—Safeguard.
PERFECT PEACE.
[Lines written by a lady on the steamship "Mongolia," near Malta. She was en route from China, where she had been a missionary for seventeen years, to her home in England. She gave the verses to Bishop Bowman, who was on the steamer with her, and he sent them to his wife, not knowing she had died a few days before he wrote his letter.—A. Lowry.]
While Jesus stands by;
His presence always cheers me,
I know that He is nigh.
For Jesus is my friend;
I change, but He remaineth
The same unto the end.
While leaning on His breast;
My soul hath full enjoyment,
'Tis His eternal rest.
By darkest scenes of woe;
I should be, if I knew not
That Jesus loves me so.
But I am leaning hard
On the mighty arm of Jesus,
And He is keeping guard.
He bade me watch and wait;
I only wonder often
What makes my Lord so late.
With joy too deep for words;
A precious, sure possession,
The joy that is my Lord's.
—Divine Life.
SWEET REVENGE.
A few years ago while Robert Stewart was Governor of Missouri, a steamboat man was brought in from the penitentiary for a pardon. He was a large, powerful fellow, and when the governor looked at him he seemed strangely affected. He scrutinized him long and closely. Finally he signed the document that restored to the prisoner his liberty. Before he handed it to him he said, "You will commit some other crime and be in the penitentiary again, I fear."
The man solemnly promised that he would not. The governor looked doubtful, mused a few minutes and said, "You will go back on the river and be a mate again, I suppose?"
The man replied that he would.
"Well, I want you to promise me one thing," resumed the governor. "I want you to pledge your word that when you are mate again, you will never take a billet of wood in your hand and drive a sick boy out of a bunk to help you load your boat on a stormy night."
The boatman said he would not, and inquired what he meant by asking him such a question.
The governor replied, "Because some day that boy may become a governor, and you may want him to pardon you for a crime. One dark stormy night many years ago you stopped your boat on the Mississippi River to take on a load of wood. There was a boy on board working his way from New Orleans to St. Louis, but he was very sick of fever and was lying in a bunk. You had plenty of men to do the work but you went to that boy with a stick of wood in your hand and drove him with blows and curses out into the wretched night and kept him toiling like a slave until the load was completed. I was that boy. Here is your pardon. Never again be guilty of such brutality."
The man, cowering and hiding his face, went out without a word.
What a noble revenge that was, and what a lesson for a bully.—Success.
NO TELEPHONE IN HEAVEN.
—Atlanta Constitution.
PERFECT THROUGH FAITH.
—Selected.
A TRUE HERO.
Two men were sinking a shaft. It was dangerous business, for it was necessary to blast the rock. It was their custom to cut the fuse with a sharp knife. One man then entered the bucket and made a signal to be hauled up. When the bucket again descended, the other man entered it, and with one hand on the signal rope and the other holding the fire, he touched the fuse, made the signal, and was rapidly drawn up before the explosion took place.
One day they left the knife above, and rather than ascend to procure it, they cut the fuse with a sharp stone. It took fire. "The fuse is on fire!" Both men leaped into the bucket, and made the signal; but the windlass would haul up but one man at a time; only one could escape. One of the men instantly leaped out, and said to the other, "Up wi' ye; I'll be in heaven in a minute." With lightning speed the bucket was drawn up, and the one man was saved. The explosion took place. Men descended, expecting to find the mangled body of the other miner; but the blast had loosened a mass of rock, and it lay diagonally across him; and, with the exception of a few bruises and a little scorching, he was unhurt. When asked why he urged his comrade to escape, he gave a reason that sceptics would laugh at. If there is any being on the face of the earth I pity, it is a sceptic. I would not be called "a sceptic," today for all this world's wealth. They may call it superstition or fanaticism, or whatever they choose. But what did this hero say when asked, "Why did you insist on this other man's ascending?" In his quaint dialect, he replied, "Because I knowed my soul was safe; for I've give it in the hands of Him of whom it is said, that 'faithfulness is the girdle of his reins,' and I knowed that what I gied Him He'd never gie up. But t'other chap was an awful wicked lad, and I wanted to gie him another chance." All the infidelity in the world cannot produce such a signal act of heroism as that.—Selected.
THE "KID."
It was not a long procession or a pleasing one but it attracted much attention.
There was a policeman in the lead. Beside him walked a stockey, bullnecked young fellow in a yellowish suit of loud plaid. His face was bloody and his right wrist encircled by the bracelet of the "twisters" which shackled him to his captor. The face of the policeman was also bloody and his clothes were torn. Behind these two walked three other patrolmen, each with a handcuffed prisoner.
The "kid" and his "gang" had been caught in the act of robbing a saloon, and the fight had been lively, although short. The prisoners had been taken to the detectives' office, and photographed and registered for the rogues' gallery. They were now on their way to court, and thence, in all probability, to jail.
At Broadway there was a jam of cars and heavy trucks, and the procession had to wait. Nobody has been able to tell just what happened, but they all agree as to the essential points. First the bystanders saw a streak of yellow, which was the kid; then a streak of blue which was the policeman. The prisoner had wrenched the twisters from his captors' hand, and made a dash across the tracks. The policeman, thinking, of course that he was trying to escape, had followed.
Then everybody saw a little child toddling along in the middle of the track. A cable-car, with clanging bell, was bearing down upon it with a speed which the gripman seemed powerless to check. The baby held up its hands, and laughed at the sound of the gong. On the other side of the street a woman was screaming and struggling in the arms of three or four men who were trying to keep her from sacrificing her own life to save that of her child.
Then the kid stood there with the child safe in his arms, the steel twisters hanging from his wrist. He set the baby down gently at his feet, loosened the clasp of the chubby hand on his big red fist, and quietly held out his wrist to the policeman to be handcuffed again. He had one chance in a million for his life when he made that desperate leap, but he had not hesitated the fraction of a second.
CHARGED WITH MURDER.
"Prisoner at the bar, have you anything to say why sentence of death should not be passed upon you?"
A solemn hush fell over the crowded court-room, and every person waited in almost breathless expectation for the answer to the judge's question.
"I have, your honor! I stand here convicted of the murder of my wife. Witnesses have testified that I was a loafer, a drunkard and a wretch; that I returned from one of my debauches and fired the shot that killed the wife I had sworn to love, cherish and protect. While I have no remembrance of committing the awful deed, I have no right to condemn the verdict of the jury, for their verdict is in accordance with the evidence.
"But, may it please the court, I wish to show that I am not alone responsible for the murder of my wife! The judge on this bench, the jury in the box, the lawyers within this bar and most of the witnesses, including the pastor of the church, are also guilty before God and will have to stand with me before His judgment throne, where we shall all be righteously judged.
"If it had not been for the saloons of my town, I never would have become a drunkard; my wife would not have been murdered; I would not be here now, soon to be hurled into eternity.
"For one year our town was without a saloon. For one year I was a sober man. For one year my wife and children were happy and our little home was a paradise.
"I was one of those who signed remonstrances against re-opening the saloons of our town. One-half of this jury, the prosecuting attorney on this case, and the judge who sits on this bench, all voted for the saloons. By their votes and influence the saloons were opened, and they have made me what I am.
"Think you that the Great Judge will hold me—the poor, weak, helpless victim—alone responsible for the murder of my wife? Nay; I, in my drunken, frenzied, irresponsible condition have murdered one; but you have deliberately voted for the saloons which have murdered thousands, and they are in full operation today with your consent. You legalized the saloons that made me a drunkard and a murderer, and you are guilty with me before God and man for the murder of my wife.
"I will close by solemnly asking God to open your blind eyes to your own individual responsibility, so that you will cease to give your support to this hell-born traffic."—Sel.
MOTHER'S FACE.
—Sel.
ONLY SIXTEEN.
Yet there on the cold, stony ground he lay;
'Tis the same sad story we hear every day.
He came to his death in the public highway.
Full of promise, talent and pride,
Yet the rum fiend conquered him—so he died.
Did not the angels weep o'er the scene?
For he died a drunkard and only sixteen.
Only sixteen.
That of all his friends, not even one
Was there to list to his last faint moan,
Or point the suffering soul to the throne
Of grace. If, perchance, God's only Son
Would say, "Whosoever will may come."—
But we hasten to draw a veil over the scene,
With his God we leave him—only sixteen.
Only sixteen.
Witness the suffering and pain you have brought
To the poor boy's friends; they loved him well,
And yet you dared the vile beverage to sell
That beclouded his brain, his reason dethroned,
And left him to die out there all alone.
What if 't were your son instead of another?
What if your wife were that poor boy's mother?
And he only sixteen.
The license to sell, do you think you will want
That record to meet in the last great day
When heaven and earth shall have passed away,
When the elements melting with fervent heat
Shall proclaim the triumph of right complete?
Will you wish to have his blood on your hands
When before the great throne you each shall stand?
And he only sixteen.
To action and duty; into the light.
Come with your banners inscribed: "Death to rum."
Let your conscience speak, listen, then come;
Strike killing blows; hew to the line;
Make it a felony even to sign
A petition to license; you would do it I ween
If that were your son and he only sixteen,
Only sixteen.
THE DRESS QUESTION.
One day, at Louisville, riding with Mrs. Wheaton to visit the sick prisoners, she said, "Do you think it your duty to rebuke Christians who wear jewelry?" I saw her question was a kindly reproof to me, and said, "If the Lord wants me to give up the jewelry I have, He will show me." "Yes, He will," she answered; "for I am praying for you." The next morning the friend who was entertaining me told me her little eleven-year-old daughter, Emma, just converted, said, "Mamma, I wish you would read to me in the Bible where it says not to wear jewelry." The mother read the verses. Then the child said, "Mamma, if the Lord does not want me to wear jewelry, I don't want to;" and she brought her little pin and ring to her mother. I took my Bible and read, "Whose adorning, let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel; but let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price" (1 Peter ii, 3, 4); and, "In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly array, but (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works." (1 Tim. ii, 9, 10.) Then I thought: "The child is right. The Bible means just what it says." Then I recalled that Mrs. Wheaton had told me how she went one day to visit a poor, sick girl, to whom she had talked of the love of Christ until she was almost won. She went again with a wealthy woman, who was decked with diamonds. As they entered the room, the girl pointed to the jewels, and said: "O mother, mother! I have wanted them all my life!" The rich woman tried to hide her diamonds, and Mrs. Wheaton tried to turn the girl's attention again to the Savior, but in vain. Her last thought was of the diamonds, and her last words, "I have wanted them all my life!"
Sitting there, with this incident fresh in my mind, I quietly slipped off ring, watch, chain, cuff-buttons, and collar-stud; and gold, as an adornment, was put away forever.—Abbie C. Morrow, in Revival Advocate, March 7, 1901.
SONGS USED IN MY WORK.
Rock Me to Sleep, Mother.
Life's Railway to Heaven.
By permission of Charlie D Tillman, owner of copyright.
Meet Me There.
Words and music copyrighted by W. J. Kirkpatrick, Philadelphia.
God Bless My Boy
The Great Judgment Morning.
Tune—"Kathleen Mavourneen."
My Name in Mother's Prayer.
Over There.
This Way.
More to be Pitied than Censured.
Some Mother's Child.
Used by permission of Charlie D. Tillman, owner of copyright.
Just Tell My Mother.
Soon the Death-bell Will Toll.
The End of the Way.
The following beautiful lines were written by a girl in Nova Scotia, an invalid for many years:
Appendix.
The matter which I have here appended I thought of too much value to omit from this volume. The first article is explanatory in itself. The second is by a prisoner whom I have known for many years. The third (regarding Christ in Gethsemane) was written by a prisoner as a letter to myself. I hope the reader may profit by the reading of each page.
E. R. W.
The Personnel of Prison Management.
Address of C. E. Haddox, warden of the West Virginia penitentiary, to the National Prison Association, at its annual session, Louisville, Ky., Congress of 1903:
This is the age of industrial development. On every side we see colossal enterprises undertaken and prosecuted to a successful and profitable conclusion.
Great railroad systems span the continent, carrying millions of passengers and countless tons of freight, with safety, celerity and dispatch, to the doors of factory, workshop, store and consumer.
Immense industrial enterprises are constantly being projected, consolidated and carried on in a manner to excite the admiration, mayhap, the wonder and fear of mankind.
Colossal financial transactions amaze the minds of those uninitiated to the magnitude and the intricacies of such undertakings.
The unexplored recesses of the earth are exploited in a manner and on a scale heretofore undreamed of and unknown, and every department of enterprise is carried on to a degree that distinctly stamps this decade as the acme of industrial enterprise and achievements, the golden age of industrial prosperity, and the acquirement of material improvement and material gain.
If it be asked why such strides have been made along industrial lines, the answer is that it is due to ORGANIZATION AND SPECIALIZATION.
The PERSONNEL of the management have devoted their lives, their talent and their energies to the special work before them. They have been drilled and educated along special lines; they have been deaf and blind to outside matters not relevant to the work in hand, and by close and careful study, by unceasing and constant labor, care and effort, having evolved, projected and carried on these immense enterprises.
The National Prison Congress at its meeting this year is mindful of the material progress of the country.
This association is equally ambitious along the lines peculiar to itself to obtain from the various penal institutions of the country the highest and best results morally, educationally, reformatively, and as an incident, punitively and financially.
How shall we keep pace in penal improvements with the great material progress of the outside world?
The answer necessarily must be, that improvements in our department of work must come, as they do elsewhere, by the investigation, the study, the thought and the effort of those who are in actual control, of those who are in a position to see, to observe and to know.
In other words, the question as to whether prisons are to improve, whether their work shall continue to be of a higher and nobler character, whether we are finally and forever to break away from the customs of the galleys of France, the prisons of Hawes in England, of the Mamertine of Rome and of Rothenburg in Germany, will depend utterly, entirely and absolutely upon the personnel of the prison management of the country.
Prof. Henderson, in his admirable address delivered at the Philadelphia meeting in 1902, on "The Social Position of the Prison Warden," says: "Some institutions have no marked qualities; they have walls, cells, machinery, prisoners, punishments, but no distinct, consistent and rational policy."
Where this is true it means that the worst possible condition of affairs exists. Such an institution has the dry rot. It is managed (or rather mismanaged) by time servers, too careless to feel the high responsibility devolving upon them, and too listless to acquaint themselves with the many opportunities spread before them to improve and keep pace with the onward march of progress.
Such officers in their abuse, by inaction, of the opportunities afforded them, commit "Crimes against criminals" and through them against society.
On the contrary institutions which have distinct features and characteristics, have them as the result of the careful investigation, the patient research and thought of those who are in responsible and actual control, and these characteristics and features reflect the wisdom and intelligence of those who have given their energies and their lives to the special work before them.
THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS.
In the management of penal institutions a Board of Directors or of Control is, ordinarily, the nominal head.
By the laws of most states they are supposed to fix the administration policy, to restrict and define the powers and duties of the officers in actual and intimate control.
In some institutions they meet a day or so each month, in most institutions not so frequently. Their duties while at the institution may or may not be largely perfunctory, and as they are generally active business men at home in other channels, the day or two a month or quarter is apt to be regarded by the unthoughtful as a respite or surcease from other duties. The main duty of a Board of Directors or of Control may be said to be the determining of the general policy upon which the institution shall be conducted, and a cursory oversight of the conduct of its affairs.
THE WARDEN.
The warden or superintendent is the one official who can give tone, expression and color to the institution. He is distinctly and positively its actual managing head, and upon his intelligence, interest, zeal, tact and discretion will depend, almost entirely, its weal or its woe.
He must be a man of intelligence, and be willing and anxious to increase his fund of knowledge and information.
He should be a profound student not only of the ordinary subjects that attract the student, but of prison systems, of laws, business, government, society as it exists, and of human nature in all its many phases.
HE MUST BE AN ORGANIZER.
No difference how elaborate a system may be found in any institution of this kind, the warden will always be an intensely busy and greatly occupied officer.
If he would prevent chaos and confusion and obtain from every official the highest and best work of which he is capable, he must organize every department thoroughly. Every officer and every inmate must know his exact duties, so far as it is possible to know them, and be made responsible for those duties and the warden must be enabled to appreciate a high order of talent and the accomplishment of good work, and to locate the blame for omissions and short comings, and provide for their correction.
Thorough system in every detail will conserve the capacities of all his subordinates and leave him in a measure free to observe the actual conditions and to plan and to put into effect improvements along moral, industrial, physical and financial lines.
HE MUST BE A FINANCIER.
The financial question in every prison in the land is an extremely important one. Funds for prisons are doled out grudgingly, and the demand for absolutely necessary purposes is always far greater than the supply.
A warden performs no more important function than when he sees that the funds of the institution are so used as to effect the highest possible results, and that all the forces of the prison are so energized and conserved as to permit, under ordinary conditions, a satisfactory and proper earning and economizing power. With the many demands made upon him for means for increasing the usefulness of his institution, a high order of financial aptitude is an absolutely necessary characteristic in a successful warden.
DISCIPLINE.
Discipline in a prison is its first requisite. Nothing can be accomplished until officers and convicts are under its sway and control.
The warden who would have control of those under him must himself at all times, be under self control.
The maxim "No one knows how to command who has not first learned how to obey," is a trite and a true one. The population of a prison is made up of a heterogeneous collection of people whose first instincts have been and are, not to obey.
To bring such people into habits of obedience and control requires the highest type of skill, tact and discretion. Punishments and reward must be so blended and combined as to effect the needful results with the least possible friction, and in the most humane and rational manner possible.
No warden can afford to delegate the matter of enforcing discipline entirely or partly, if at all, to another. His first duty to himself, that he may know actual conditions as they exist, is to preside over or assist in, the trial of offenders and to order discipline.
Individual treatment is a necessity in our dealings with delinquents, and a study of the many phases of delinquency is a prime requisite in a successful warden's repertoire.
Brainard F. Smith says: "Many a prisoner has been reformed—or, if not reformed, made a better prisoner—by punishment."
Will the warden have any higher duty to perform than to face his delinquent delinquents and to order in merciful severity, rational punishments for their short-comings?
But a warden's disciplinary powers are apt to be taxed more severely in another direction. The great problem ordinarily, is not so much the discipline of convicts as that of subordinate officers. If subordinate officers will obey the spirit and the letter of the rules, the convict has the potential influence of a powerful example to aid him. "Like master like man."
In institutions where officers are appointed solely with reference to their fitness, comparatively little trouble should be had in the matter of proper official discipline. But where places are given to heelers, ward-workers and political strikers, the matter of efficient discipline is a question of grave concern to the warden. In the absence of better material, however, he must address himself to organizing what he has to the highest efficiency possible, and insist and require a rigid regimen and adhere to his demands and requirements with Spartan firmness.
THE PRISON SCHOOL.
The educational work of a prison is of the highest, I may say, of the first importance. The education of the hands to work comes naturally, partly as an incident of the necessary work carried on in prison.
Nearly all convicts are densely ignorant. The polished, scholarly, shrewd criminal of whom we hear so much, and to whom the papers and books give so much prominence, is the exception, not the rule, in prison.
If the prison is to have a reformatory feature, it must come very largely through the school. Many prison schools are such only in name. The work accomplished is very meager. The results are very unsatisfactory.
To no part of prison work should a warden address himself with more ardor and determination than so to organize the prison school as to make it the great positive factor in dispelling ignorance and its attendant viciousness, and in quickening and enlivening the moral sense in those whose moral judgment is exceedingly obtuse.
The course of study in a prison school is necessarily a very elementary one, and unless followed by a supplementary course of reading and study, will be of little permanent and practical benefit. Many prison libraries, largely the result of indiscriminate and heterogeneous donations of all kinds of literature, good, bad and indifferent, chiefly the latter, are not in a position to be a positive force.
Let the warden see that his library is so arranged, classified and used as to be a source of information, profit, help and pleasure to the inmates, and that a course of reading along rational lines is laid out, encouraged, and, if possible, adhered to, in order that the preliminary school course may not have been in vain.
COURAGE NEEDED.
The warden must be a man of courage. I do not refer to the kind of courage necessary to face a regiment of depraved and wicked men shorn of their power and their stimulus to do evil, but that high moral courage necessary to clean the Augean stables of abuses of customs, to reverse policies of long standing that are nevertheless wrong in principle and in practice, to fight against unjust, improper and unwise legislative propositions concerning his institution; the kind of courage that prompted the chaplain in Chas. Reade's "NEVER TOO LATE TO MEND," to fight and destroy the iniquitous prison system of Keeper Hawes and his minions; the courage that will keep to the fore-front a persistent opposition to prostituting penitentiaries into eleemosynary institutions and political cribs and feeding troughs for political strikers.
He must have the courage to weed out and eliminate useless barnacles in the shape of incompetent and worthless employes, and substitute in their stead men of capacity, character and intelligence, who are in love with their work and believe in its dignity and usefulness; the courage to face demagogues in their efforts to take from the prison its educative, moral, reformatory and economic force, the right of the unfortunate inmates to learn the gospel of labor under right and just conditions.
OPTIMISM NECESSARY.
The warden needs to be intensely optimistic. He must have a reserve fund of enthusiasm. He must believe profoundly in the high character of his office and educate others constantly to believe in it. The ignorance of the great mass of the people as to the real function of penitentiaries and the methods by which they are carried on is amazing and mortifying to prison officials.
A part of the warden's mission is to acquaint the outside world with conditions as they exist inside, and to inspire the interest and support of the general public in measures for bettering and improving prison conditions. Legislative bodies especially, need to be brought into closer relations and the law makers made to realize their duty to the public and the convict in the enactment of wise, proper and righteous legislation.
Longfellow, in his beautiful poem, "THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP," tells why the master builder achieved success. It was because