terrible chill—a chill like death; and, Jacky, I have tried too much—I have abused my strength. I am a very strong man as men go, and so was my father; but he abused his strength—and he was took just as I am took now, and in a week he was dead. I have worked hard ever since I came here, but since Abner left me at the pinch it hasn't been man's work, Jacky; it has been a wrestling-match from dawn to dark. No man could go on so and not break down; but I wanted so to save the poor sheep. Well, the sheep are saved; but—”
When Jacky's infusion was ready he made George take it and then lie down. Unfortunately the attack was too violent to yield to this simple remedy. Fever was upon George Fielding—fever in his giant shape; not as he creeps over the weak, but as he rushes on the strong. George had never a headache in his life before. Fever found him full of blood and turned it all to fire. He tossed—he raged—and forty-eight hours after his first seizure the strong man lay weak as a child, except during those paroxysms of delirium which robbed him of his reason while they lasted, and of his strength when they retired.
On the fourth day—-after a raging paroxysm—he became suddenly calm, and looking up saw Jacky seated at some little distance, his bright eye fixed upon him.
“You better now?” inquired he, with even more than his usual gentleness of tone. “You not talk stupid things any more?”
“What, Jacky, are you watching me?” said the sick man. “Now I call that very kind of you. Jacky, I am not the man I was—we are cut down in a day like the ripe grass. How long is it since I was took ill?”
“One, one, one, and one more day.”
“Ay! Ay! My father lasted till the fifth day, and then—Jacky!”
“Here Jacky! what you want?”
“Go out on the hill and see whether any of the sheep are rubbing themselves.”
Jacky went out and soon returned.
“Not see one rub himself.”
A faint gleam lighted George's sunken eye. “That is a comfort. I hope I shall be accepted not to have been a bad shepherd, for I may say 'I have given my life for my sheep.' Poor things.”
George dozed. Toward evening he awoke, and there was Jacky just where he had seen him last. “I didn't think you had cared so much for me, Jacky, my boy.”
“Yes, care very much for you. See, um make beef-water for you a good deal.”
And sure enough he had boiled down about forty pounds of beef and filled a huge calabash with the extract, which he set by George's side.
“And why are you so fond of me, Jacky? It isn't on account of my saving your life, for you had forgotten that. What makes you such a friend to me?”
“I tell you. Often I go to tell you before, but many words dat a good deal trouble. One—when you make thunder the bird always die. One—you take a sheep so and hold him up high. Um never see one more white fellow able do dat. One—you make a stone go and hit thing; other white fellow never hit. One—little horse come to you; other white fellow go to horse—horse run away. Little horse run to you, dat because you so good. One—Carlo fond of you. All day now he come in and go out, and say so (imitating a dog's whimper). He so uncomfortable because you lie down so. One—when you speak to Jacky you not speak big like white fellow, you speak small and like a fiddle—dat please Jacky's ear.
“One—when you look at Jacky always your face make like a hot day when dere no rain—dat please Jacky's eye; and so when Jacky see you stand up one day a good deal high and now lie down—dat makes him uncomfortable; and when he see you red one day and white dis day—dat make him uncomfortable a good deal; and when he see you so beautiful one day and dis day so ugly—dat make him so uncomfortable, he afraid you go away and speak no more good words to Jacky—and dat make Jacky feel a thing inside here (touching his breast), no more can breathe—and want to do like the gin, but don't know how. Oh, dear! don't know how!”
“Poor Jacky! I do wish I had been kinder to you than I have. Oh, I am very short of wind, and my back is very bad!”
“When black fellow bad in um back he always die,” said Jacky very gravely.
“Ay,” said George quietly. “Jacky, will you do one or two little things for me now?”
“Yes, do um all.”
“Give me that little book that I may read it. Thank you. Jacky, this is the book of my religion; and it was given to me by one I love better than all the world. I have disobeyed her—I have thought too little of what is in this book and too much of this world's gain. God forgive me! and I think He will, because it was for Susan's sake I was so greedy of gain.”
Jacky looked on awestruck as George read the book of his religion. “Open the door, Jacky.”
Jacky opened the door; then coming to George's side, he said with an anxious, inquiring look and trembling voice, “Are you going to leave me, George?”
“Yes, Jacky, my boy,” said George, “I doubt I am going to leave you. So now thank you and bless you for all kindness. Put your face close down to mine-there—I don't care for your black skin—He who made mine made yours; and I feel we are brothers, and you have been one to me. Good-by, dear, and don't stay here. You can do nothing more for your poor friend George.”
Jacky gave a little moan. “Yes, um can do a little more before he go and hide him face where there are a good deal of trees.”
Then Jacky went almost on tiptoe, and fetched another calabash full of water and placed it by George's head. Then he went very softly and fetched the heavy iron which he had seen George use in penning sheep, and laid it by George's side; next he went softly and brought George's gun, and laid it gently by George's side down on the ground.
This done he turned to take his last look of the sick man now feebly dozing, the little book in his drooping hand. But as he gazed nature rushed over the poor savage's heart and took it quite by surprise. Even while bending over his white brother to look his last farewell, with a sudden start he turned his back on him, and sinking on his hams he burst out crying and sobbing with a wild and terrible violence.
CHAPTER XLI.
FOR near an hour Jacky sat upon the ground, his face averted from his sick friend, and cried; then suddenly he rose, and without looking at him went out at the door, and turning his face toward the great forests that lay forty miles distant eastward, he ran all the night, and long before dawn was hid in the pathless woods.
A white man feels that grief, when not selfish, is honorable, and unconsciously he nurses such grief more or less; but to simple-minded Jacky grief was merely a subtle pain, and to be got rid of as quickly as possible, like any other pain.
He ran to the vast and distant woods, hoping to leave George's death a long way behind him, and so not see what caused his pain so plain as he saw it just now. It is to be observed that he looked upon George as dead. The taking into his hand of the book of his religion, the kind embrace, the request that the door might be opened, doubtless for the disembodied spirit to pass out, all these rites were understood by Jacky to imply that the last scene was at hand. Why witness it? it would make him still more uncomfortable. Therefore he ran, and never once looked back, and plunged into the impenetrable gloom of the eastern forests.
The white man had left Fielding to get a richer master. The half-reasoning savage left him to cure his own grief at losing him. There he lay abandoned in trouble and sickness by all his kind. But one friend never stirred; a single-hearted, single-minded, non-reasoning friend.
Who was this pure-minded friend? A dog.
Carlo loved George. They had lived together, they had sported together, they had slept together side by side on the cold, hard deck of the Phoenix, and often they had kept each other warm, sitting crouched together behind a little bank or a fallen tree, with the wind whistling and the rain shooting by their ears.
When day after day George came not out of the house, Carlo was very uneasy. He used to patter in and out all day, and whimper pitifully, and often he sat in the room where George lay and looked toward him and whined. But now when his master was left quite alone his distress and anxiety redoubled; he never went ten yards away from George. He ran in and out moaning and whining, and at last he sat outside the door and lifted up his voice and howled day and night continually. His meaner instincts lay neglected; he ate nothing; his heart was bigger than his belly; he would not leave his friend even to feed himself. And still day and night without cease his passionate cry went up to heaven.
What passed in that single heart none can tell for certain but his Creator; nor what was uttered in that deplorable cry; love, sorrow, perplexity, dismay—all these perhaps, and something of prayer—for still he lifted his sorrowful face toward heaven as he cried out in sore perplexity, distress, and fear for his poor master—oh! o-o-o-h! o-o-o-o-h! o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-h!
So we must leave awhile poor, honest, unlucky George, sick of a fever, ten miles from the nearest hut.
Leather-heart has gone from him to be a rich man's hireling.
Shallow-heart has fled to the forest, and is hunting kangaroos with all the inches of his soul.
Single-heart sits fasting from all but grief before the door, and utters heartrending, lamentable cries to earth and heaven.
CHAPTER XLII.
—— JAIL is still a grim and castellated mountain of masonry, but a human heart beats and a human brain throbs inside it now.
Enter without fear of seeing children kill themselves, and bearded men faint like women, or weep like children—horrible sights.
The prisoners no longer crouch and cower past the officers, nor the officers look at them and speak to them as if they were dogs, as they do in most of these places, and used to here.
Open this cell. A woman rises with a smile! why a smile? Because for months an open door has generally let in what is always a great boon to a separate prisoner—a human creature with a civil word. We remember when an open door meant “way for a ruffian and a fool to trample upon the solitary and sorrowful!”
What is this smiling personage doing? as I live she is watchmaking! A woman watchmaking, with neat and taper fingers, and a glass at her eye sometimes, but not always, for in vision as well as in sense of touch and patience nature has been bounteous to her. She is one of four. Eight, besides these four, were tried and found incapable of excellence in this difficult craft. They were put to other things; for permanent failures are not permitted in —— Jail. The theory is that every home can turn some sort of labor to profit.
Difficulties occur often. Impossibilities will bar the way now and then; but there are so few real impossibilities. When a difficulty arises, the three hundred industrious arts and crafts are freely ransacked for a prisoner; ay!—ransacked as few rich men would be bothered to sift the seven or eight liberal professions in order to fit a beloved son.
Here, as in the world, the average of talent is low. The majority can only learn easy things, and vulgar things, and some can do higher things and a few can do beautiful things, and one or two have developed first-rate gifts and powers.
There are 25 shoemakers (male); 12 tailors, of whom 6 female; 24 weavers, of whom 10 female; 4 watchmakers, all female; 6 printers and composers, 5 female; 4 engrainers of wood, 2 female. (In this art we have the first artist in Britain, our old acquaintance, Thomas Robinson. He has passed all his competitors by a simple process. Beautiful specimens of all the woods have been placed and kept before him, and for a month he has been forced to imitate nature with his eye never off her. His competitors in the world imitate nature from memory, from convention, or from tradition. By such processes truth and beauty are lost at each step down the ladder of routine. Mr. Eden gave clever Tom at first starting the right end of the stick, instead of letting him take the wrong.) Nine joiners and carpenters, 3 female; 3 who color prints downright well, 1 female; 2 painters, 1 female; 3 pupils shorthand writing, 1 female.
[Fancy these attending the Old Bailey and taking it all down solemn as judges.]
Workers in gutta-percha, modelers in clay, washers and getters-up of linen, hoe-makers, spade-makers, rake-makers, woodcarvers, stonecutters, bakers, etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum. Come to the hard-labor yard. Do you see those fifteen stables? there lurk in vain the rusty cranks; condemned first as liars they fell soon after into disrepute as weapons of half-science to degrade minds and bodies. They lurk there grim as the used-up giants in “Pilgrim's Progress,” and like them can't catch a soul.
Hark to the music of the shuttle and the useful loom. We weave linen, cotton, woolen, linsey-woolsey, and, not to be behind the rogues outside, cottonsey-woolsey and cottonsey-silksey; damask we weave, and a little silk and poplin, and Mary Baker velvet itself for a treat now and then. We of the loom relieve the county of all expense in keeping us, and enrich a fund for taking care of discharged industrious prisoners until such time as they can soften prejudices and obtain lucrative employment. The old plan was to kick a prisoner out and say:
“There, dog! go without a rap among those who will look on you as a dog and make you starve or steal. We have taught you no labor but crank, and as there are no cranks in the outside world, the world not being such an idiot as we are, you must fill your belly by means of the only other thing you have ever been taught—theft.”
Now the officers take leave of a discharged prisoner in English. Farewell; good-by!—a contraction for God be wi' ye—etc. It used to be in French, Sans adieu! au revoir! and the like.
Having passed the merry, useful looms open this cell. A she-thief looks up with an eye six times as mellow as when we were here last. She is busy gilding. See with what an adroit and delicate touch the jade slips the long square knife under the gossamer gold-leaf which she has blown gently out of the book—and turns it over; and now she breathes gently and vertically on the exact center of it, and the fragile yet rebellious leaf that has rolled itself up like a hedgehog is flattened by that human zephyr on the little leathern easel. Now she cuts it in three with vertical blade; now she takes her long flat brush and applies it to her own hair once or twice; strange to say the camel-hair takes from this contact a soupcon of some very slight and delicate animal oil, which enables the brush to take up the gold-leaf, and the artist lays a square of gold in its place on the plaster bull she is gilding. Said bull was cast in the prison by another female prisoner who at this moment is preparing a green artificial meadow for the animal to stand in. These two girls had failed at the watchmaking. They had sight and the fine sensation of touch required, but they lacked the caution, patience and judgment so severe an art demanded; so their talents were directed elsewhere. This one is a first-rate gilder, she mistressed it entirely in three days.
The last thing they did in this way was an elephant. Cost of casting him, reckoning labor and the percentage he ought to pay to the mold, was 1s. 4d. Plaster, chrome, water-size and oil-size, 3d.; goldleaf, 3s.; 1 foot of German velvet, 4d.; thread, needles and wear of tools, 1d.; total, 5s.
Said gold elephant standing on a purple cushion was subjected to a severe test of his value. He was sent to a low auction room in London. There he fell to the trade at 18s. This was a “knock-out” transaction; twelve buyers had agreed not to bid against one another in the auction room, a conspiracy illegal but customary. The same afternoon these twelve held one of their little private unlawful auctions over him; here the bidding was like drops of blood oozing from flints, but at least it was bona-fide, and he rose to 25s. The seven shillings premium was divided among the eleven sharpers. Sharper No. 12 carried him home and sold him the very next day for 37s. to a lady who lived in Belgravia, but shopped in filthy alleys, misled perhaps by the phrase “dirt cheap.”
Mr. Eden conceived him, two detected ones made him at a cost of 5s., twelve undetected ones caught him first for 18s., and now he stands in Belgravia, and the fair ejaculate over him, “What a duck!”
The aggregate of labor to make and gild this elephant was not quite one woman's work (12 hours). Taking 18s. as the true value of the work, for in this world the workman has commonly to sell his production under the above disadvantages, forced sale and the conspiracies of the unimprisoned—we have still 13s. for a day's work by a woman.
From the bull greater things are expected. The cast is from the bull of the Vatican, a bull true to Nature, and Nature adorned the very meadows when she produced the bull. What a magnificent animal is a bull! what a dewlap! what a front! what clean pasterns! what fearless eyes! what a deep diapason is his voice! of which beholding this his true and massive effigy in —— Jail we are reminded. When he stands muscular, majestic, sonorous, gold, in his meadow pied with daisies, it shall not be “sweet” and “love” and “duck”—words of beauty but no earthly signification; it shall be, “There, I forgive Europa.”
And need I say there were more aimed at in all this than pecuniary profit. Mr. Eden held that the love of production is the natural specific antidote to the love of stealing. He kindled in his prisoners the love of producing, of what some by an abuse of language call “creating.” And the producers rose in the scale of human beings. Their faces showed it—the untamed look melted away—the white of the eye showed less, and the pupil and iris more, and better quality.
Gold-leaf when first laid on adheres in visible squares with uncouth edges, a ragged affair; then the gilder takes a camelhair brush and under its light and rapid touch the work changes as under a diviner's rod, so rapidly and majestically come beauty and finish over it. Perhaps no other art has so delicious a one minute as this is to the gilder. The first work our prisoner gilded she screamed with delight several times at this crisis. She begged to have the work left in her cell one day at least. “It lights up the cell and lights up my heart.”
“Of course it does,” said Mr. Eden. “Aha! what, there are greater pleasures in the world than sinning, are there?”
“That there are. I never was so pleased in my life. May I have it a few minutes?”
“My child, you shall have it till its place is taken by others like it. Keep it before your eyes, feed on it, and ask yourself which is the best, to work and add something useful or beautiful to the world's material wealth, or to steal; to be a little benefactor to your kind and yourself, or a little vermin preying on the industrious. Which is best?”
“I'll never take while I can make.”
This is, of course, but a single specimen out of scores. To follow Mr. Eden from cell to cell, from mind to mind, from sex to sex, would take volumes and volumes. I only profess to reveal fragments of such a man. He never hoped from the mere separate cell the wonders that dreamers hope. It was essential to the reform of prisoners that moral contagion should be checkmated, and the cell was the mode adopted, because it is the laziest, cheapest, selfishest and cruelest way of doing this. That no discretion was allowed him to let the converted or the well-disposed mix and sympathize, and compare notes, and confirm each other in good under a watchful officer's eye; this he thought a frightful blunder of the system.
Generally he held the good effect of separate confinement to be merely negative; he laughed to scorn the chimera that solitude is an active agent, capable of converting a rogue. Shut a rogue from rogues and let honest men in upon him—the honest men get a good chance to convert him, but if they do succeed it was not solitude that converted him but healing contact. The moments that most good comes to him are the moments his solitude is broken.
He used to say solitude will cow a rogue and suspend his overt acts of theft by force, and so make him to a non-reflector seem no longer a thief; but the notion of the cell effecting permanent cures might honestly be worded thus: “I am a lazy self-deceiver, and want to do by machinery and without personal fatigue what St. Paul could only do by working with all his heart, with all his time, with all his wit, with all his soul, with all his strength and with all himself.” Or thus: “Confine the leopards in separate cages, Jock; the cages will take their spots out while ye're sleeping.”
Generally this was Mr. Eden's theory of the cell—a check to further contamination, but no more. He even saw in the cell much positive ill which he set himself to qualify.
“Separate confinement breeds monstrous egotism,” said he, “and egotism hardens the heart. You can't make any man good if you never let him say a kind word or do an unselfish action to a fellow-creature. Man is an acting animal. His real moral character all lies in his actions, and none of it in his dreams or cogitations. Moral stagnation or cessation of all bad acts and of all good acts is a state on the borders of every vice and a million miles from virtue.”
His reverence attacked the petrifaction and egotism of the separate cell as far as the shallow system of this prison let him. First, he encouraged prisoners to write their lives for the use of the prison; these were weeded, if necessary (the editor was strong-minded and did not weed out the re-poppies); printed and circulated in the jail. The writer's number was printed at the foot if he pleased, but never his name. Biography begot a world of sympathy in the prison. Second, he talked to one prisoner acquainted with another prisoner's character, talked about No. 80 to No. 60, and would sometimes say: “Now could you give No. 60 any good advice on this point?”
Then if 80's advice was good he would carry it to 60, and 60 would think all the more of it that it came from one of his fellows.
Then in matters of art he would carry the difficulties of a beginner or a bungler to a proficient, and the latter would help the former. The pleasure of being kind on one side, a touch of gratitude on the other, seeds of interest and sympathy in both. Then such as had produced pretty things were encouraged to lend them to other cells to adorn them and stimulate the occupants.
For instance, No. 140, who gilded the bull, was reminded that No. 120, who had cast him, had never had the pleasure of setting him on her table in her gloomy cell and so raising its look from dungeon to workshop. Then No. 140 said, “Poor No. 120! that is not fair; she shall have him half the day or more if you like, sir.”
Thus a grain of self-denial, justice and charity was often drawn into the heart of a cell through the very keyhole.
No. 19, Robinson, did many a little friendly office for other figures, received their thanks, and, above all, obliging these figures warmed and softened his own heart.
You might hear such dialogues as this:
No. 24. “And how is poor old No. 50 to-day (Strutt)?”
Mr. Eden. “Much the same.”
No. 24. “Do you think you will bring him round, sir?”
Mr. Eden. “I have great hopes; he is much improved since he had the garden and the violin.”
No. 24. “Will you give him my compliments, sir? No. 24's compliments and tell him I bid him 'never say die'?”
Mr. Eden. “Well, ——, how are you this morning?”
“I am a little better, sir. This room (the infirmary) is so sweet and airy, and they give me precious nice things to eat and drink.”
“Are the nurses kind to you?”
“That, they are, sir, kinder than I deserve.”
“I have a message for you from No. — on your corridor.”
“No! have you, sir?”
“He sends his best wishes for your recovery.”
“Now that is very good of him.”
“And he would be very glad to hear from yourself how you feel.”
“Well, sir, you tell him I am a trifle better, and God bless him for troubling his head about me.”
In short, his reverence reversed the Hawes system. Under that a prisoner was divested of humanity and became a number and when he fell sick the sentiment created was, “The figure written on the floor of that cell looks faint.” When he died or was murdered, “There is such and such a figure rubbed off our slate.”
Mr. Eden made these figures signify flesh and blood, even to those who never saw their human faces. When he had softened a prisoner's heart then he laid the deeper truths of Christianity to that heart. They would not adhere to ice or stone or brass. He knew that till he had taught a man to love his brother whom he had seen he could never make him love God whom he has not seen. To vary the metaphor, his plan was, first warm and soften your wax then begin to shape it after Heaven's pattern. The old-fashioned way is freeze, petrify and mold your wax by a single process. Not that he was mawkish. No man rebuked sin more terribly than he often rebuked it in many of these cells; and when he did so see what he gained by the personal kindness that preceded these terrible rebukes! The rogue said: “What! is it so bad that his reverence, who I know has a regard for me, rebukes me for it like this?—why, it must be bad indeed!”
A loving friend's rebuke is a rebuke—sinks into the heart and convinces the judgment; an enemy's or stranger's rebuke is invective and irritates—not converts. The great vice of the new prisons is general self-deception varied by downright calculating hypocrisy. A shallow zealot like Mr. Lepel is sure to drive the prisoners into one or other of these. It was Mr. Eden's struggle to keep them out of it. He froze cant in the bud. Puritanical burglars tried Scriptural phrases on him as a matter of course, but they soon found it was the very worse lay they could get upon in —— Jail. The notion that a man can jump from the depths of vice up to the climax of righteous habits, spiritual-mindedness, at one leap, shocked his sense and terrified him for the daring dogs that profess these saltatory powers and the geese that believe it. He said to such: “Let me see you crawl heavenward first, then walk heavenward; it will be time enough to soar when you have lived soberly, honestly, piously a year or two—not here, where you are tied hands, feet and tongue, but free among the world's temptations.” He had no blind confidence in learned-by-heart texts. “Many a scoundrel has a good memory,” said he.
Here he was quite opposed to his friend Lepel. This gentleman attributed a sort of physical virtue to Holy Writ poured anyhow into a human vessel. His plan of making a thief honest will appear incredible to a more enlightened age; yet it is widely accepted now and its advocates call Mr. Eden a dreamer. It was this: He came into a cell cold and stern and set the rogues a lot of texts. Those that learned a great many he called good prisoners, and those that learned few—black sheep; and the prisoners soon found out that their life, bitter as it was, would be bitterer if they did not look sharp and learn a good many texts. So they learned lots—and the slyest scoundrels learned the most. “Why not?” said they, “in these cursed holes we have nothing better to do; and it is the only way to get the parson's good word, and that is always worth having in jail.”
One rogue on getting out explained his knowledge of five hundred texts thus: “What did it hurt me learning texts? I'd just as lieve be learning texts as turning a crank, and as soon be d—d as either.”
This fellow had been one of Mr. Lepel's sucking saints—a show prisoner. The Bible and brute force—how odd they sound together! Yet such was the Lepel system, humbug apart. Put a thief in a press between an Old Testament and a New Testament. Turn the screw, crush the texts in, and the rogue's vices out! Conversion made easy! What a wonder he opposes cunning cloaked with religion to brutality cloaked under religion. Ay, brutality, and laziness, and selfishness, all these are the true foundation of that system. Selfishness—for such a man won't do anything he does not like. No! “Why should I make myself 'all things to all men' to save a soul? I will save them this one way or none—this is my way and they shall all come to it,” says the reverend Procrustes, forgetting that if the heart is not won in vain is the will crushed; or perhaps not caring so that he gets his own way.
To work on Mr. Eden's plan is a herculean effort day by day repeated; but to set texts is easy, easier even than to learn them—and how easy that is appears from the multitude of incurable felons who have swapped texts for tickets-of-leave. Messieurs Lepel, who teach solitary depressed sinners the Bible with screw and lifted lash and no love nor pity, a word in your ear. Begin a step higher. Go first to some charitable priest and at his feet learn that Bible yourselves!
Forgive my heat, dear reader. I am not an Eden, and these fellows rile me when I think of the good they might do, and they do nothing but force hypocrisy upon men who were bad enough without that. I allow a certain latitude; don't want to swim in hot water by quarreling with every madman or every dunce, but I do doubt any man's right to combine contradictory vices. Now these worthies are stupid yet wild, thick-headed yet delirious—tortoises and March hares.
My sketch of Mr. Eden and his ways is feeble and unworthy. But I conclude it with one master-stroke of eulogy—He was the opposite of these men.