It Is Never Too Late to Mend Part 34

well-disposed. In ill health. Says he has been overworked The surgeon should be consulted and punished for inability. Shall about him. intercede with the governor for him.

Mem. Pale and hollow-eyed; pulse feeble.

Strutt, No. -- Sullen, impenitent Strutt.-- This poor man is in and brutal. Says it is no use his a state of deep depression. I learning texts, they won't stay much fear the want of light in his head. Discontented; wants and air and society is crus.h.i.+ng to go out in the yard. The best him. He is fifty years old.

one can hope for here is that the punishment, which he finds so Mem. Inquire whether separate severe, will deter him in future. confinement tries men harder Says he will never come here after a certain age. Talked again, but doubts whether he to him; told him stories with shall get out alive. Gave him all the animation I could.

some tracts. Stayed half an hour with him.

He brightened up a little, and asked me to come again. Nothing to be done here at present but amuse the poor soul.

Mem. Watch him jealously.

Jessup.-- The prisoner whose Jessup.-- Like Rock, professes term, owing to his excellent extravagant penitence, indifference conduct, is reduced from twelve to personal liberty, and love of months to nine months, so that Scripture. He overdoes it greatly.

he goes out next week. Having However, it appears he has gained discovered that the news had his point by it. He has induced not been conveyed to him, I asked Mr. Jones to plead for him in Mr. Hawes to let me be the bearer. mitigation of punishment, and When I told him, his only remark next week he leaves prison for was, with an air of regret: a little while.

"Then I shall not finish my Gospels!" I begged for an He asked me to hear some texts.

explanation, when he told I said, "No, my poor fellow; they me that for eight months he will do you as much good whether I had been committing the Gospels hear you them or not." By a light to heart, and that he was just that flashed into his eye I saw beginning St. John, which now he he comprehended the equivoque; should never finish. I said he but he suppressed his intelligence must finish it at home in the and answered piously, intervals of honest labor. His "That they will, your reverence."

countenance brightened, and he said he would.

A most cheering case, and one of the best proofs of the efficacy of the separate and silent system I have met with for some time. I fear I almost grudge you the possession of such an example.

Robinson-- A bad subject, Robinson.--This man wears a rebellious and savage; refuses to singular look of scorn as well speak. Time and the discipline as hatred, which, coupled with will probably break him of this; his repeated refusals to speak but I do not think he will ever to me, provoked me so that I make a good prisoner! felt strongly tempted to knock him down. How unworthy, to be provoked at anything a great sufferer can say or do; every solitary prisoner must surely be a great sufferer.

My judgment is quite at fault here. I know no more than a child what is this man's character, and the cause of his strange conduct.

Mem. Inquire his antecedents of the turnkeys. Oh, Lord, enlighten me, and give me wisdom for the great and deep and difficult task I have so boldly undertaken!

The next day the new chaplain met the surgeon in the jail and took him into Josephs' cell.

"He only wants a little rest and nouris.h.i.+ng food; he would be the better for a little amus.e.m.e.nt, but--" and the man of science shrugged his shoulders.

"Can you read?" said Mr. Lepel.

"Very little, sir."

"Let the schoolmaster come to him every day," suggested that experienced individual. He knew what separate confinement was. What bores a boy out of prison amuses him in it.

Hawes gave a cold consent. So poor little Josephs had a richer diet and rest from crank and pillory, and the schoolmaster spent half an hour every day teaching him; and above all, the new chaplain sat in his cell and told him stories that interested him--told him how very wicked some boys had been; what a many clever wicked things they had done and not been happy, then how they had repented and learned to pray to be good, and how by Divine help they had become good, and how some had gone to heaven soon after, and were now happy and pure as the angels; and others had stayed on earth and were good and honest and just men; not so happy as those others who were dead, but content (and that the wicked never are), and waiting G.o.d's pleasure to go away and be happy forever.

Josephs listened to the good chaplain's tales and conversation with wonderful interest, and his face always brightened when that gentleman came into his cell. The schoolmaster reported him not quick, but docile.

These were his halcyon days.

But Robinson remained a silent basilisk. The chaplain visited him every day, said one or two kind words to him and retired without receiving a word or a look of acknowledgment. One day, surprised and hurt by this continued obduracy, the chaplain retired with an audible sigh. Robinson heard it, and ground his teeth with satisfaction. Solitary, tortured and degraded, he had still found one whom he could annoy a little bit.

The governor and the new chaplain agreed charmingly; constant civilities pa.s.sed between them. The chaplain a.s.sisted Mr. Hawes to turn the phrases of his yearly report; and Mr. Hawes more than repaid him by consenting to his introducing various handicrafts into the prison--at his own expense, not the county's.

Parson must have got a longer purse than most of us, thought Hawes, and it increased his respect.

Hawes shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say, "You are just flinging your money into the dirt;" but the other, interpreting his look, said:

"I hope more good from this than from all the sermons I shall preach in your chapel."

Probably Mr. Hawes would not have been so indifferent had he known that this introduction of rational labor was intended as the first step toward undermining and expelling the sacred crank.

This clergyman had a secret horror and hatred of the crank. He called it a monster got by folly upon science to degrade labor below theft; for theft is immoral, but crank labor is immoral and idiotic, too, said he. The crank is a diabolical engine to keep thieves from ever being anything but thieves. He arrived at this conclusion by a chain of reasoning for which there is no room in a narrative already smothered in words.

This antipathy to the crank quite overpowered him. He had been now three weeks in the jail, and all that time only thrice in the labor-yard. It cut his understanding like a knife to see a man turn a handle for hours and nothing come of it.

However, one day, from a sense of duty, he forced himself into the labor-yard and walked wincing down the row.

"These are our schoolmen," said he. "As the schoolmen labored most intellectually and scientifically--practical result, nil, so these labor harder than other men--result, nil. This is literally 'beating the air.'

The ancients imagined tortures particularly trying to nature, that of Sisyphus to wit; everlasting labor embittered by everlasting nihilification. We have made Sisyphism vulgar. Here are fifteen Sisyphi.

Only the wise or ancients called this thing infernal torture; our old women call it salutary discipline."

He was running on in this style, heaping satire and sorrow upon the crank, when suddenly, at the mouth of one of the farthest cells, he stopped and threw up his hands with an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of astonishment and dismay. There was a man jammed in a strait waistcoat, pinned against the wall by a strap, and throttling in a huge collar; his face was white, his lips livid, and his eyes rolling despairingly. It was Thomas Robinson. This sight took away the chaplain's breath. When he recovered himself, "What is this?" said he to the turnkeys, sternly.

"Prisoner refractory at the crank," answered Hodges, doggedly.

The clergyman walked up to Robinson and examined the collar, the waistcoat and the strap. "Have you the governor's authority for this act?" said he firmly.

"Rule is if they won't do their work, the jacket."

"Have you the governor's authority for this particular act?"

"In a general way we have."

"In a word, you are not acting under his authority, and you know it.

Take the man down this moment."

The men hesitated.

"If you don't I shall."

The turnkeys, a little staggered by his firmness, began to confer in whispers. The chaplain, who was one of your decided men, could not wait the consultation. He sprang to Robinson's head and began to undo the collar. The others, seeing this decided move, came and helped him. The collar and the strap being loosed, the thief's body, ensacked as it was, fell helplessly forward. He had fainted during the discussion; in fact, his senses were shut when the chaplain first came to the cell. The chaplain caught him, and being a very strong man, saved him from a dangerous fall and seated him gently with his back to the wall. Water was sprinkled in his face. The chaplain went hastily to find the governor. He came to him pale and out of breath.

"I found the turnkeys outraging a prisoner."

"Indeed!" said the governor. It was a new idea to him that anything could be an outrage on a prisoner.

"They confessed they had not your authority, so I took upon me to undo their act."

"Humph!"

"I now leave the matter in your hands, sir."

"I will see into it, sir."

The chaplain left Mr. Hawes abruptly, for he was seized with a sudden languor and nausea; he went to his own house and there he was violently sick. Shaking off as quickly as he could this weakness, he went at once to Robinson's cell. He found him coiled up like a snake. He came hastily into the cell with the natural effusion of a man who had taken another man's part.