The Room with the Little Door

The missionaries I have met! Mind, I am not speaking of the professional ones, those who are officially connected with the Tombs, or with Sing Sing prison; nor the chaplains. Years of experience have taught them their good work; they do it properly and without the aid of trumpets. Nor do I mean the ladies, who out of the goodness of their hearts, come and sing to us on Sundays. I am referring to those kind creatures who have made it their “life work” to come here occasionally and bestow tracts and cheering words upon us; the kind that carry enormous Bibles, full of colored book marks, pressed against their flat chests, and who punctuate their sentences by rolling their eyes upward. These book marks, I am convinced, are what make them so round-shouldered. They do not come during all the year: with summer they receive calls, doubtless from a celestial source, to “green fields and pastures new”; while the real helpers stay and, with us, bear the heat and burden of the day.

How I have been comforted by the visitations (on clear days during the winter, and how I have prayed for stormy ones) of these devoted and self-appointed examiners of my beliefs, and by a perusal of the literature they thrust upon me, “The Drunkard’s Home” (this to me, who have never tasted liquor in my life); “The Path to Hell” (when I am there already); “A Life of Sin” (I have always lived at home with my parents). Still another piece of literature informs me that I may possibly be a Christian, but not a clean one—if I smoke. Oh, the irony of life! with all this abundant and excellent supply, I am not allowed, while in the Tombs, to shave myself!

What a spiritual uplift I experienced by the sudden appearance of a female of uncertain age, who demanded: “Where are you going to spend eternity?” and before I could answer, “Not with you if I can help it,” she put her second question. “Do you pray, brother? Do you get right down on your knees and lift yourself up?” (wouldn’t that be a stunt? it is also a mixed metaphor, but what do missionaries care for rhetoric?)

On the first day of my incarceration a good lady (she is also a type of all the others) introduced herself to me in this manner: Transfixing me with an awful glance she said, “Man’s nature is threefold: physical, intellectual, spiritual. I am here to minister to your spiritual necessities.” This she proceeded to do by telling me to “look up, hope on, it is brighter further off”; and that I was in a prison cell—“for a purpose.”

Hardly had she passed on and left me happy in my solitude when her place was taken by another, and then another, who gave place to still another, all with the same tracts and expostulations. Not one of them neglected to tell me, that even St. Paul had been put in prison (for a purpose, doubtless), and that John Bunyan, although in a similar state of durance, had written that great and good book, “Pilgrim’s Progress.” Had I ever read it? I pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to read it again for my own good. After several hours of this, I also was in the mood to write—I wrote this and to my mother—begging her to come and sit in front of my cell all day, and to bring a broom; but still they came. My mother’s presence and the absence of the broom but gave them the opportunity to inflict her also.

Oh, the missionaries! are there no bandits in America? Why, oh why, do they insist on questioning me about my soul, and offering to wrestle with my most secret sins, when there is a man in the next cell who needs underclothes? After hearing the missionaries and being promised another call on the morrow, I wonder that the men do not rush to the District Attorney’s office and accept “pleas.” Sing Sing would seem preferable to another visitation.

I must not forget Sister “Goo-Goo,” who is so sympathetic. She stands outside, looking into my cell through the barred door; she also looks alluring. She sighs, then whispers, “This may be your door of hope.” “Then why is it kept locked?” I beg to inquire.

Sometimes they come on Sundays with last year’s religious papers and magazines; they come and gossip with the keepers; or they bring a friend to whom they show the sights and point out us poor unfortunates. It is pleasant to watch them as they meet and compare dress goods patterns which they produce from their pocket-books; how briefly the hours go by, what brotherly and sisterly love; how they enjoy themselves; how happy we are while they do this.

Of course we exchange experiences when they have departed; and, good souls, their visits often provoke some humor in the gray days of our existence. During the exercise hour one morning I overheard the “hard” man tell another, “her skirts” (that woman) “says she is praying for me, but it won’t hurt me none, for I’ve got an alibi.”

“See what the old ‘four-eyed gent’ just gave me,” said the wooden-legged man. It was a tract on the sin of dancing.

“He’s all right,” cut in another, “the old ‘polar top’s’ going to see the judge about me and I’ll only get two years.”

“Oh,” said the lame man, “that’s what the judge intends to give yer now; after ‘the century plant’ talks to him for three or four hours, the judge will give you eighty years.”

How the missionaries love each other! few are on speaking terms; but must they make me their confidant; do I not suffer sufficiently? This is what I must listen to, “That woman over there putting her ‘stuff’ through the bars is one of the very worst liars who comes here; you can’t believe a word she says. You don’t want to have anything to do with her; the less you tell her the better. What do you think, she keeps the money she collects for the poor prisoners.”

My visitor goes and his place is taken by the “friend” he has just eulogized. “Did that man say anything about me? Did you ever hear of his doing any good for any one? He ought to be put out.”

This good lady is followed by another, her sister in the Lord. The second one does not speak to the first; but she does speak of her and imparts her social and financial status. “Oh, yes, she’s very wealthy; she could afford to do much more than she does; she lives in a brownstone house, and keeps three servants; but I have given everything I possess to the Lord.”

Oh, the cant! the cant one hears in the Tombs.

But there is another kind; there are the real workers who bring gladness and help; there was the “Tombs Angel,” there is “Sister Sunshine,” and “Sister ----”; but it is of her I started to tell this story. I heard it from a court officer over in the Criminal Court Building during my examination before the Coroner.

I was in the “box,” which means the “pen,” that is to say, the “stall” in which you wait till you are called before the judge, and my friend the officer said, referring to a very miserable specimen in the opposite “pen,” who was in convulsions by reason of his anger:

“He’s the worst ever; the worst ever I see; the very worst. Why, what do you think? he cursed the Sister—what? did I? Did I call him down?”

The Sister he referred to is one of the black-robed saints, who for the sake of the lowly Nazarene devote their lives to laboring among the sinners and unfortunates in the city prisons. The object of the keeper’s wrath was the toughest man in the Tombs—to have that distinction one must be hard indeed.

The treatment which this particular Sister of whom I speak had received at the hands of the hard citizen was somewhat as follows, according to my informant: First, he had lied to her; then he had asked of her an impossibility. Of course she had attempted to do it. Of course she failed; then he insulted her, and what he said I am ashamed to write; but tears were in her eyes when she turned away. But for all that—wait, I am ahead of my story.

It seems that previous to this he had abused his own lawyer until that worthy would do little or nothing for him. “Let him go. No one will help him, anyhow—there’s no one who would be a witness for him. He has no friends—there’s no evidence that can save him,” said his legal adviser.

At the trial, which took place that day, the day it stormed so, some evidence did appear which proved him absolutely innocent; never was this expected; it came from an old enemy; he had not dreamed this possible.

How did this happen? She (the Sisters hear much that no one else does) had learned of this witness, and in spite of the man himself and her own outraged feelings, had procured his defence and acquittal.

“He didn’t deserve it, but then that is just her way,” said my friend the attendant. “Whose way?” I asked. “Don’t you know? Why, God bless her, I thought every one knew Sister Xavier.”