'More fool than rogue.''He will be sorry when he mounts the wheel.'
These and such like remarks were handed round concerning me.An hour passed by.An inspector enters,and announces the receipt of a telegram.'It is all right.You can put him down.'And turning to me,he said,'They will send for you on Monday,'and then I passed into the inner ward,and a cell.The door closed with a harsh,grating clang,and I was left to face the most clamorous accuser of all--my own interior self'
"Monday morning,the door opened,and a complacent detective stood before me.Who can tell the feeling as the handcuffs closed round my wrists,and we started for town.As again the charge was entered,and the passing of another night in the cell;then the morning of the day arrived.The gruff,harsh 'Come on'of the gaoler roused me,and the next moment I found myself in the prison van,gazing through the crevices of the floor,watching the stones flying as it were from beneath our feet.Soon the court-house was reached,and hustled into a common cell,I found myself amongst a crowd of boys and men,all bound for the 'dock.'One by one the names are called,and the crowd is gradually thinning down,when the announcement of my own name fell on my startled ear,and I found myself stumbling up the stairs,and finding myself in daylight and the 'dock.'What a terrible ordeal it was.The ceremony was brief enough;'Have you anything to say?'
'Don't interrupt his Worship;prisoner!''Give over talking!'
'A month's hard labour.'This is about all I heard,or at any rate realised,until a vigorous push landed me into the presence of the officer who booked the sentence,and then off I went to gaol.
I need not linger over the formalities of the reception.A nightmare seemed to have settled upon me as I passed into the interior of the correctional.
"I resigned my name,and I seemed to die to myself for henceforth.
332B disclosed my identity to myself and others.
"Through all the weeks that followed I was like one in a dream.
Meal times,resting hours,as did every other thing,came with clock-like precision.At times I thought my mind had gone--so dull,so callous,so weary appeared the organs of the brain.The harsh orders of the gaolers;the droning of the chaplain in the chapel;the enquiries of the chief warder or the governor in their periodical visits,--all seemed so meaningless.
"As the day of my liberation drew near,the horrid conviction that circumstances would perhaps compel me to return to prison haunted me,and so helpless did I feel at the prospects that awaited me outside,that I dreaded release,which seemed but the facing of an unsympathetic world.The day arrived,and,strange as it may sound,it was with regret that I left my cell.It had become my home,and no home waited me outside.
"How utterly crushed I felt;feelings of companionship had gone out to my unfortunate fellow-prisoners,whom I had seen daily,but the sound of whose voices I had never heard,whilst outside friendships were dead,and companionships were for ever broken,and I felt as an outcast of society,with the mark of 'gaol bird'upon me,that I must cover my face,and stand aside and cry 'unclean.'Such were my feelings.
"The morning of discharge came,and I am once more on the streets.
My scanty means scarcely sufficient for two days'least needs.Could Ibrace myself to make another honest endeavour to start afresh?
Try,indeed,I did.I fell back upon my antecedents,and tried to cut the dark passage out of my life,but straight came the questions to me at each application for employment,'What have you been doing lately?'
'Where have you been living?'If I evaded the question it caused doubt;if I answered,the only answer I could give was 'in gaol,'and that settled my chances.
"What a comedy,after all,it appeared.I remember the last words of the chaplain before leaving the prison,cold and precise in their officialism:'Mind you never come back here again,young man.'And now,as though in response to my earnest effort to keep from going to prison,society,by its actions,cried out,'Go back to gaol.There are honest men enough to do our work without such as you.'"Imagine,if you can,my condition.At the end of a few days,black despair had wrapt itself around every faculty of mind and body.Then followed several days and nights with scarcely a bit of food or a resting-place.
I prowled the streets like a dog,with this difference,that the dog has the chance of helping himself,and I had not.I tried to forecast how long starvation's fingers would be in closing round the throat they already gripped.So indifferent was I alike to man or God,as I waited for the end."In this dire extremity the writer found his way to one of our Shelters,and there found God and friends and hope,and once more got his feet on to the ladder which leads upward from the black gulf of starvation to competence and character,and usefulness and heaven.
As he was then,however,there are hundreds--nay,thousands--now.
Who will give these men a helping hand?What is to be done with them?
Would it not be more merciful to kill them off at once instead of sternly crushing them out of all semblance of honest manhood?
Society recoils from such a short cut.Her virtuous scruples reminds me of the subterfuge by which English law evaded the veto on torture.
Torture was forbidden,but the custom of placing an obstinate witness under a press and slowly crushing him within a hairbreadth of death was legalised and practised.So it is to-day.When the criminal comes out of gaol the whole world is often but a press whose punishment is sharp and cruel indeed.Nor can the victim escape even if he opens his mouth and speaks.
