Walled In
I
THE HIGH STONE WALLS
When the world was made, a number of islands were loosely scattered around at the mouth of the Hudson River. To this day, the old river works steadily on, trying to change the saltness of the Atlantic by pouring in fresh water, and trying to widen its own mouth by washing away these islands, but the ocean is as salt as it was a thousand years ago and the islands are of about the same size that they ever were, so far as anybody can see. When they were put there, however, and for nobody knows how long afterward, there was not a boy or girl to have been found upon either of them, while nowadays there are swarms and swarms, from every nation this side of Asia, and they are of all sorts and sizes.
Some of the ways and doings of those boys and girls cannot be rightly told without first asking those who are to hear the story to take a look at a map of New York City and of the land and water around it. The map shows everything pretty clearly excepting the people and the houses they live in.
One of the boys belonging to this story might have required a sharp search to find him, on a particular morning, early in the spring. Not that he seemed to be hiding, or that he was alone. On the contrary, he stood nearly in the middle of a long line of boys. There were over four hundred of them, dressed all alike, in jackets and trousers of dark, thick gray cloth. Their caps and shoes were of the same pattern, all along the line.
Stationed at intervals, here and there, were boys no larger than the rest, in uniforms of dark, but bright blue cloth, with red stripes on their arms, and these were officers and this was a battalion, and it was marching briskly forward to the spirited music of half a dozen drums and several shrill fifes.
It was a kind of charge, across the level, gravelly parade-ground, and the boys were marching well, but right before them stood a high and frowning stone wall and it was of no use to charge against it. It could neither be broken through nor climbed and this one boy, in the middle of the line, was staring at it as if he hated it, while he marched. His feet kept time with the music and perfect pace with the feet of the other boys, but there was an angry look in his black eyes and a hot flush on his face, as if the wall had spoken to him, saying something to rouse his temper and make him answer back. What he did say, was, in a whisper that the next boy to him heard:
“I will!—See if I don’t!”
“What?” whispered the other boy.
“I’ll go with you, then. I can climb anything you can——”
“Halt!”
The clear-voiced command was at that instant heard, all along the line, and every boy stood still in his tracks.
They were a pretty well drilled battalion.
“About,—face!”
In an instant the long, double lines stood, with their backs to the wall and facing the parade-ground.
Away out in the middle of it stood the commander, the drill-master of that very remarkable battalion. He was a handsome, pleasant eyed man, of about twenty-five, dressed in a trim blue uniform, very like that of a United States Army officer. He was really a naval officer, detailed there by the Government to be practically the colonel of a regiment of pretty wild boys. He was there to teach them discipline, order, obedience, only a shade or so more strictly than if they had been cadets at West Point, or the Naval Academy at Annapolis.
Other commands had been given and obeyed, and the entire force was now marching around the broad enclosure by companies, six of them, and each company was composed of boys of nearly the same height.
The first company consisted of boys, the oldest of whom may have been eighteen, and the rear company was made up of little fellows as young as twelve, or even younger.
Very nearly all of them, white or colored, moved as if they liked the idea of being young soldiers, but they had not been recruited like other soldiers. Some of them were there because they had no other home to go to nor any other school to be taught in. Many, however, were there for other reasons. For instance, that tall young fellow in command of the foremost company. The captain, in bright, blue uniform who handled his men so well. He is here for highway robbery and it will be a long time before they let him out, although he is one of the best behaved boys in the House of Refuge. He is not here altogether as a punishment, however, nor are any of his companions, no matter what their fault was. This is not a place of judgment, but of help and hope, and, not long ago, a well-known literary man, after inspecting the whole institution, said to the Superintendent:
“Sir, this is one of the footprints of Christ on earth. It is an effort, in His name, to seek and to save that which was lost.”
“Thank God!” replied the officer. “About eighty-five out of every hundred do well and become good citizens. We keep track of them, long after they leave us.”
Nevertheless, the House of Refuge has to be a kind of prison. It is on Randall’s Island, separated from the city of New York, on Manhattan Island, by a swiftly running branch of the East River, which is not a river at all, but an arm of the sea, and its rapid current is made by the changing tides.
If, in one view, this is a prison, in another it is a great boarding school, with very remarkable appliances for the education and discipline of its pupils.
The entire enclosure, of which the parade-ground is a part, contains several acres. The stone wall, twenty feet high, in front of which the battalion halted, guards all of one of the sides of the enclosure and parts of two other sides.
The remaining lengths of those two are protected just as well by high buildings but on the southern side a tall chimney sticks up from a range of buildings that are not so high. They contain a steam engine, machinery and several kinds of workshops.
The drill was long and must have been tiresome, particularly to the boy who carried and pounded the big, bass drum and to the other boy who carried the flag. It all but blew him over, more than once, for there were sharp gusts of March wind, now and then. He looked relieved, very much so, when the battalion at last halted on the side nearest the green lawn and the buildings, and was ordered to “break ranks.”
That command dispersed the young soldiers and sent them off to fun of their own making, just as the order to assemble for drill had found them, scattered here and there. It had not been a regular “school day” and none of them had been in the vast schoolroom in the main building, busy with books. At the moment when the military instructor’s whistle had sounded, a brisk game of base ball had been going on in the ball ground, next to the parade-ground. On that itself, a number of knots of boys had been skylarking. Most of them had been indoors, however, and of these, some had been in the conservatory, learning to be gardeners; others in the printing shop; in the tailor-shop; in the shoe-shop; in the stocking factory; in the carpenter shop; in the rope and matting shop; and so on. It was not the season for farm work and none had been away outside, on the island farm learning to be farmers as they soon were to be, later in the spring. Moreover, the model ship, in front of the main building, toward the East River, had a deserted look, but it was waiting for the boys to come, crew after crew, and play sailors under the nautical instructor. In that way many of them were to get themselves ready to go to sea, really some day.
Jim, the boy who had hated the wall, had been in the printing shop, and he had walked out of it with a look on his face as if he did not care much for drill or for printing or for anything else. He was a tall, wiry looking boy, of not much over fourteen, and he might have seemed even good looking if he had not been so downcast. That was hardly the right word for it, either, for right along with what some people might have mistaken for sullenness was another look that was full of the most determined pluck. It had stuck to his face during drill-time and had grown stronger when he stared at the wall. It was there now, as he walked along with the other boys, toward the entrance of the shop buildings.
“I don’t belong here!” came out in another whisper, that nobody heard. “I never did it! I never did it! I’ve been here long enough! I won’t stay any longer. I’m going to climb that wall, somehow. I’m going to be free and go where I choose!”
That was it. He was struggling with a sense of injustice, in some way done him, and it was stirred up to unusual bitterness by a longing for freedom. It was as natural as breathing to hate to be shut in and to hate the wall and to study how it could be climbed over, and to dream of all the wonderful things beyond it.
“Jim!” said a boy of his own size who was walking with him. “You can’t do it!—You can’t even get a chance to try.—Then, if you did get out, there’s the East River to cross and we never could swim it. What’s more, if we got to New York, we’d be known by our clothes and the cops would catch us and send us back. It’s no use!”
“I will, though,” said Jim. “You see if I don’t. I don’t belong here!”
And then he added, in his hot and angry thoughts, but not aloud:
“I’ve been here a whole year and I ought not to have been sent here. I didn’t do it!—I never stole a cent of that money,—I don’t care what they say.—When I get out, though, I won’t go back to uncle John’s house. He’s as hard as flint. Aunt Betty isn’t, though. I’d like to see her. She tried to keep me from being sent here.”