A LIFETIMER'S CELL

After Prison—What?

By
Maud Ballington Booth

New York Chicago Toronto

Fleming H. Revell Company

London and Edinburgh

Copyright, 1903, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
(September)

New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 63 Washington Street
Toronto: 27 Richmond Street, W
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 30 St. Mary Street

[DEDICATION]

Lovingly dedicated to our boys in prison by
their Little Mother
who
believes in them and looks with confidence
to a bright, victorious future
when they shall have lived down
the old, sad record, stormed the walls
of prejudice,
wrested just recognition from the skeptical
and
answered convincingly the question,
"can a convict be reformed?"

[Preface]

This message from my pen is not a work on criminology or penology. No gathering of statistics, nor comparative study of the works or theories of learned authorities on these subjects will be found within its pages. It is just a plea from the heart of one who knows them, for those who cannot voice to the world their own thoughts and feelings. We ask no sentimental sympathy or pity, no patronage or charity, but only understanding, justice, and fair play.

My point of view is that of the cell. All I know of this great sad problem that casts its shadow so much further than the high walls of prison I have learned from those for whom I work, and my great joy in every labor is the knowledge that "the boys" are with me. In speaking of them thus I do so in prison parlance; for just as Masons on the floor call each other "Brothers"; soldiers in camp "Comrades"; men in college "Fellows"; so we of the prison use the term "The Boys," and leave unspoken that hated word "Convict," which seems to vibrate with the sound of clanging chains and shuffling lock-step.

If I do not write of others, who, during the past century, have worked in prison reform, it is not that I have disregarded their efforts, but as this is a record of what I have personally seen and learned, space and time will not permit the recording of experiences which can doubtless be read elsewhere.

In sending forth these pages of personal experience I pray that they may stir the hearts of the free, the happy, and the fortunate throughout our dear country, that they, in their turn, may champion the cause of those who cannot fight their own battle, giving to them the practical help that they so sorely need.

[Contents]

[After Prison What?]

[I
GOLD IN THE MINE]

Long before the discovery of gold in Australasia, geologists had pronounced the strata auriferous. They had propounded to the world their theories and scientific conclusions on the subject. Those who read undoubtedly gave respectful credence to their interesting treatises because of the learning of the writers, and then as quickly forgot the facts that had not very strongly appealed to any personal interest. No one thought it worth while to sell out business, and leave home to risk or venture anything on the theories advanced. The gold lay there untouched until one day some shepherds from the bush came into Melbourne and displayed fragments of rock encrusted with glittering yellow particles which were found to be pure gold. After that people believed, for they had seen and to almost all the world "seeing is believing." The shepherds knew nothing of geology. They could not speak of the strata, but they had found and could show the gold, and in their footsteps tens of thousands followed in the great rush that opened up the mines and sent forth to the world the vast wealth that had lain hidden for ages.

Many who have faith in the hopefulness of all human nature have believed and told the world of their belief in the possible reformation of criminals. They have argued that every soul is precious in the eyes of the great Father in heaven, and that beneath the stain and dross of crime and sin must always be some grain of gold worth redeeming. Their great difficulty is to convince those who are hopeless as to human nature and who, seeing very vividly the evil, have not the discernment to see beneath it any possible good.

To the world at large a State Prison has been looked upon as an abode of the utterly evil, depraved and good-for-nothing. In the slums are the unfortunate victims of drink, the helpless poor and straying ones who can still be sought and saved, but in the prisons are those whose lives are spoiled and ruined beyond repair. Many of course give the subject no thought and their prejudices are the result of utter ignorance. Others form their conceptions from the sensational accounts of notorious criminals whose deeds have been exploited in the press. Some, perhaps, base their unfavorable judgment on the theories advanced against the possibility of reforming the criminal, and speak as if our prisons were full of perverted degenerates, at the mention of whom it is proper to shudder and about whom one can speak as of some species of human animal quite alien to the common thoughts, feelings, instincts and possibilities which are possessed by denizens of the outside world. How truly may it be said that prejudice builds a higher, thicker wall around our prisoners than those of brick and stone within which the law has placed them. Naturally in my extensive travels all over this country and my personal contact with people of every description, I have had ample opportunity to gauge the thought and feeling of the world towards those in whom I am so deeply interested, and, though during the last few years I have seen with joy a very marked change of feeling, there is yet much gross miscomprehension of the whole subject.

Those of us who have become familiar with the question on the inside of the walls have found a veritable gold mine of possibility. We realize fully however that it is only when they see this gold for themselves that the world will lay aside its doubting for faith in the future of these men and, casting to the wind prejudice, will stretch out a friendly hand of good-will to those who come forth from the testing furnace.

We realized in the early years of its history that such a work as the one of which I write could only be seen and appreciated by the world at large in the years of the future when our "boys" had come back into liberty and had had time to prove the genuineness of their purpose. Already this day has dawned, and all over the country the forerunners of the thousands still to come are proving that the work is no experiment, though naturally many have neither seen them nor looked into the lives of those still in prison. It is hard to make the wholly uninformed concede that any good thing can come from such a place. Many a time when talking to friends after some drawing-room gathering, at a dinner table or in the cars, they will say with a look of almost compassion, "But are you not afraid to talk with these men? Is it not very dreadful to have to come into contact with them?" I try to explain that they are my friends, that the respect, courtesy and attention I receive from them could not be excelled in any circle of society; but the raised eyebrows and incredulous looks tell plainly that I have not answered the question, simply because to their minds all criminals are of the same stamp as Tracy, the James brothers and Czolgosz. They cannot conceive of men of education, refinement or gentlemanly instincts in prison.

Constantly I am asked, "But how can you talk to these men; what can you say; how do you touch or appeal to such an audience?" I answer, "Precisely as I should to any lecture audience or from the pulpit of any fashionable church." I am talking, not to the criminal with the theft of a pocketbook or with manslaughter, burglary or murder on his record but to the man, to the soul, the heart. It is just here that a grave error could be made. If we always associate the prisoner with his crime, with the stripes, the cell, the surroundings, we get wofully far away from him and even find ourselves beyond the point where we can reach him at all. The crime was one incident of his life, his imprisonment is but the fact of to-day. Before he was a prisoner he was a man, and in the future world he will be simply a man, so why not talk to him and think of him as a man to-day. A lady was recently being shown over a penal institution (which will remain nameless save to say that it was not a state prison), and the officer who was explaining the system took her from room to room that she might understand their régime. He showed off company after company as a professor might exhibit specimens in the different classes of zoology, talking of them loudly in their hearing. At last coming to one of the lower grades he said, "You will note the inferior intelligence of these men, their poorer development. These are much lower in mental and moral capacity and there is very little hope for them. They are many of them very degraded and seem devoid of moral instinct." Certain malformed heads and many poorly nourished bodies were pointed out and all this while these classified animals stood listening. How should we like such an experience? What thoughts passed through those minds, what fierce hate, what hopeless despair may not have swept over them as they listened to the summing up of their case?

Prison communities come from no uncivilized island where they form a different species of the human family nor are they drawn from one section of the population confined to the slums. They are from the great, wide world at large. Some have had homes of ease and comfort and have been educated in our finest colleges and schools. Society gives its quota, so does the great world of the common people, while yet others come from homes of poverty and some from no homes at all. There are the educated and the ignorant, the rich and the poor, the industrious and the idle, the brilliant and the poorly endowed. In fact our audiences in Prison are much like the audiences that we meet in the free world, save that their hearts are sore and sensitive and that that great shadow of suffering, the awful loss of liberty, has brought anguish, despair and shame to quicken every feeling. Nowhere have I found audiences more attentive, earnest and intelligent than in prison and I find all who have had any experience will compare them most favorably with those of the outside. One thing is very evident—superficiality, seeming and artificiality have been swept away by the close and bitter contact with life, hence the real man is easier to recognize and reach. They in their turn are quick to read and judge the speaker behind the subject, the faith behind the doctrine.

Another gross misconception is the belief that all men in prison are dishonest. People forget how many and devious are the causes for which men can be imprisoned. Sometimes when I have asked a business man to employ one of our "boys" the answer has been, "I am in sympathy with your work and pity these poor fellows, but in my business I dare not do it as there would be opportunities to steal and it would not be right to those whose interests I must protect." This has shown me how constantly the thought of theft and robbery is associated with all who come from prison. There are many within the walls who have never misappropriated a cent. This does not mean they are guiltless, for their crime may have very justly brought them to conviction but there is no reason to imagine that because of that punishment they must be ranked as dishonest.

Then there are those within prison walls who, though evil well nigh all their lives, claim our sincerest pity. They may have done desperate deeds, may perhaps be ranked as habitual criminals and may represent to-day the most hardened and determined offenders and yet in strict justice they should not be spoken of with harsh condemnation, before the sad pages of their lives have been read. The judge and jury take cognizance only of the offense; the police and prison record note the list of charges and the number of returns to prison but those of us who seek to know the man beneath the criminal have a right to go back and ask ourselves, "What chance did this man have to do right, to act and to be as we are?" The answer sometimes is a pathetic revelation of a loveless babyhood and childhood where blows and curses took the place of kiss and caress; a youth where revolt against society in an embittered heart made it easy to develop every evil tendency and to follow the lead of those in the under-world who proved the only possible friends and associates.

Many, many letters have I received from just this class of prisoner. I remember especially one that spoke of such a history. It was written just after my first visit to Joliet State Prison and was in the natural unrestrained language of one who had never learned the art of deftly turning sentences. He began with an apology for bad spelling and poor writing in which he explained that it was the first letter he had attempted to write in seven years, for he had no one in the world who cared whether he lived or died. Then he thanked me for what I had said to them Sunday, adding, "You said you loved us. Nobody ever said that to me before in my whole life and I hardly know what the word means. You spoke of home. The nearest approach to it I ever had was my time in the kitchen of one of the state prisons where the officer was very kind to me." Briefly this was his story. He was born in a poorhouse in Ireland and never knew father or mother and received in childhood no touch of love or sympathy. When still very young he was sent out to work and soon found evil companionship and was led into trouble. He came out to this country only to continue on the same path which was in fact the only path he had ever known. It naturally led him to state prison and his whole life here has been spent within the walls except for the few short holidays in the slums between the day of his discharge and the next arrest. All through the letter I could see that he had never dreamed there was another life for him. He confessed he had never tried to be good, had had no inducement or chance to be so. Very pathetic to me was the closing sentence in which he said, "Now that I know somebody cares, I will try." Let me diverge from my point enough to add that he made a success of the effort and became an earnest member of our League. On his discharge from prison he had a happy experience at our Home and from there launched out into a new life. He soon proved himself a good workman and in time became the possessor of a happy little home of his own and has for several years been a useful member of society.

I have mentioned but one but I could fill a volume with such stories. I do not think that the happy and fortunate in this life need look upon it as foolish sentimentality to pity the prisoners. Surely our pity is no more misspent upon them than upon the heathen for they too have never seen the light that they might follow it.

A young man came not long since to our Home. He was a poorly developed, broken-spirited, frightened looking boy. His parents died when he and his brothers and sisters were very young. He was brought up in a juvenile asylum, bound out to people who were hard on him, ran away and herded with criminals. He never knew home, love, sympathy or friendship. Our Home was the first true home he had ever known. It took weeks to work a change in the physical, mental and moral attitude of the man but when the change commenced it was wonderful to notice how he developed. Naturally he became devotedly attached to the one bright happy spot in a very sad and gloomy life. When we sent him out to his first position which was some way from the Home, he broke down and sobbed like a child whose vacation is over and he was so utterly homesick that those who had offered him employment had to return him to us so that we could place him somewhere nearer the Home, for, as they wrote, they feared that his homesickness was incurable.

Again wholesale condemnation should be withheld by the thought that there are some innocent men within prison walls. It is natural that justice should sometimes miscarry and yet alas, the stigma and brand remain with the man even after his innocence has been proved. A man was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder and served sixteen and a half years. Most of the evidence had been purely circumstantial and he was convicted mainly on the testimony of one witness. He was only saved from the gallows by the earnest efforts of those who had known of his previous good character. Last winter the woman who had borne witness against him came to what she believed to be her deathbed and sending for the priest she confessed that she had committed perjury. The matter being brought to the Governor, the man was at once liberated. To the world into which he passed nervous, unmanned and broken, he will always be an "ex-convict."

At the present time I know a man who has served nine years and is still in prison where he has been visited by the boy whom he was supposed to have murdered. His "victim," a mere child, disappeared and this man, a tramp who was overtaken in the forest by a search party was held responsible. Some years after his conviction to state prison, the boy returned from what proved to have been a runaway adventure, alive and well. It is sometimes very hard work to make the wheels of justice turn backward for those once confined within prison walls so the man who was poor and friendless is in prison still.

A young German who was a member of the League told me one day his story, not with a plea that I should help him for my "boys" know that my mission is not to get them out of prison, and I found he was serving an eight years' sentence for an offense of which at the time of his conviction he was utterly ignorant. When arrested he could speak no English and understood absolutely nothing of his trial. He had no friends and could make no appeal and when he found himself within the prison walls, he asked to be enlightened as to what he was supposed to have done. He was a very bright fellow, a skilled workman and when he had mastered the language, he very much impressed all who knew him with his honest straightforwardness. I brought the matter to the notice of the Governor who on investigation was perfectly satisfied with the truth of the story and sent the innocent man home to me after he had served some six years in prison. We found for him a good position and he became a trusted and well-paid employee. In the first years of his freedom he was able to lay by money with which he later bought a farm. He was married to an estimable young woman and is now living a thoroughly honorable life.

These instances are cited, not with the idea of proving that injustice has been done, but merely to show that to look with horror and wholesale condemnation at this great prison family is unfair and that one may find much good metal worthy of redemption, even from the standpoint of those who despair of the man who has sinned and fallen.

In contrast to some quoted comes the story of a young man who was welcomed to the same Home in Illinois after a term in Joliet. He sat rather silent at the dinner table where the newcomers had gathered around the white cloth covered with its pretty table ware and substantial fare. His companions thought he was dispirited and afterwards finding him alone in a corner of one of the parlors, one of the older inmates of the Home asked him what was the matter. "Had he had bad news?" "Oh no," he answered, "it is not that. It is this Home. Just think of the contrast! When I fell and was sent to prison I thought I had forever made myself an outcast. For years I have sat in a cell, dressed in the stripes; I have drunk my coffee and water from a tin cup and eaten my food from a tin plate. When I sat down at that table to-night, I was reminded of home and of the past and I seemed to see the possibility of some day regaining what I had lost." He was not a poor stray of the city streets but the son of a Christian home. His father was an Episcopal clergyman and his environment had been one of comfort and refinement until he had yielded to evil and started on a downward course.

One of those whose return to rectitude I watched with deep interest had been a professor of mathematics. Another came from a family with whom I came in touch through correspondence, and found them honorable members of one of the courts of Europe, and many represent homes in this country very far removed from the ignorance and neglect of the slums.

It should also be remembered that there is in many of our prisons a large foreign element of the illiterate, ignorant and helpless who have drifted to our country and easily joined the ranks of the lawless if indeed they have not belonged to them in their own native land. Some of these however are in prison more through ignorance than criminal intent.

When we come to inquire into the cause of imprisonment, we are constantly impressed with one fact, which cannot be denied, that the curse of drunkenness has proved directly or indirectly the ruin of between eighty and ninety per cent. of all those in prison. Many a blow has been struck, many a deed committed, many a robbery perpetrated by those so under the influence of this evil spirit that when they have come to their senses in the prison cell they have asked, "Where am I, what have I done?" and have literally had no memory of the deed that brought them there. It would not of course be in accordance with common sense or justice to say that they were therefore not guilty. They are guilty; they do deserve punishment but have we not the right to believe that, if delivered from this evil habit, they might be found to be trustworthy and true-hearted men?

My experience gained by close contact with the men in our prisons during the last seven years has convinced me that but a small percentage of the eighty-four thousand now within the walls should be called criminals at heart. In this statement I have been endorsed by wardens who have had a far longer and more intimate experience and who can speak from the standpoint of those whose duty it is to watch very closely the actions, character and tendencies of the men under their charge. This has to do with the manner of men in prison, the birth, position, etc., of those who form the prison population, but what of the hearts beneath the surface? No one could go into prison with hope of success who did not possess faith in the redemptibility of every soul, however far from the light it may have wandered. There is naturally, much to discourage. Many of the men are utterly hopeless about themselves; some are hard and bitter; others skeptical, liking to boast, as do crowds on the outside, of their indifference and carelessness. Yet for those who will be patient; who will look deeper, there are pearls beneath the turbulent waters; gold in the darkest corners of the mine and diamonds glittering amid the clay.

I believe that in every human heart however hardened or hopeless the exterior, there is some tender spot if one know rightly how to touch it; some chord of sweetness that can be made to vibrate to the very harmony of heaven amid all the jangling discords of life; some little spark that by the breath of inspiration may be fanned into a flame and kindle the purifying fire. Amid these whom many would give up as beyond reach and unworthy of effort, I have found generosity, unselfishness, sympathy, patience and cheerfulness that would often teach people in happier circumstances a striking lesson. How greatly this adds to the hopefulness and courage of those who have gone forth into this field can readily be conceived. Many, many instances could I cite but I will quote one case of kindness which came under my personal observation. A young man was serving a twenty years' term in Sing Sing. The long sentence was nearing its close. Only a year more stood between him and liberty. The old mother over seventy years of age, who had stood by her boy all through these dreary years was very sick and reduced to direst poverty. Her husband had died and after years of hard toil she had reached the point where sickness and weakness made money earning impossible, and eviction was imminent. In this hour of distress she appealed to her boy for help. He was able to make a little money by over-time work. It was very little, only a cent and a half a day or five dollars in a whole year. He found on referring to the Warden that he had already sent all that he possessed to his mother. The thought of her need and possible death from want drove him nearly to distraction and yet he felt himself utterly powerless to help her. In the same prison was another man also serving twenty years. He was an old timer, had served several terms before and this one was a sentence he would probably never have received had it not been for his past record. When he learned of his fellow-prisoner's anxiety, he took all his own earnings, twenty dollars which represented the hard toil of four years and sent them gladly to the old mother though it meant depriving himself of all the extra little comforts he might have purchased. Though for later chapters I reserve the after lives of my "boys" I must give the sequel of this story. Both men came home to us. They became earnest Christians and have good positions to-day where they have proved themselves absolutely worthy of our confidence. They are earning good wages, have won the confidence of their employers and the old mother has been well provided for.

[II
"REMEMBER ME"]

As a little child I spent many a happy season in the home of my dear aunt Miss Charlesworth, the authoress of "Ministering Children." The pretty tree-shaded garden of Nutfield Cottage was bordered on one side by the quiet village churchyard and a little private gate opened on the path that led through it to the garden of Nutfield Court, where our special playmates lived. By daylight one could run blithely enough between the old quaint head-stones, many of them moss-covered, while other mounds were bright with masses of blossom, when the breeze was playing in the trees, the lark was sending forth its carol of praise from the blue sky above or the quaint old ivy-covered tower of the church might send forth its glad peal of chimes. There was so much of life and beauty that children could run back and forth over the grassy path with no thought of the death that lay still and solemn beneath the smiling flowers and whispering grasses. But it was a different thing entirely, if one walked back after nightfall, with senses alert for every sound and heart beating fast with unknown terrors. The rustle of a bird in the ivy; the creaking of a dead branch; the flitting of a bat's dark wing or the play of moonbeam and shadow were things that made the churchyard a place to be avoided for now the memory was vivid that this was the village of the dead. In those childish days death held for me a great horror. The thought connected with it, that which made me feel most desolate, was the fact that when one was dead, laid away deep in the earth and left alone in some dark place beneath the tree shadows; to be covered in by the snow, or swept over by howling winds or dismal rains, the world would still go on the same as ever. For others, bright home lights would gleam, laughter and fun, companionship and love, life with all it means would still exist, while the dead would lie forgotten and alone.

I have thought of these things and seen once more the vivid picture and felt the thrill of those childish fears as I have entered into sympathy with "the boys" in prison. Prison to many is a living death. They feel that they have dropped out of life. The rendering of the judge's sentence was the "dust to dust" of their burial service; the rhythm of the wheels that bore them away to prison sang the requiem of their despair and desolation, and when the heavy iron door clanged to behind them, it was like the falling of the sod upon their grave. Henceforth they were not of the world. In it they were dead and forgotten and this bitterness was harder to bear when they remembered that outside amid the old scenes, the busy, happy rush of life would go on just as blithely despite their sorrow. For others the home light still gleamed; the sunshine, the joy, the love of life which was still dear to them was continuing in all its fullness but beyond their reach. Forgotten! There is more bitterness and tragedy in that one word than volumes could describe. It holds a record of broken hearts and embittered souls that blots the star of hope out of many a sky. "What a man sows he must reap. They deserved it for they have sinned, they have broken the law and it is only maudlin sentiment to pity and sympathize with them," is a sentiment I have often heard expressed. From the purely worldly point of view this may be so, among those who feel in no sense their brother's keeper, and believe that the one who has fallen has put himself forever without the pale of human sympathy. The whole question can be solved by merely quoting the old saying, "They have made their own bed, they must lie upon it." To Christians, however, this is impossible. No, I will say more. To any who have an interest in their fellow-men and a loyal love for their country, the grave responsibility towards this vast prison population must loom up as a potential fact. Yet it has been a very much forgotten subject.

"Remember me!" From the long ago past this cry rings out to-day. How vividly we can call up the scene before us, when lips white and parched with death and anguish first spoke them in the labored breath that was hurrying a guilt-laden soul into the dark unknown hereafter. We hear also the answer spoken in like mortal agony by the martyred One at his side. With what light it must have come into his darkness as peace in the storm and very life to that dying one, "This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." The Christ was perfectly aware of the past. There is no intimation in the story that the man was suffering wrongfully but the answer was not, "You've no one to blame but yourself;" "once a thief always a thief." The deed that had brought him to death, the sin that had ruined his life was forgiven, the soul that cried for help, that believed in the power of the dying Christ beside him was recognized by the world's Saviour. He was called and welcomed to go into the mystery of eternal life side by side with his Lord. That same cry goes up to-day from every cell in our dear Christian land, from those who represent to-day that outcast of Calvary, "Remember me!" To whom should it appeal more strongly than to the followers and representatives of that same Christ, who would have His glad message of hope sent clearly and convincingly, echoing and re-echoing into every dark and lonely cell where it is so sorely needed. Has this been done? Do the Christian people and philanthropists of our land feel their responsibility to these men? Compare this corner of God's vineyard with many others and let us ask ourselves whether it has had its share of prominence in pulpit and press as a plea to efforts of Christian charity. I fear not, and yet in the scene of the last judgment as well as the one already quoted, we are reminded that this is one of the Christ's requirements of those, who would follow in His footsteps.

In response to those words, "Go ye into all the world," this country has spent its millions on foreign missions and sent forth thousands of consecrated men and women in willing exile. The Christ gathered little children into His arms and blessed them, and the Church following the divine example can show to-day its splendid Sunday-school work, children's hospitals, orphanages, nurseries, kindergartens and many other loving, saving missions to the little ones. He healed the sick, and His followers have poured out their wealth in these days to give hospitals to the poor, but He is also "in prison" and have we in like manner visited Him there? I write thus and I ask these questions because I have seen the great need so vividly that I have been impelled to come back from the prison world to testify that the criminal problem is what it is to-day because it has been neglected. If the responsibility for those in prison was realized by the Christian world as clearly as it has realized the need of the heathen, the whole situation would in ten or twenty years be revolutionized. It has been an overlooked and in a great measure an untilled field. Repeatedly was I told when I contemplated making it my life mission, that my efforts would be useless, nothing lasting could be accomplished, and that these men were beyond hope, but it has always seemed to me that such an argument merely furnished a greater reason for determined effort. I would not have any misconstrue my statement and report me as saying that this work was wholly neglected until our work began. I speak in the wide sense and am comparing this field with other fields of Christian activity and in what I say, I believe all who have worked in prisons will agree with me. There have been of course some workers, loving, loyal souls who have toiled away unknown and unrecognized so far as the world is concerned, but they are the few whose devotion only emphasizes the fact that this field has been abandoned by the forces that should long since have conquered it. England in years gone by had her Elizabeth Fry and John Howard. They did a lasting work, but should not their example have been followed by tens of thousands in that land? Her jails are still full of prisoners and one of her oldest wardens has declared with emphasis, after an experience of thirty-five years, that he has known only two cases of reformation in all that period. In this country I could name other devoted workers. I would not slight the consecrated toil of Chaplain Barnes who for twenty-eight years has striven with the devotion of a saint for the welfare of "the boys" in Massachusetts, or of Mrs. Courtland De Peyster Field who has for twenty years led a Bible class in Sing Sing. There have been earnest workers of the Society of Friends who have done valuable service in Pennsylvania, and in Iowa there are Sunday-school teachers who have had a record of over twenty years of teaching in the prison. But the call has been unheeded by the many who are equally responsible with the few who have heard and responded. From every pulpit, in every Sunday-school, through the pages of the religious press, the need of the heathen is constantly kept before the people and so impressed that the youngest child knows all about it. What do the children in our Sunday-schools or the congregations gathered in our churches know of the need behind prison walls? Where has any large offering ever been taken for this cause? Who has ever thought of leaving a generous legacy for the redemption of these men? I do not for a moment grudge what has been given to missions. I merely want to bring to remembrance these others who have been overlooked, this occasion for help at our very door, a need which may be unlovely and have nothing about it of the glamour of romance which distance lends to a cause, but which all the same concerns human souls divinely loved and groping in great darkness.

Those who have entered it can report that here is a glorious opportunity. This field is indeed white to the harvest and there is no reason why mighty results should not be gathered where people have been inclined to look only for disappointment and failure.

In seeking for the cause of all this general indifference, I can only conclude that the fact that these men have been wrong-doers and are suffering in consequence, has robbed them of sympathy. If I were pleading for the abolition of prisons, the lightening of punishment or were making sentimental excuses for transgressors, I could understand that the appeal might awaken no interest, for it would appear to be a contradiction to justice. What we do advocate is the saving of these derelicts, that while in prison and on their discharge, help be given them in a practical way so as to prevent their relapse into crime. From the purely worldly standpoint he who has sinned is unworthy of help and therefore is not an object of pity or sympathy. From the Christian side of the question he is more to be pitied and the more earnestly to be sought after. Did not the Good Shepherd say He would leave the ninety and nine to seek for the one straying sheep? Surely his need of mercy is far greater with the guilt of sin on his conscience, its haunting memory robbing him of confidence in himself or faith in efforts at reformation.

How much the attitude of the world towards the prisoner and its prevalent opinion have effected the men can hardly be imagined by an outsider. Hope, encouragement and confidence mean everything to any man in life's struggle. Take only as an illustration, the attitude of the doctor at the sick bed. He knows that his cheering words to the patient mean almost as much as his remedies, and were he to be forever reminding the sufferer of each unfavorable symptom and shaking his head disconsolately over the prognosis with an admission that it was little or no use to try and save him, the result would be a depression on the part of the patient which might even in many cases prove fatal. In just this way have the morally weak and sick been too often robbed of the hope and courage that might have meant ambition and effort in the right and saving direction.

A learned writer some years since published in one of our scientific papers a treatise concerning criminals, in which he proved from his own mental conclusions that they could not be reformed. I did not read the paper but I saw it mentioned in reviews and deplored the fact that science should be prostituted to so demoralizing a use. On the following Christmas day I planned to spend my time visiting the cells in Sing Sing and talking individually to as many of the men as possible, for that is a day full of home memories and the realization of loneliness is even more keen and bitter than usual. To my surprise I was met at cell after cell with the question, "Have you read, Little Mother, what Professor ---- said about us?" and in some instances by educated and skeptical men, it was used as an argument against the duty of trying to do better. If those who toll the bell of doom for these poor souls in bondage, fully realized how the damning tones echo and reecho in disheartening vibration from prison to prison, from cell to cell, they might understand that it is almost criminal to break the bruised reed and quench the smoking flax. What should we think of the physician who should calmly and cold-bloodedly put out the spark of life in a patient where though his theories contradicted the likelihood of recovery, some other doctor might save life in the eleventh hour?

That there is a terrible influence in heredity, no one can deny. The drunkard or impure liver leaves the taint of evil appetite to be struggled against by the children to whom he gave life, but to use this as an argument against the possibility of reforming certain men is a contradiction of the teachings of Christ. His message of hope is to every man; His offer of strength and power to the most needy and unfortunate as well as to those in whom one would naturally look for godly aspirations. We have seen enough in our work to understand that many of those who have had the worst environment to contend with, and have been handicapped by miserable parentage have yet been able to accept and respond to the highest teaching, and have made a thorough success of earnest Christian living. I was visiting Sing Sing on one occasion when I had planned for a long list of interviews. As was my custom I presented the list to the Warden, who was deeply in sympathy with our work, and we went over it together that he might give me information that would prove useful in meeting the wants of different men. Coming to one name upon the list, he paused and asked me if I knew the man. I told him that I knew him merely as one who had written me a few lines requesting an interview. "Well," he said, "I will tell you his reputation. We look upon him as the worst and most treacherous man in this prison. He is an habitual criminal, has probably been a criminal all his life, has had several terms in prison and has been constantly punished for insubordination. Three times he has stabbed officers and fellow-prisoners, he has been in plots to escape and twice attempted to burn down the prisons he was in. He has been a morphine or opium fiend, and now he is being kept in 'solitary' because he cannot be trusted with the other men." I shall never forget my interview with this man. It was towards evening of a very busy day for I had between sixty and seventy private interviews between the opening and closing of the prison day. I was sitting in the chapel close to one of the barred windows that looked over the Hudson. The sun was setting and the river gleamed like burnished gold while great shafts of glory were flung upwards from the hills tinting the clouds with crimson and amber. Looking back from the brilliant scene without I glanced down upon my papers scattered upon the little table at which I was seated. There I saw also the streaks of yellow light but between each sunbeam lay the heavy shadow of a bar. I sat there thinking how like the lives of our "boys" was that contrast. In every life there was that heavy shadow blotting, discouraging, darkening the whole present and future, and then turning from the sad side, I thanked God that there was a sunlight that could force its way even into the darkest gloom of prison life, the sunshine of God's own love and mercy, His pardon and His presence. I suppose I had allowed myself to dream a little for I was startled when I heard a shuffling footstep near me. I had not noticed that the officer who stood outside the door had ushered in my next visitor. Looking up I saw a man who might have been taken as a very type of the hopeless habitual criminal. His walk, his attitude, the furtive, distrustful look in his eyes, the nervous twitching of hand and lip and muscles told of one who had been hunted and caged. As he stood there with his dark eyes fixed searchingly on my face I saw how completely he had become a nervous wreck and how he had lost his faith not only in himself but in mankind. I rose to say a few words of welcome, drew up his chair near the table and yet he said never a word. I noticed how the hand that he had laid on the table to steady it shook and how the poor face so white with prison pallor quivered with nervousness. I told him again how glad I was to see him and that he had done quite right in sending for me but it was not until some moments later that he broke the silence and then with the abrupt question, "Do you know who I am?" I was going to give him his name as I knew it, but before I could speak he leaned forward and in the bitterest accents said, "I will tell you. I am the worst and most treacherous man in this prison." Then followed in short, concise words, the story of the efforts to escape, the insubordination, the attempts at incendiary outrage. Pointing to the chains that hung upon the pillar in the chapel, he said, "I have been chained up there. I have been put in the dark cells. I have been punished over and over again but it has not any of it done me any good. Would you like to know what the magistrate who last sentenced me said about me? He said after passing sentence, 'Take him away and lock him up like a brute beast for that is all he is.'" Then with indescribable pathos he turned and said, "Do you think there is any hope for me?" I was at once upon ground where I could speak without hesitation, and I told him simply that if he was through with an evil life, if he was tired of wrong-doing and was thoroughly determined to do right there was a love that could forgive him and a power that could help and keep him in the future. When at last we knelt together, there in the glory of the setting sun, I prayed that the dear Lord, who could bring light into our darkness, might dispel the thick clouds that had shut in this soul from hope, and bring to him the revelation that would change his life. There were tears in the dark eyes as we parted, and taking my hand in his he said, "I will try, Little Mother." He did try, and more than that he triumphed. At first it was a stern battle of an awakened will and conscience fighting against desperate odds. The feeling that a friend was watching and waiting anxiously for good reports proved undoubtedly an incentive. Just about this time I was taken dangerously ill and had to go to the hospital. The news was received with the deepest concern within the prison walls and many men who had never prayed in their lives were found on their knees night after night asking God to spare my life. A letter from this "boy" reached my secretary in which he said, "I am trying very hard to be good these days because it says that the prayers of the righteous avail much and I do want my prayers to help in making the Little Mother well." It was not the highest motive for being good but it was the best that had thus far ever inspired this life and it proved the stepping-stone to better things. It was not long before he sought and found Christ as his Saviour and became an earnest Christian. When he left the prison I do not believe there was an officer who thought it would be possible for him ever to make an honest living. That was over five years ago. He is to-day a prosperous and happy man. He has become by hard work and faithfulness assistant-superintendent in a large industry in which he is employed. He has a comfortably furnished and happy home, and is so changed in face and personal appearance that I do not believe any of his old companions could recognize him. Some three years ago a detective, who had several times arrested him, talked with him sometime without for a moment suspecting it was the same man. So truly when the heart is transformed do the face and manner reflect the change. I quote from his last letter to me written after our seventh anniversary gathering:

"My dear Little Mother: I write to let you know I enjoyed the seventh anniversary celebration very much. How soon a man forgets the years of misery in the days of happiness. My wife was quite disappointed when I told her of the mistake I had made in leaving her in New York. How pleased she would have been to have met you on such a great occasion. The 'boys' and their families all seemed so happy and indeed it was a sight worth seeing. I have a deep feeling in my heart for Hope Hall 'boys' and have often taken one into my home for a few days while he was out of work. Some day I am going to own my own home and realize what has been my day-dream. Do you remember that it was your confidence in telling the public that you would give them 'flesh and blood facts' that made me resolve to be one of the 'facts.' Well, I have fought the fight and I have had a hard, even cruelly bitter struggle for the first two years. How much sweeter is the victory! I would not have it different. God has been very good to us and we can see His hand in the working of our prosperity. When I think of those two years, the struggles and trials, the hungry days and sleepless nights, it only gives me and mine more zest in the enjoyment of the God-given prosperity we have now. 'All things work together for good.' You know I had to learn a trade since I left prison and that it was B—— G—— (one of our 'boys' who had been a notorious burglar but has made a success of an honest life) who taught me the fundamental principles of this trade, at which I am now earning a living that only good mechanics can enjoy. Indeed no man can prosper unless he hustles and pushes himself ahead, for business people these days are carrying no dead wood on their pay rolls. Thank you for the very happy day, etc."

In this case there was certainly nothing in the past to bring in a hopeful aspect. His environment had been of the worst, so had been his parentage and rearing. From childhood his feet had been trained to tread in the wrong path and, as he once said to my dear co-worker, Mrs. E. A. McAlpin, he did not believe in heaven or hell, God or the devil.

Those who have been looked upon by all as the most hopeless are the old timers in State Prison. Speaking one day in a court-room in New York on behalf of a man to whom I wanted the Judge to give a chance and the benefit of doubt in his case, I was told most definitely by that gentleman that there was absolutely no hope for a man who had been more than once in State Prison. He said, "Mrs. Booth, you may have some success with the first offenders, but you can do nothing whatever with those who have been in prison again and again. They are criminals born and there is nothing to do for them but to rearrest them and put them out of harm's way." This discouraging verdict I have heard from the lips of many prison officers, police officers and authorities on criminal questions and so has it been impressed upon the men that they have repeatedly assured me that I was wasting my time upon them. Can anything be imagined more utterly contradictory to the teaching concerning the Almighty power of divine grace? Above all should these be remembered and the greatest hope and most earnest effort be put forth by those who would take hope to the prisoner.

[III
THE VOLUNTEER PRISON LEAGUE]

How small a thing may sometimes all unforeseen lead to momentous results! How often a little turn of the tide which some of us call chance and others Providence, opens up to us new channels that carry us into unexpected futures! It was a letter from some of the prisoners in San Quentin, California, asking me to visit them during my stay in San Francisco that first led my steps over the threshold of a state prison. That day left a deep impression on my heart, and what I had seen made me long for an opportunity practically to help the prisoner.

Never shall I forget the sea of upturned faces, many of them so plainly bearing the marring imprint of sorrow and sin—despair and misery,—yet behind the scars and shadows there was such an eager longing,—such a hungry appeal for a sight of the gleam of Hope's bright star, that one could but feel an intense inspiration while delivering the message. Never before had I seen the stripes,—never heard the clang behind me of the iron gates, nor had I realized the hopelessness that enshrouds the prisoner. It seemed almost an impertinence for me, coming as I did from a happy sunlit world, from freedom, friends and home, to undertake to preach to these into whose lives I had only just entered and whose thought and feeling I could so poorly interpret. Is it a wonder that tears rose more readily to my eyes than words to my lips, and that it was hard for me to control either thoughts or voice? I did not attempt to preach. Undoubtedly their consciences in many a dark lonely hour had preached far more pointedly than I could. As far as possible I tried in that brief hour to carry them away from prison. I felt it would help them if I could make them forget where they were, whereas the emphasizing of their position and condition might only prove embittering. Stories I had gathered from the great fragrant book of nature, or that had come to me from baby lips, I realized would touch their hearts more swiftly than the most forcible arguments or convincing condemnations. The response I read in those upturned faces—the grateful words that reached me afterwards through the mail and the constant memory of that scene as I witnessed it lasted with me deepening into a determination to make their cause mine when the opportunity should offer.

At that time my husband and I were leaders of the movement known as the Salvation Army.

It would have been impossible to start prison work under the hampering influence of regulations which governed that movement from a foreign land. When our connection with the Salvation Army was finally severed, we found ourselves free to enter new fields.

I wish to make it very clear, as many are often misled, that our movement has nothing to do with the Salvation Army, is in no way connected with it, and is absolutely dissimilar in method and government. This distinction I venture to emphasize in order to avoid a confusion that has frequently occurred in the past.

I wish to go no further into this subject save to say, that when we severed our connection with the Salvation Army, it was not the action of impulse or of disagreement with individuals, but from conscientious principles and after much anxious thought and earnest prayer. It was not easy to begin over again and build up a new movement. Starting in two small rooms in the Bible House, with half-a-dozen workers to help us, and absolutely no capital or source of income for the work that opened out before us, the Volunteers had many difficulties to face.

We knew that God's hand was with us, and now, looking back over the history of the movement during the seven years of its existence, we have, indeed, much to be thankful for.

Many have come to feel that one of God's purposes in those leadings that often seem so strange to us was that this new work in the prisons might be undertaken.

Though this is but one branch of the work of the Volunteers of America, which has of course many other fields in which much blessed success has been obtained, yet it is the one which fills perhaps the most needed gap in the defenses of Christ's Kingdom.

When we designed the new standard of the movement we placed in the centre of a white field as our emblem the star of hope. I prayed then that it might in time be known and loved in every prison of our land. Though I longed from the first to undertake this special work for our country's prisoners, I did not wish to open the way myself, for with my whole heart I believe most strongly in Divine guidance and I wished to be very sure that this was God's work for me.

The Volunteers had only been organized a few weeks when a letter came from the warden of Sing Sing asking me to speak there. Another small thing, but it put into my hands the key to the future and came unsolicited. I felt that it was God's answer to my earnest prayer that the door might be opened. On the 24th of May, 1896, the initial meeting was held, and from that place and hour it has grown and widened, until now the movement has attained national proportions. From Sing Sing the call came to prison after prison. Sometimes it was a plea sent from the boys by the chaplain with his request for a visit added in earnest words. Sometimes it came from a warden who had heard the testimony of other wardens as to what had been accomplished in their prisons. The work was opened in the following State Prisons—Sing Sing—Auburn and Clinton in New York State—Charlestown, Mass.,—Trenton, New Jersey—San Quentin and Folsom, California—Joliet, Illinois—Columbus, Ohio—Fort Leavenworth, Kansas—Canon City, Colorado—Anamosa, Iowa, and Baltimore, Maryland.

The initial meetings have been held also in Lansing, Kansas—Jackson, Michigan—Fort Madison, Iowa—Weathersfield, Connecticut—Fort William—Governor's Island, New York. Yet there are many, many other prisons from which most earnest invitations have come to us, which at present to our great regret have to be denied for lack of time. Were my shoulders free from the growing financial burden which has naturally increased with the development of the work, I could spend infinitely more time with these who need me so much and could double the good already accomplished. It is a wide country and the breadth of the field and urgency of the need often make we wish I could be in twenty places at once.

In New York State I owe much to the loving and able assistance of my dear friend, Mrs. E. A. McAlpin. She has won a very warm place in the hearts of the "boys" and constantly leads my League meetings for me—spending hours over interviews with the "boys" in the prisons of New York. I have around me a devoted little band of workers who help me in the outside work, and yet we all feel this longing for more time, more means, more strength to fill the great opportunity that has opened before us. We realize only too keenly that this is but the small beginning of a great work. Already we are in touch with some twenty-four thousand men within the walls, and with a growing number who are now in the hard struggle to honorably maintain their regained freedom.

We did not commence the enterprise with any preconceived ideas, plans or hobbies of our own to work out. We believed that to be successful the work must be of natural growth, developing with circumstances. To plan your methods out in study or committee room and then to try to bend the circumstances to your well laid track, will almost invariably mean failure. All the plans and measures of the present organization have been worked out in prison, and that which I know of the problems I have learned from the "boys" themselves.

From the very first I realized that to make the work effectual there must be the establishment of personal friendship, and that it was only as we recognized and helped the individual that we could by degrees affect the whole population. They needed friendship and the touch of human sympathy far more than preachment or argument. To thus help them practically we had of course to know the men that we might enter as much as possible into their lives, so that we could meet them on a more intimate footing than that of lecturer and audience—preacher and congregation. The only way in which one can really understand a man's life is to meet him on the level. We commenced with the chapel services, talking to the men collectively in a strain that would make them feel and realize the faith and hope we felt for them. Then I expressed my willingness to correspond with all those who had no friends to write to. The many letters which reached me as a consequence soon gave us an insight into the thoughts and feelings of the men and we were then able to become familiar with the names and histories of many of them. After this we could follow up our correspondence with personal interviews. It was wonderful how the hearts of the men were touched and opened to us. In no field have I found a quicker and deeper response to the message delivered, and there has certainly been time now to prove that it was not a mere passing emotion or revival enthusiasm, but that a deep and lasting work was being accomplished.

As men began to take the decisive step and declared their intention to lead a different life it became evident that organization would be wise to band them together and to enable them to show their colors in a way that would strengthen and safeguard them, helping them to be a constant example to others. To meet this need we started the V.P.L. or Volunteer Prison League. It is a very simple banding together in each prison of those who stand for right living and good discipline. Each member has a certificate of membership which reads as follows:

"This is to certify that —— is a member of the Volunteer Prison League having faithfully promised with God's help to conform to the following conditions of membership:

First—to pray every morning and night.

Second—to read the Day Book faithfully.

Third—to refrain from the use of bad language.

Fourth—to be faithful in the observance of prison rules and discipline so as to become an example of good conduct.

Fifth—to earnestly seek to cheer and encourage others in well-doing and right living, trying where it is possible to make new members of the League."

This document is hung in the prison cell and as the man pins on his coat the badge of the order, a small white button with the blue star in its centre and the motto of our League in red lettering—"Look up and Hope"—he becomes at once a marked man. He is watched by officers and men alike and that very fact is in itself a reminder to him in the hour of temptation of the obligations he has taken upon himself. When the League has attained some size it becomes a post and the white standard is presented. Their loving loyalty to the flag is very clearly seen among the men by the way in which they earnestly try to live up to the principles it represents. Often in my letters I read such sentiments as this—"Little Mother, as I entered the chapel Sunday and looked at our white flag, I thought again of the promises I had made, of all they ought to mean, and I promised God that with His help I would never disgrace it. No one shall see anything in my life that could bring dishonor or stain to its whiteness."

Naturally there is quite a bond of union among these League men and it exists not between those in the one prison alone, but is a link of prayer and fellowship, and sometimes almost produces healthy rivalry between prison and prison as each Post wishes to keep the best record. The thought that has made this League a strong foundation for the work and that has proved the most rousing inspiration to the men is that the work is not ours but theirs. No philanthropist, preacher or teacher in the world can reform these men. An influence from without may prove very helpful but it is from within that the true reform movement must start. The whole key of this great question, the real solution of the problem lies within the prisons. It rests with the men themselves. We can bring them hope, can help them with our sympathy, can stimulate their ambition and effort, but they must "work out their own salvation." In the League they are made to realize this very keenly; the responsibility is rolled back upon their own shoulders. They cease to think that people must pick them out from their difficulties or that some turn of fortune's wheel must come to place them in happier circumstances, before they can become truly honest and upright. They realize that they must fight their own battle,—commence to rebuild their character, wresting from adverse circumstances every good lesson and using every chance they can gain to raise themselves from the pit into which they have fallen. Of course we lay the greatest stress on the need of Divine help. We know from repeated experiences that the "boys" must be transformed in heart and nature by the spirit of God if they are to be truly successful, but we believe that God helps the man whom He sees willing and anxious to help himself. Nowhere in the Bible do we find that people can drift lazily into the kingdom of heaven. Christian life must be an earnest warfare of watchful struggle in which every faculty of the man is sincerely engaged. Since the starting of the League we have enrolled nearly fourteen thousand men within prison walls. We have found their interest in the work intense, and as news of it has spread from prison to prison even before our coming to them, the "boys" have learned to look upon it as their special work and have longingly waited to welcome that which they have come to feel will mean the dawning of a new hope for the future. To try and convey to you something of this feeling of possession on the part of the men that have prepared our way in prison after prison, I turn back to an old diary of mine and quote from its pages the notes on the opening of our work at Dannemora—November 22d, 1896.

"It was a dark, windy night, heavy snow clouds had gathered and dark shadows lay around the prison wall. Long rows of electric lights gleamed steadily through the gloom and the absolute stillness was unbroken. Right there by my window I knelt and prayed for the many we should soon see and learn to know; prayed that the 22d of November might be as memorable a day as the 24th of May, the 27th of September, the 17th of October and other red letter days in prison which I might mention.

All through that night the snow fell and Dannemora presented a pretty winter scene when we looked out of our windows Sunday morning. Clouds were still in the sky, but streaks of silver light and pale primrose tints behind the mountain range and patches of blue here and there showed that fair weather was triumphing. The icicles hung in long, glittering fringes from the roofs of the prison buildings and the crust of the snow in the prison yard gleamed with frost brilliants. As the hour of service approached we entered the prison and waited in the warden's office until the word came that all was ready.

How can I describe what followed and the sight that greeted me? Loving hands had for four weeks been decorating the chapel. Two thousand yards of evergreen trimming was wreathed and festooned on pillars and walls. Flags, shields, mottoes had been beautifully draped and designed and the blending of the national colors with the Volunteer standard was graceful and effective. Over the door through which I entered was the word "welcome" surmounted by an eagle on a drapery of the two flags. As we passed up the aisle escorted by the warden, the chapel was packed, all the "boys" being present, save those who had charge of the boilers, and the men in the condemned cells.

The audience was very still as I entered, but the moment I mounted the flower-decked platform they burst into an enthusiastic welcome. What a sight it was, that great sea of eager faces, amid the setting of colors and greenery! I wish I could give you a picture of the chapel as I saw it, but you must paint it in your own mind and when I tell you it was the most beautifully decorated building I have been in, you can realize how much loving thought and toil it represented. Is it a wonder my heart was deeply touched? Who was I, to receive such marks of love and honor? A stranger to all but three in that community, and yet they opened their hearts to me as their friend, even before they had heard my voice. I think they had learned already that I loved them, that I believed in a future of hope for them and that God had formed a bond of understanding and sympathy between us.

I cannot describe the meeting. The band played superbly, the singing was hearty, the interest and enthusiasm were intense, and to me the faces of my audience with their ever changing expressions were a perfect inspiration. Then came the solemn closing minutes. Tears had flowed freely, hearts had been moved by the influence of God's own Spirit and now a hush seemed to fall and one could feel and see the struggle going on in many hearts.

Clearly and definitely understanding all that it meant, one after another arose. It was all I could do to control my feelings. The chaplain was in tears: many of the officers were weeping, and, with bowed heads, men were rising all over the place, until eighty-seven stood in God's presence, seeking the light and cleansing and liberty that He alone can give.

God was there. We could feel His presence, and the light came down and shone on some of those tear stained faces until they were almost transfigured.

When all was over, they had gone back to their cells, and I stood at the window of my room looking out at the snow, over which now the sun shone, my heart was very thankful, and the words seem to come to my mind with new force "though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow"; and looking up at the sky, where the sun had triumphed and chased away the clouds, the blessed promise "I have blotted out as a thick cloud thy transgressions and as a cloud thy sins," came to my heart with a fresh wave of comfort.

The afternoon was a busy one with interviews, and in the evening I was again fully occupied. What a glorious night that was! The brilliant moon smiled down upon the snow-clad country making it glitter with a myriad frost diamonds. As we looked out upon the prison buildings from our windows, it was a very different scene from the night before. Everything looked so bright, so pure, so peaceful. The dark shadows, the heavy clouds, the fitful wind had given place to calm and silver light. So I think in some of the hearts that were that night speaking to God within those prison walls peace and light had triumphed, and the shadows and gloom had fled away. I sometimes wonder if my friends realize that I am thinking of them. I wonder if they know how near I am to them in heart and thought all the time I am at the prison.

I had intended to leave early Monday morning, but the warden persuaded me to remain over and take the night train. The whole day was spent in interviews, which kept me right up to the moment the carriage was at the door and I had to tear myself away. This enabled me to have a little personal talk with seventy-six men.

I was very much touched by a mark of appreciation of our work shown by a number of the men who subscribed nearly one hundred dollars out of the money they had on deposit towards our Hope Hall fund. Does not this show how truly they appreciate our plans and schemes and efforts for their future? I think this should make the fortunate and wealthy outside the prison eager to follow their example in generous and loving sympathy with the good work. The officers of the prison among themselves subscribed fifty-five dollars as a testimony of their indorsement of the movement.

From men all over the country, in prisons not yet visited, comes the plea to go to them and my heart longs to answer it, but so far we have had to go slowly.

I was visiting recently for the first time a new prison, and was much touched by a remark made by one of the men to the chaplain. He is serving a life term and has proved himself to be an earnest Christian. Meeting the chaplain the day before my expected visit he said, "Chaplain, when there is some special request I have made in prayer, I write it down and when the answer comes, I put O.K. against the prayer. To-day I can do that again, for I have prayed so long that the Little Mother might come to us, and at last my prayer is answered." Is it a wonder that my heart turns longingly to the great wide field where the harvest awaits us, to the many whose call to us is as clear as ever the Macedonian call could be from heathen lands?

Alas, all too much of my time has to be filled with money-raising lectures, so that long lecture-trips for this purpose keep me from the work where I know I could do so much to cheer and comfort these waiting hearts.

We do not want our labors in the prisons to be a mere evangelizing effort, but we wish to establish a permanent work, and hence of course we have had to move slowly. On the other hand the effect has been much more lasting. How much it has meant of cheer and sunshine to the men, can only be realized as we gather from day to day the news that comes to us from all over the country. It must be remembered how shut off these men are from friendship, from the world, from all matters of interest that can carry them out of their dull, dreary routine in cell and workshop life, to understand what this link with the outer world has proved to many of them. We send to each prison a large number of Volunteers' Gazettes, the official organ of our movement and its pages are read with deepest interest giving, as they do, news of progress of each prison League, and also constant reports of the successes of men once their fellow-prisoners, who are now living free and honest lives in the path that lies before them also. They look forward intensely to their League meetings. The whole tendency of the work is to stir up a new interest in life.

When one thinks of the men who are incarcerated for a lifetime, many of whom have perhaps outlived all ties of friendship and relationship, one can gain some idea of the help it proves to them in enduring their position, to realize that they belong to something and some one, and can still look for bright spots in the monotony of prison life.

The question may be raised as to the relationship of this work to the labors of the chaplains in state prison. I want it most emphatically understood that in all things our wish is to work harmoniously with prison officers, not only with the spiritual advisers, but also the wardens, and so far we have had the greatest help and sympathy from them. Our work could not be construed into a reflection on that of the chaplain. It is to help and to back up his efforts, to bring in an outside influence which I have found the chaplain most ready to welcome, a link to the outside world. The chaplain is of necessity of the prison world and though he has a splendid sphere for helping and blessing the men while under his charge, he cannot go with them into the new life. We may come in and form a friendship and tie to which they can turn after the chaplain has bidden them farewell, and they are once more facing life's battle on the outside. In almost all the prisons where the V.P.L. has been established, the chaplains have most cordially welcomed us and are working heart and hand with us, some of them even wearing the little League button and becoming officially associated with the movement.

Chaplain Barnes of Massachusetts has an experience of twenty-three years of devoted toil for the "boys" and he has often told me he feels that a new era has come to the spiritual life of our prisons through the establishing of the V.P.L. It has been wonderfully interesting to us to watch the spiritual growth in grace, and the mental and moral development of the men after they have started in the new life. Often the most unlikely have seemed suddenly to wake up and develop possibilities never dreamed of by those who had known them before. As letter after letter has come to me from such I have felt as if I could read here the unfolding of a better nature long dormant, between the lines so simply and naturally telling of struggles and victories in the passing days. I have seen over and over the birth and growth of a soul.

Just recently a little Day Book came into my hands by chance, and knowing what I do of the owner, its record is a very pathetic glimpse into a heart story. He was by no means a first offender but an inmate of the prison of the old timers, Dannemora. Burglary had been his special line and he had started in it quite young, as did his brother whose story I shall tell elsewhere. My first acquaintance with him was an urgent letter entreating me to care for his wife and little one, who, he feared from news just received, were facing dire need. My interest in them evidently touched a tender chord in his heart for he became one of my warm friends and champions, though at that time neither a Christian nor a League member. Many of the men who make no profession of being good are still most heartily with us in sentiment, and I have been looked upon as the "Little Mother" and stood up for as loyally by these as by our own V.P.L. "boys." As time went on and this man came more and more under the influence of the work, he began to weigh well his future and at last took his stand with good determination for the new life. When he joined the League I gave him this little book which all our boys are supposed to read together each morning and night. Five years afterwards it came into my hands by accident and I read what he had written on the fly leaf the day he had received it. "In accepting this little book I do so with a firm determination and a promise to try and live faithfully a better and purer life with God's help." Underneath his name and number are signed, and then the words "seven years and six months" chronicled the length of his sentence. Turning the leaves I found one verse marked that had evidently proved his greatest comfort, "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise as some men count slackness, but is long-suffering to usward not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance." Then came the record of the passing days and years, marked off at the head of different daily portions blending the interests near and dear to his heart and future, with his daily devotion. "I am twenty-nine years old to-day," headed July 21st. On July 27th, "My wife is twenty-three years old to-day," and yet later on the same page three years after he chronicled, "My wife is twenty-six." In the shadow of that cell the baby face with golden curls came often to smile upon him in fancy and on one page we find "My little girl is two years old, 1897." In prison the days pass all too slowly. We find on another page May 2d, "Eight hundred and fourteen days more." Further on "Five hundred and seventy-two days more," then "three hundred and sixty-five days more" and yet again "two hundred and seventy" is marked and then the last entry "I go home to-day, July 27, 1901." So the Day Book, his little companion and guide, held on its pages the record of the passing days in which he was preparing for the future. I knew something of the fierce struggle he had with old habits, evil temper, past memories and disappointments that had to be faced, for during those prison days I sometimes talked with him personally, but I also know how he conquered and how truly he came out "a new man in Christ Jesus." He thought he was coming to a glad, bright, joyous experience on his discharge and was met by a blow and sorrow that would have staggered many a stronger man. I cannot chronicle the awful test through which this soul passed, for there are confidences that cannot be betrayed even to show the keeping grace of the new life, but I can say this, he manfully stood the trial and is to-day a happy, earnest, honest, Christian man. He has proved himself a good husband and a most tenderly devoted father. He works hard all day, receiving excellent wages and in the evening walks or reads with his little girl. He has a bright, well furnished home and over a thousand dollars in the bank laid by for a rainy day. He has never returned to the saloon or in any way mixed with the old life which he considers buried with the dead self, for truly he is living in a new world after a veritable resurrection.

The little Day Book has proved a great comfort to many. At first we used to send a copy to every League member, though now regretfully we have had to desist, because we could not afford it with the great increase in membership. Many of our "boys" had never taken any interest in the Bible before and some are as indifferent and ignorant as the heathen abroad, but this "Daily Light" collection of passages has been to them a veritable revelation. Many feel towards it as one "boy" wrote to me, "As I kneel down to pray and read before going to the workshop in the morning it seems as if my Saviour sent me a direct message to guide and warn me through the trials of the day, and at night when I come in tired and read again, I find a message of comfort and a promise from Him that cheers and encourages my heart." The writer of these words died in prison a triumphantly happy death, leaving behind him a record, the truth of which every officer could attest, of earnest Christian living after having at one time been the terror of the prison, for from childhood he had been absolutely ignorant of the first rudiments of goodness and Christianity.

The following verses were sent by one of our League members and were penned in a prison cell. They give an insight into the thought and feeling of many another man who cannot perhaps as readily express himself in verse.

"Alone in my cell, where no eye can behold,
Nor ear drink in what I say,
I kneel by my cot, on the stones hard and cold,
And earnestly, tearfully pray.

"O, Jesus, dear Saviour, blot out from Thy scroll,
Each record there penned against me,
In mercy forgive me and ransom my soul,
O, fit and prepare it for Thee!

"I've wandered from Thee and forgotten Thy care,
Thy love trampled under my feet;
The songs of my boyhood, the altar of prayer,
Are only a memory sweet.

"Strange spirits oft come in the night to my cell
And moisten my cheek with their tears;
A message they bring and a story they tell,
That I had forgotten for years.

"They tell of a mother bowed down with despair,
Bereft of her pride and her joy,
Who morning and evening is breathing this prayer,
'Dear Jesus, restore me my boy!'

"O, Father, dear Father! in heaven forgive,
My weakness, my sin and my shame,
O, wash me and cleanse me and teach me to live,
To honor Thy cause and Thy name!"

If the record of successful work in prison were written only in numerical report one might still have many misgivings as to its success. There is only one thing that really tells in Christian work either in prison or on the outside and that is the life. Theory can be questioned, argument can be refuted, profession doubted, creed quibbled over, but a life that can be seen and read of all men is testimony beyond criticism.

I remember after we had been working in Sing Sing six months an officer called me on one side and speaking very earnestly of the work, he said, "I want to confess to you that I was one who took no stock in this movement at first. I used to laugh at the men making a profession of living any better. I looked upon it as so much religious nonsense, but I confess I have been forced to change my views. You do not know the change it has made in this prison and the miracles that have been wrought in many of these men. You can see them in the meetings and can judge of them by their letters, but we live with them day after day and know far more than you can. I never believed anything could take hold of the whole prison population, the educated, the middle class and the tougher element affecting them equally as this work has done." Then he added, "There was one 'boy' in my company who was the foulest-mouthed man I have ever met. He used an oath with almost every word and was so criminal and evil that we never dreamed he could be anything else. The absolute reformation in that man is what opened my eyes. That was not talk but reality."

Perhaps the strongest testimony we could offer as to the effect of the work on prison discipline, comes from the pens of our well-known wardens. Speaking before the quarterly meeting of the Iowa State Board of Control, Major McClaughry, late of Joliet, Ill., now Warden of the Federal Prison at Fort Leavenworth, said:

"I wish to add a word in relation to influences in the prison that I have found most helpful. Some years ago, Mrs. Booth came to the prison to speak to the prisoners. She first had interviews with some of the men which I permitted rather reluctantly, but I soon noticed her wonderful personal influence over the men she talked with. When later she spoke to the prisoners in chapel, and they were greatly interested in her presentation without cant or denominational prejudice, of the best way to live. I asked her to come again and she came. That time she organized with us what is known as the 'Volunteer Prison League' an association of men, who, realizing what is before them band themselves together and wear the button of the League—which requires a great deal of bravery in a prison like Joliet. The promise to them was, that so long as they followed the motto of the League and looked upward and not down, forward and not back, and helped one another, they should be recognized as a force in the prison itself making for good order and constituted authority.

"I entered upon the experiment, as I say, with a good deal of apprehension, but I am glad to say that it proved to be one of the most potent forces inside of the prison to secure not only cheerful obedience and compliance with the rules and regulations of the prison, but a force that co-operated with the authorities of the prison in the direction of law and order. Wherever that League has been established, while it has gone up and down and had its vicissitudes, like the early church, it has proved most helpful in every respect, and its influence upon the individual men, no person not familiar with its workings can for a moment imagine. Therefore I feel that the Volunteer Prison League, properly managed, is one of the most beneficent institutions that can be introduced into prison life."

This testimony is all the more forceful when we remember that the one speaking has been a prison warden for some twenty-eight years and has also served as Chief of Police in Chicago. He certainly should know of what he speaks.

I opened the work in Dannemora, New York State, where Warden Thayer welcomed me most courteously, did all in his power both in his own home and in the prison, to make me feel at home, but being frank and outspoken he thought it well to impress me with the hopelessness of my task. He said briefly that no obstacle should stand in my way as far as he was concerned, but he did not want to see me heart-broken over a work that he foresaw could never succeed. He told me clearly his opinion and advised me not to try the impossible. After watching the work, however, he became one of my stanch supporters and has repeatedly championed our cause where the usefulness of such work has been questioned.

At a public meeting in New York, he told a story on himself of which I was up to that time ignorant. Speaking of our first enrollment of men in prison, he said, "When I saw those men, one hundred and seven of them, stand up, I began to feel sorry for Mrs. Booth. Here were the very hardest men I had to deal with in the prison; men constantly reported for punishment. I took a list of their names for future reference. I kept that list in my desk, and when the year had passed I brought it out with a view of paralyzing that little woman. Would you credit it? I learned to my own surprise and satisfaction on comparing it with the punishment book that out of those who stood up in the chapel that Sunday morning, only three had required punishment during that entire year. I saw now what I had not realized before, namely, that as an aid to the observance of discipline of the prison no plans had ever equalled the influence of this work."

Warden Darby of Columbus, Ohio, writes:

"The organization of Post No. 10, Volunteer Prison League in the Ohio Penitentiary, has been very gratifying to the prisoners, who are looking forward to a brighter and better future, who are striving to build a moral foundation that will withstand the tides of adversity and trial. The League has been of incalculable benefit, for it has been directly instrumental in bringing many to right thinking, an absolutely necessary prelude to right doing.

"The good derived has not been limited to the League members alone, others have been induced to strive for better, higher and nobler lives. The influence of good will manifest its usefulness in any community and the rule is equally applicable on either side of the prison wall.

"The Volunteer Prison League is a factor in bettering the discipline of its members, since they who live up to the obligations must strive to improve their conduct, this being one of the primary objects of the organization."

Space does not allow the reproduction of the much that has been said and could be said of this work which, as I have tried to show, is not my work but the work of the "boys" themselves, the result of earnest conquering lives. Undoubtedly the lesson which men in prison need to learn almost above any other is that of self-mastery. Many are there through lack of self-control: others have utterly weakened will and deadened conscience by yielding themselves slaves to strong drink and yet others have let go their hold on the reins because, having once failed, they have allowed the feeling that it is no use to try again to rob them of courage. Just on this point their League membership has proved invaluable. If the new leaf is ever to be turned over, it should certainly be in prison. In the early days of our work many men would say to me as also to my dear friend and fellow-worker, Mrs. McAlpin, "No, I cannot take my stand now. It is too hard here, but I am determined to do right the day of my discharge." More and more the "boys" are coming to see how disastrous is such a fallacy. The man who does not have the courage in prison lacks it as much in freedom, when faced with the decision between right and wrong. There are, moreover, so many pitfalls and temptations awaiting him, to say nothing of the hard, up-hill road abounding in disappointments which almost all have to tread, that if he be not well prepared, failure is almost inevitable. Before he knows it, even with the best of intentions in his heart, such a man will be swept aside and carried away back to the whirlpool of vice and crime, from which he will all too quickly, be cast again on to the rocks of wreck and ruin.

In many ways I have heard of the influence of the League from unexpected sources. Travelling in a parlor car in the West on one occasion, I was introduced by some friends to a judge of the Supreme Court. In the conversation that followed, he told me he had heard of our work and was deeply interested in it. "There is one of your men," he said, "who has come under my personal notice and to whose great change of life I can myself testify. Some years ago I had to sentence him to State Prison. The man protested his innocence but there was no doubt in my mind as to his guilt. After he had become a member of your League in prison he wrote me a letter telling of his intention to lead an upright life in the future. He confessed his guilt and thanked me for the sentence which he now looked upon as the best thing that had befallen him. In due time he came out of prison, found work, has done well and won the confidence of those who knew him. Quite recently he wrote me saying that he had earned money enough to pay off his debts little by little, until all were discharged and so far as money could make restitution he had made it. Now he wanted to know the cost to the State for his prosecution that he might pay that also." This desire to make restitution and to undo past wrongs I have seen constantly, after the men's consciences had been awakened, but in no other case have I heard of it going to the extent of wishing to repay the State and had I not heard this from the lips of the judge himself, I should have been inclined to think it an exaggeration.

Speaking in one of our Volunteer meetings a short time since a young man testified to the help the League had been to him in years gone by. He told our officers that he had been in prison for a forgery amounting to two thousand dollars; that on his discharge he had consulted me and I had advised him to promise the gentleman whom he had wronged that he would pay back the amount by degrees. He said further that he had just succeeded in doing this and was now a trusted employee of the very man who had had to prosecute him for crime.

This is not a place to lay bare confessions but I could give a wonderful story of the many confidences that have been given to me by hearts deeply enough touched and truly enough changed to become quick and sensitive regarding hidden wrongs that should be righted.

As I have looked over what has already been accomplished in state prison in its power on the future of these men and their relation to the world, I can but realize the safeguarding and benefit to others of that which tames and controls, changes and inspires men who might otherwise go out into life hardened, imbittered and more depraved than on the day of their incarceration, to prey on society and wreak their vengeance for wrongs real or imaginary.

[IV
THE POWER BEHIND THE WORK]

In the bright fragrance of a spring morning our long, heavy train of cars wound its way slowly up the Divide. The track curved and doubled back and forth amid the forest like some great brown silver-streaked serpent; here gliding into the earth to be lost in the blackness of a tunnel, there, flinging itself over a dizzy chasm spanned only at fabulous cost by a feat of engineering. Higher, ever higher we rose until a glorious view of valley swept below us from the forest fringe to Ashland. At the summit came a pause for breath and then the long, dark, suffocating tunnel, and after it the sight that one would gladly cross a continent to see, as we beheld it in all the glory of brilliant sunshine and bluest ether. Below us stretched a great plain, a veritable green ocean of prairie. To one side the ridge of rugged forest-clad mountains that form the great Divide. Away ahead like high rocky islands in the emerald sea rose the dark steep Buttes backed by the spires and turreted peaks of the Castle Rocks.

But all this was only a setting for the jewel, the less beautiful, above which towered in queenly majesty the glory of the Sierras, Shasta. As we first saw her, it seemed impossible to believe that the gleaming majestic mass of whiteness belonged to earth. She seemed to be a great white cloud on the horizon, shimmering against the pale-blue ether, resting but for a moment on the rock-bounded forest that swept from the plain to form her base. As we slowly wound our way down to the valley, as we glided in and out and round about over the plain, we gazed for hours at this most wonderful of mountains, our eyes fascinated, our lips silent, our hearts stirred by the wonder of her quiet, queenly grandeur. At first she dazzled us in the full glory of the sunlight as her snows shone against a vivid blue sky, then as the sun sank to the ridge opposite, the background changed to palest green and her whiteness was stained with crimson and touched with gold, growing richer and deeper every moment. Darkness began to gather in the valley; the woods grew mysterious with gloom; purple shadows crept up to the timber-line and even dared to steal over her snowy base, but the head of Shasta still glowed and blushed with the glory of the setting sun. At last he was lost to us over the ridge and the swift twilight claimed the whole land, but watching still the mountain heights above us, we saw yet another change. Shasta was transfigured! The pale primrose of the after-glow shone over all her pure whiteness and from a queen of glory she seemed changed to the sweet loyalty of a loving heart that held the sacred memory of the beloved long after he was lost to other eyes.

Night found us creeping downwards in the solemn darkness of the chasm on the further side. Great fir trees, giant sentinels of the forest closed in about us and that strange, silent mystery of mountain solitudes reigned supreme. Looking backwards, we could still catch glimpses of the centre peak behind us, shining serenely white now beneath the silvery moonbeams, which had not strength to penetrate the dense forest that clothed the gorge. Leaning over the edge of the observation car, I had become so absorbed in communion with nature that it was startling to be aroused by a voice at my side. A fellow-passenger was calling my attention to something away down beneath us in the abyss which seemed to me to hold nothing but impenetrable blackness. As my eyes became used to the obscurity, however, I could distinguish a little silver line amid the rocks and though at first I could hear only the creaking of the trestle bridge beneath us and the labored breathing of our great locomotive, I distinguished at last the far-away silvery music of a tiny mountain stream. It struck me as strange that I should have my attention called to this little brook when I had seen so many glorious streams and rivers in my overland journeys. The explanation however gave reason enough as my friend announced, "That is the Sacramento at its source. During the night we shall cross it twenty-seven or twenty-eight times and to-morrow you will see it very differently when we cross it for the last time."

All through that night I watched the growth of the little stream. At first it was narrow and shallow and its voice but a silvery song as it threaded its way amid the rocks or sent a spray of mist and foam over the moss when some obstruction barred its way. But by and by it grew to be a rushing torrent, the double note of power and purpose dominated its song, and as the train thundered over bridge after bridge, I saw it dashing and crashing over its rugged bed, here leaping a precipice, there rushing with wave-white fury against some mighty rock, tossing great logs from side to side as if they were straws. Ever onward, forward, downward, drawing with it every lesser stream, engulfing every waterfall and spring, it kept us company through the long, moonlit night and then in the broad daylight, we crossed it for the last time and saw it in the might of its accomplished strength. As the great ferry-boat bore our heavy train over the river, I looked out upon a deep broad placid expanse of blue water. Sunbeams played with the myriad ripples powdering the turquoise with gold. Fertile foothills rolled away on either side and looking far off to the horizon the mighty river joined the bay, and yet further lost itself through the Golden Gate in the mighty Western ocean. Broad enough, deep enough, strong enough to carry a nation's fleet upon its breast, that is what the streamlet of the wilderness had become. What mighty lessons Nature teaches us!

I have carried my readers far away to California and surely might be accused of wandering from my point, but I wanted to tell them of a voice that has been a blessed cheer and inspiration to my heart, reminding me in hours of difficulty and discouragement of the great Source of all strength and power. Had a critic paused in faithless speculation by the side of the little Sacramento in its rocky cradle days up there in the wilderness, he might have interrupted its silvery song with a jarring note of discouragement. "Foolish little stream," the critic might have said, "what are you singing about so joyously? Do you tell of the thirsty you are going to cool, of the wilderness that shall blossom at your touch, of the great valleys you are going to fertilize? Are you dreaming of ships you would carry, of the long miles you would travel, of the great ocean upon whose breast you would cast yourself? How absurd and unlikely are these day dreams! Look at yourself! See how tiny and insignificant you are, so narrow that a child could leap over you, so shallow that I can see the very pebbles in your bed. It is a foolish fancy, impossible of realization. You had better stop singing, you will only dry up and be absorbed by the ferns and moss of the forest; that will be the easiest, happiest end for you." If the stream had thought it worth while to respond, I know the answer that would have rung out clear and sweet, for this is the message it sang to my heart, "Yes, of myself I may be small and insignificant. The distance and obstacles may be far and formidable. I may of myself be too weak to face them, but look behind me, at the snows of Shasta; think of the springs and water courses that gush from her eternal rocks and remember that my help comes from the hills and when thus helped, I too can become mighty."

In the early days of the work, it seemed an overwhelming undertaking to meet the great sad problem that faced us within the walls of State Prison. There was indeed a great desert representing thirst and need, wreck and ruin. Many tried to discourage us by painting in vivid colors, the difficulties of the undertaking, and I grant they cannot be very easily exaggerated, for where vice and sin, human weakness and life's misfortunes have swept over mankind, the problem is one of the most overwhelming that can be faced. The work was spoken of as an experiment and a very doubtful one at that, and if it had been some new plan for the reforming of criminals, some mere exertion of human influence or the hobby and scheme of an organization that was to be tried, one might well have been faint-hearted. We, however, have felt from the first and now feel more intensely than ever that this undertaking has not been our work, but God's work. We can truly say we are not attempting it in our own strength but we "lift up our eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh our help," and to every doubter and critic we answer, "God does not experiment." His work succeeds; His building stands; His touch transforms. Were it not for this, what heart should we have in dealing with those who have made trial of other help and strength and found it to fail them?

Many of the men to whom we go are defiled with the leprosy of sin. They have tried self-purification, and effort after effort has failed them. What could we say to them unless we believed that the Voice that said of old, "Be thou clean," could say it as truly to-day? We deal with some who are truly blind as to things spiritual, and no human hands could open these sightless eyes, no human voice could unstop the ears of the spiritually deaf. There we must deal with souls and consciences dead to right, unconscious of the responsibilities and possibilities of life, and we know that only the Divine Hand that raised the dead can quicken them again. We have realized and acknowledged this from the first, so our work is not to be a moral education or a recommendation tending to the turning over of a new leaf, but we have sought ever to point the souls in darkness to the true light and those wrestling with their own sin and weakness to the wondrous power of God.

Too often are we met when pleading with men to rise up and make a brave effort to do right, with the discouraging answer, "I have tried and failed," and each effort that proved fruitless has robbed them of the courage to try again. While we do not for a moment discount the vital importance of personal effort, of good resolves, of will exerted in the right direction, we try most clearly to show the need of seeking God's help, showing that when the man would start out on the road, it is of the utmost importance to start right. Feeling as we do, we have naturally been filled with hope and courage for our work. We do not have to look for difficulties, we need not be overwhelmed by our own weakness or inefficiency; nothing is too hard for God. No obstacle can stand before Him. So from the first we have been full of faith and joy in battle and have not been disappointed for victory after victory has come to add inspiration to our efforts.

We believe that the great Father-heart feels intense pity and divine compassion for the one who has strayed and fallen. Surely no child of God can doubt this. It has seemed to us that the time has come when that passage of Scripture is being fulfilled, "For He hath looked down from the height of His sanctuary; from heaven did the Lord behold the earth, to hear the groaning of the prisoner, to loose those that are appointed to death." One can but be a believer in the miracles of old when faced with the miracles of to-day, where the fetters that have bound some souls have been snapped, and men have been delivered from the power of opium, of strong drink and other vices after they had been given up as utterly beyond redemption. During these years of work in prison, onlookers have acknowledged to me over and over again, that they have been forced to recognize some superhuman power when they have seen lives transformed. From watching at first with indifference or skeptical criticism, they have come at last to look upon the work with absolute faith, even though personally they have had no knowledge of the wonderful power at work.

Let me give you in his own words the abbreviated sketch of the life of one of God's miracles:

"Everything looked fair for me as life lay all in front; money, education, social standing were mine. Loving parents and sweet surroundings beautified life, but alas they counted for nothing in one sense. Before I was twenty-one I flung all that was good to the winds, took my life into my own hands and decided to do as I pleased; I did so. Why, if there was any reason, it is immaterial now. Surely there should not have been. I left all who could help me and when twenty-two years of age found myself in a strange country, with all the tastes and ideas of one who had been gently raised, but without means to gratify them. To work I was not able, to beg I could not, so from being a lamb I gradually became a wolf. I realized that in order to succeed I must learn to keep cool, I must face life desperately. As I lived in the far West mostly, I had to acquire skill in the use of weapons and I was also an expert horseman. There was no other career open to me but the army. To my nature and character, there was no other safe place except prison. I did well while in the service, but the dissatisfaction in my heart drove me often to excesses that gained a hold over me that constantly threw me down. Yielding to evil and despising myself for it, had the effect of hardening and embittering me; though I committed many lawless deeds, I generally managed to protect myself from consequences, never being caught for the worst things, and though I have known the inside of several prisons in the long years of my wanderings I have only served nine years, which, compared to what I might have had, seems small punishment. Once I escaped while in double irons and had it not been for that escape I might have died in the miserable suffering I was then enduring. I had to make a hundred miles on foot through desert country without food or water, and the third day I faced death having only just strength enough to reach the desired goal. I went through a term in one of the hardest prisons of this country years ago, when men suffered there indescribably and it was there that I took to opium, because I found it makes men forget and by its use you can still the anguish of remorse. A few years after that I served as Chief of Police in one of the districts of Alaska, then under martial law and the hard school through which I had passed gave me the stern recklessness of life necessary for such a post. The opium which I still used I took scientifically and was able to keep my own counsel in all things. The first five years of the drug were comfortable, the second five it lost its happy effect. I had commenced to use the hypodermic needle and morphine, because of the quicker action of this method. During this period I was a soldier of fortune in South America, Mexico and Central America. I was a hospital steward in the Army, Sergeant Major in a regiment, First Sergeant of a Company and I was able to hold my own and fulfill my duties and yet I was becoming scarred from head to foot with the use of the hypodermic needle. After this I was reckless and careless as to my own life and I never knew, when the sun rose, whether I would live to see it set. I became wholly indifferent as to the consequences of my life, careless and reckless as to my actions. Then came an imprisonment, out of which I came back into the world a wreck. I made a desperate effort and managed to rehabilitate myself and once more held a good position in life, but unable to break from the bondage of the evil habit that behind everything held me in thralldom, I was once more dragged down and was led to commit deed after deed that I otherwise should have scorned. I have used as many as sixty grains of morphine and thirty grains of cocaine, during these miserable days of slavery.

Then came my last two years of imprisonment. I was looked upon as a hard and desperate man in the prison, one who could not be reached or influenced in any way. One day I was sent for to the front office of the prison. The messenger said, 'A lady wants to see you.' 'Not me,' I replied, 'no one wants to see me; it is a mistake.' But it was not. To my surprise I found Mrs. McAlpin had sent for me. 'Twas almost a shock for I had no visitors and it was long since I had talked to a lady. Then came a never-to-be-forgotten meeting in the chapel, when the words spoken thrilled in my heart; I felt for once that I was compelled to stop and think. I had made many plans of what my future was to be, but they were plans of evil design. I had decided that my apprenticeship was served, that I ought to be able to do a master's work so I had determined never to stand for an arrest again. But I deliberately planned a coup that if successful would place me beyond the necessity for such things and if a failure, I had determined never to be taken alive. Then the Little Mother came and spoilt all my plans; as I heard her talk, I felt she was putting me out of business; she was putting me in the wrong. Shortly after this I was removed to a new cell and on a shelf in the corner I came upon a piece of paper; it was a partly torn piece of the Volunteers' Gazette smeared with whitewash. It had evidently been pasted on a cell wall once, but had become detached and had been thrown up upon the shelf and there had been overlooked. It was difficult to decipher, but with care I made out these words that I have never forgotten. They were in an old message from the pen of our Leader to her 'boys.' 'If I can afford to face difficulties and yet go on with a faith that wavers not, you can also. So let us look up and hope, taking a firm hold of the strong arm of God and looking for courage to the stars of eternal promise that shine on above the clouds and mists of earth.'

"Do not think all the good things came at once. They did not. It took a long time to build up the edifice on the site of the old ruins. Alone I certainly should have failed and the last end would have been overwhelmingly worse than the first, but God's help is almighty and the 'I trust you' of His messenger meant everything."

Facing a stern struggle on his discharge this man proved strong enough to withstand. The old vices were abandoned. He took the sharp turn to the right that goes up the steep mountain side to the purer, clearer altitudes where we can walk in the light and enjoy the sunshine of God's approving smile. With wonder was the news received in prison, month after month, year after year that he was standing firm. To-day he is a worker at my side, a strength and comfort to many another soul and a messenger of blessing in the many poor and sad homes that he visits. A little while since he returned to the prison where he had paced so often back and forth, back and forth through the weary hours of struggle in the narrow little cell. As he talked to the men who had known him, as he gave his thrilling message before the officers who had doubted the possibility of his reformation, he appeared to them as one who had gone into a new country and returned with tidings, not so much of the giants that dwelt there as of the milk and honey and fruits of peace and happiness which awaited those who in their turn would venture over the dividing line.

On one of my visits to Trenton, the warden told me of a man whose change of life was so remarkable that it had become the talk of the prison. He had been the most treacherous and dangerous of the prison population. Every officer agreed that he could never be trusted and for insubordination and violence they had never known his equal. After his conversion he was so quiet, amenable to discipline, cheerful and helpful in his attitude to others and at all times consistent in living up to his profession that his life made the most profound impression. In speaking of him to me the warden said that it was nothing short of a miracle, and that the work was well worth while if only for that one case.

As I shall give many other life stories in their place, I will touch only on one more phase of the blessed influence that the new life brings to those in prison. It enables them to face the weary, dreary monotony of their life with happy cheerful contentedness, despite the difficulties and gloom that surround them.

There are many life-men in prison and many more with very long terms whom one might expect to find gloomy and morose, embittered in heart and utterly miserable. Among them I know innumerable cases of those who have become cheerful, patient and humbly grateful for every good gift of God, where we might see only cause for complaint. Many a Christian on the outside would have his faith strengthened by coming into contact with these men, and their bright experiences would make the world realize that the essence of Christianity is its triumph over circumstances. It can literally make the darkness light and put the song of freedom in the heart of the caged bird.

Here is a letter I received from a man whose causes for complaint might have been considered very justifiable. In the past he had been several times in prison and was known to the police as an "ex-convict." On his last discharge he came to us and we were witness of his manly struggles to do right. It was before the days of our Hope Hall, and we could not help him so much as we longed to. He passed through a period of testing difficulties; he not only suffered from hunger but at times went to the point of starvation before he was able to find work, and endured it willingly rather than return to an evil but easy way of making a living. He would not accept charity, and never once asked for help except that help which we could give him by advice and sympathy, and hid from us the need and suffering through which he was passing. At last he found work and was doing well when he was arrested and "railroaded" to prison for an offense he did not commit.

I speak advisedly, for I was well acquainted with the case and have since heard from the man who did the deed. After his reimprisonment with a sentence of ten years, he found Christ as his Saviour. He wrote me constantly and the letter quoted below reached me after he had passed through a period of great suffering and weakness in the prison hospital.

"My dear Little Mother:—I am most happy to be able to write you a cheering letter. I am afraid my letters the past two or three months have been rather 'blue' reading to you, but now, thank God, I am feeling very well and want to chase that sorrowful expression from your face which I suspect has been there of late on receiving my letters. I want to write you a cheering letter, first because I am cheerful, hopeful and happy myself and then because I know it will cheer and comfort you to hear that I am fighting the battle bravely, and that the victory we all look forward to so intensely is mine. I have indeed experienced the new life, and God has been my guide and refuge for two years now and I tell you, Little Mother, I would not exchange it for my old sinful life for the world. My past bad name and misdeeds sent me to this place for ten years, but I have gained by it something I never realized or had before, the love of our dear Saviour. I cannot help but think of the bright happy future in store for me. Although the state holds my body, my spirit is free, thank God, and though clouds do gather at times in this dreary place I have One to go to who is all sunshine and always understands and comforts me. Now Little Mother, I am feeling very well. Good Dr. Ransom, God bless him, has been like a father to me, you will never know how much he has done for me. He asked me the other day when I had heard from you. I told him and he said I must never forget you. Little Mother, I guess you know whether I could or not. God bless you. I wish you every success on your western trip. Pray for me," etc.

I give the letter just in the natural outspoken way in which it was written. Shortly afterwards the Doctor wrote me that his patient was undoubtedly suffering from the first inroads of tuberculosis. I immediately set to work on the case, though, as a rule, I do not help men to regain their liberty. They know that is not my mission. Here however was one whom I believed innocent, who had served two years and who in all likelihood could not live out the other eight, a man whom I believed thoroughly safe to trust at large.

President Roosevelt, then governor, gave me his pardon the following New Year, and when the "boy" received my wire with the news the joy was too much for him, and he fainted away in the prison hospital. We welcomed him home, put him under excellent medical treatment and afterwards kept him for a spring and summer on the farm at Hope Hall. The disease was checked, he was perfectly restored to health, and went out into the world to work. He is still leading an upright life not far from New York and keeps in touch with us.

Could I give space to the hundreds of happy letters that tell of the change from gloom to brightness, from soul-bondage to freedom and new strength, it would be clearly seen that, though the men deeply appreciate their Home and friends and are intensely grateful for all that may be done to help them, they fully realize the power behind the work. It is this power that has given them new hope and from it they have drawn their deepest consolation and surest certainty for the unknown future. Often in life the human friendship is the stepping-stone to the Divine. The moonlight makes us realize that the sun still shines.

Sometime since the Chaplain of Auburn, a devoted shepherd to that big flock wrote me as follows: "When you were so very sick three years ago the men here were very much alarmed and anxious for your recovery. Among them was an old-timer who had spent over twenty years solid in prison out of forty-nine years of life, the longest time of liberty between his incarcerations being seven months. When he heard that fears were entertained that you might not recover, he felt impelled to pray for you. In relating the story he said, 'I dropped on my knees to pray for her and as I did so I was overwhelmed with the thought that God would not hear such a sinner as I was. I began to pray for God to have mercy upon me and in my pleading forgot where I was and everything but the fact that I was a sinner and Jesus Christ my Saviour.' His sympathy for you was the means of leading him to Christ." The sequel of this story made another record of successful right-doing on the outside as well as in prison.

Divine truth is not only whispered to our hearts from the leaves of the forest, sung to us by the mountain brook and flashed into our mind by the glint of the sunbeam, but sometimes it looks out at us from the wonders of science. A nerve has been severed by accident or during an operation and has remained for months or years perhaps useless and atrophied. Yet operative skill can resurrect the buried nerve ends and unite them again restoring perfectly the lost function. To this end especially when there has been much loss of substance it is necessary to interpose an aseptic absorbable body such as catgut or decalcified bone tube to serve as a temporary scaffolding for the products of tissue proliferation. Sutured to this connecting substance the nerve reunites using it as a bridge over or through which the union can be affected. When this end is accomplished the bridge or scaffolding is no longer needed and disappears through absorption. This it seems to me is the relative position of the soul-seeker to the unsaved. The poor soul has wandered far from God, is lost, buried beneath numberless hindering obstacles. To a great extent the functions of soul and conscience are destroyed, the power to serve God, to feel aright, to be pure and good, and honest are gone; even feelings and aspirations for things Divine in many cases seem wanting, but we believe that all this can be reawakened if only the soul is brought near to God. A helpless human atom reunited to the Divine compassionate power above. The human friend and messenger or the organization that has the privilege of stretching out the helping hand to those thus needy can serve as the bridge or connection, the link useful in the right place but worse than useless if unaided by the loving miracle-working power from above.

As I turn the pages of our little Day Book a verse smiles out at me, the truth of which I know, and the sweet realization of which hundreds of happy hearts in prison to-day attest with earnest acclamation, "Their voice was heard and their prayer came up to His holy dwelling place even into Heaven."

[V
LETTERS FROM THE "BOYS"]

In such a work as that within prison walls the results can only be fully understood by those who have the opportunity closely to watch the lives of the men and who can keep in touch with them through their after experience. Results cannot be statistically summed up and proclaimed to the world. They are too intangible and far-reaching to be fairly represented by figures. It is difficult to exhibit to the public the direct issues of this toil behind the scenes. Reporters have often asked to accompany me to prison and have earnestly requested permission to visit our Hope Halls for the purpose of describing the work. They have assured me that by allowing this, we could arouse much public interest. We have declined. Our movement does not live by sensational advertisement, and even wisely written reports would harm us with those whom we seek to save. The men in prison are intensely sensitive and through their bitter past experience very apt to be suspicious of the motives of those who go to them. Among the men who do not know us personally there might be the idea that the work was done with a desire for advertising or lauding the Volunteers and to all the men it would give the unpleasant impression that they were still to be regarded in a different light from the denizens of the free world. These men naturally do not want to be exploited or ticketed by publicity. The very spirit of our work would be spoiled and its object defeated by such an error, and the self-respecting men would shun a place where their home life was not held sacred.

For similar reasons we do not have our graduates lined along the platforms of public halls to relate the stories of their past lives, their many crimes and subsequent conversions. This may be thought by some to be helpful in mission work and among church people, but in a work like ours it would be more than unwise. Talking of an evil past is often the first step that leads to repeating the evil deeds. Anything like boasting of the crimes and achievements of an evil past cannot be too strongly deprecated. In their own little home gatherings among themselves our "boys" freely give their testimonies as to what God has done for them, but even there with no outsiders present, they feel too deeply ashamed of the forgotten and buried past to wish to resurrect it. One of the mottoes of Hope Hall is, "Never talk of the past and so far as possible do not think of it." There is in this however one disadvantage in that the world cannot have the object lesson which would surely be helpful to many when brought face to face with the results already gained. The missionary can bring back his Indian or Chinese convert and the dark face and simple earnest broken words appeal to a Christian audience; the doctor can exhibit his cures at the clinic; the teacher can glory over her scholars at their examinations, but in work like ours the victory can never be fully shown to the world without violating sacred confidences, and making a show of that which it would be cruelly unjust and unwise to parade.

That something of the grateful hearts and bright hopeful lives of our graduates may be known to others, I gather here and there, from hundreds of like letters, just a few that will speak for themselves.

To the "boys" still in prison one man writes: "Dear Comrades:—I will try and write a few lines to assure you, that you have in me a converted comrade who has left the 'college' but has not forgotten those still confined there" (as not a few have since found out).

"I am very grateful for this, another opportunity to send a few words of cheer to those who, I know, are deprived of many blessings of this nature that cost so little—a smile, a cheering word or a pleasant nod that you dare not receive or return.

"Dear comrades, you probably would not know me now, as such a marvellous change has come over me. The dear Lord has been very good to me. I am very often surprised at the wonderful alterations in my life of late, the complete abnegation of my former desires, and, thank God! I now possess a fervent desire to henceforth be a man.

"At the time of my conversion I little thought my future life would be the success it has since proven to be.

"It is just a little over two years ago since I left 'college' and what has that two years wrought in my life? I have made many new friends, won their confidence and esteem, hold a fine position on the official paper of this town, live right with the editor in his own home, have been elected president of one of our local Sunday-schools, have a fine large class of little girls, am studying preparatory to entering the University of Illinois, have been restored to citizenship by Governor Yates, and am now purchasing a two thousand dollar piece of property.

"Dear comrades, let me give you two keys to my success. One—God loves to bestow where gratitude is extended; two—I have a private book on the page of which it reads: 'May 3d, 1902. One-tenth of my earnings, $—— paid and used in God's cause, May....'

"I fear I have gone beyond the space allotted me so must close, dear comrades, with this, my last remark, and if you forget all the rest, remember this: 'Value and grasp the opportunities to form character as they are extended, and God will take care of the rest.' Fraternally yours, One of the Graduates.

Another writes me after two years the following cheering news, though as I write I can add on another year for the record since that date.

"Dear Little Mother:—It is now close to two years since I gained my liberty from Joliet Prison, and I know that it will make you happy to know that I am leading a good life. The thought that you were instrumental in procuring my release upon parole, and that you still take an interest in me for the future gives me great joy and pride, and I thank God for the many benefits I have received at His hands through you.

"I have a splendid position at $21 per week, and save half of it. I have the respect of my employers and neighbors and live with my father and mother and have the knowledge that I am loved of God. I am happy, and have good reason to be. I shall always appreciate your loving kindness to me, also the help I have received from Adjutant and Mrs. McCormick and Sergeant Sam of Hope Hall No. 2.—Yours truly, Frank ——"

The next letter is from a man who was a very successful and notorious forger. Of him the warden said to me one day while he was still in prison, "If you can keep that man right after his discharge, you will save the country thousands of dollars. All your work would be worth while only for one such." He was, when we first met him a pronounced infidel and terribly embittered against the world in general. He became a sincere simple-hearted Christian, coming straight to us from fifteen years in prison. He was nervous and unstrung and felt utterly helpless to cope with life. In this condition Hope Hall meant everything to him. He soon regained strength, nerve and courage. He is now a prosperous man and has been out of prison nearly five years.

"Dear Little Mother:—It was my intention to write you ere this, but my time has been so much taken up with the cares and labor of my position, and things are so unsettled yet, that I put it off from one day to another, but I will not neglect to obey the call of duty; the more so, as it entails only a labor of love. I want you to believe me, that my heart is in no manner changed towards you and your work. It is just as full of love as when first I had the happiness to meet you in those dark and bitter days, when nothing but darkness and friendlessness seemed to be before me, and you proved yourself such a faithful friend. Though I still live in the shadow of the past, there is such a lot of sunshine about me now. If any word of mine can be a comfort to you and a help to any one of my comrades still behind the bars, I gladly give the word.

"I am well in body and mind. It seems to me that I am making friends and well wishers everywhere. It lies with me to stay or not, but there are so many things in this particular business which I cannot entirely approve, that of late I thought much if it were not better for me to turn to something else. I have not decided yet, but as soon as I shall have done so, I will let you know. Be sure of one thing, though, whatever I shall do, or wherever I may be, there is none anywhere, that I know of, who can replace the friend who found me in wretchedness and stretched forth her hand to help and comfort me. To the Christ-love planted then in my heart, I shall remain true in storm or sunshine."

Since then this man has gone into business for himself. He is now married and has a happy little home.

Another writes:

"Dear Little Mother:—Yours of the 4th received, and I need not tell you how happy it made me feel when I realized that though you are constantly behind the walls or touring across the country for your 'boys' you have not forgotten me and the other graduates. I am sure that there are none of the 'boys' who have forgotten you.

"What a blessing Hope Hall has been to the thousands that have passed through its doors, almost all of whom have been faithful to all that the V.P.L. means.

"I have a good position and am living the life of a God-fearing man. You would be surprised at the number of 'boys' that I meet in the city constantly, all looking bright and happy and doing well in every sense of the word.

"Asking your prayers and praying God to bless and prosper you in the work, Yours for Christ."

The remark has sometimes been made that it is innate laziness that leads to crime. I do not agree with this statement, but I can say that if any of our "boys" were lazy in the old days, they certainly have not shown it in their new life, for we find them most anxious to work and they often undertake and keep bravely at work far beyond their strength.

"My dear Little Mother:—I was both surprised and happy to receive your letter. I have not only friends of the right sort, but a position and a prospect which increases in brightness each time I look forward after doing nine years in prison. When I received my pay yesterday it was the first legitimately earned money I have had in fifteen years. I have never regretted giving up the past. I am satisfied with my position, although the first few days I was not. I wrote to Lieutenant B——, and he advised me to stick, in my own behalf, and his advice I have taken. My work is hard and the hours long, but it can never be so hard as to make me throw up the sponge. I have a little of your writing, which I received on last Christmas in a Christmas present while at Hope Hall. God bless you and your work for the 'boys' behind the bars. Your comrade.

"P.S.—Enclosed find my first subscription to the Maintenance League."

The next letter is from a young man who had been the sorrow of his home people because of his wild life. He was bright, well educated and had good ability but he sold his soul to evil, demoralizing pleasures. He became a thief and at last reached the point where the patience of his people was exhausted and they believed it impossible for him to be reclaimed. He came to us from a prison where our work was not yet established. A copy of the Gazette had reached him and through its influence he learned to look upon us as his friends. He made no profession of conversion but merely declared that he was anxious to try and make a success of an honest life. His stay at Hope Hall was quite a long one and we who watched him closely, could see the growth and development of his better self as he fought desperately the old vices.

Speaking to a comrade about this time he said, "When I have written in the past to Mrs. Booth I have never called her Little Mother because I was not sure I was going to stay right. I dared not call her that until I was sure but now when I write it will be always, 'Little Mother.'" Here is a letter from him after he had been twelve months in one position, and at the same time there came to me a letter full of commendation, from his employer.

"Dear Little Mother:—I am sorry that I must begin by asking your pardon for not having written for so long a time, but I am deeply thankful that my next words can be, that I have done well in every sense of the word. After the dull emptiness of the past, my life here comes like the opening of summer after a long winter of weariness and discontent. Day by day the influences that had grown up in the old life have been losing their place, and new interests coming into my heart that make me happier and stronger and better. I have written but few letters since the beginning of the year, and I cannot write much now, but I think you can understand much, perhaps all, of what I feel and would wish to say. But I can say, after the year that has passed since I left Hope Hall, that there are few months of my life that I can remember with more pleasure than those I spent there, and I have felt since leaving, that I there gained the strength I needed to help me start life anew. I shall always feel the influence of those months of close companionship with the men—each with a different story, and a different struggle, and, no matter where my life may be passed, or how dear the interests that may come into it, I shall always feel, when I think of Hope Hall, the tenderness one feels when thinking of an absent, well-loved friend."

The following note was an acknowledgment of a special copy of the little Day Book sent to one of our "boys" shortly after his graduation. "Dear Little Mother:—I am more pleased than I can say for your remembrance of me and the delightful manner of this remembrance emphasizes itself in the gift. Every day as I read this precious little book I will think of the giver, and pray that God may grant unto you every good and perfect gift. I am now in the world and must fight my fight, but I know that that power which alone can subdue the enemy will be my strength and shield if I but walk circumspectly. I know too that the testimony of words will avail nothing, but that it is my life that must speak. In the selection of the evening portion for to-day I read, 'Ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord. Walk as children of the light.' I want my life to say this for me. Accept, dear Little Mother, the remembrance of a grateful heart and in the charity of your prayers remember me."

To those who do not know the writers much behind the written words cannot be realized and I find myself saying, "After all what will these pages mean to the public?" To me they are unspeakably precious; they represent so many nights of prayer and anxious days, after the darkness of which they come as the touch of a rosy dawn; they remind me of tears to which they have brought the rainbow gleam of promise. I almost grudge them to other eyes and yet if by their words other hearts may be strengthened, their value will be doubled.

[VI
UNWELCOMED HOME-COMING]

Liberty! How much that word means to all of us! It is the keynote of our Constitution. It is the proud right of every citizen. The very breeze that flutters our starry flag sings of it; the wild forests, the rocky crags, the mountain torrents, the waving grasses of the wide-stretching prairies echo and reecho it. Yet much as we may think we know of the fullness, sweetness and power of that word, we cannot form an estimate of its meaning to one who is in prison. He has lost the gift and those who have it not, can often prize the treasure more than those who possess it.

People have talked to me about the prisoner becoming quite reconciled to his lot, and in time growing indifferent to the regaining of liberty. I think this is one of the fallacies that the outside world has woven. I do not know from what prison such an idea emanated. So far as my observation goes, I have yet to find the first prisoner who did not long with an unspeakable desire for freedom. Even the older life-men who have been in long enough to outlive all their friends, who have no kith or kin to return to, and for whom there is no home-spot on earth, plead earnestly for the chance to die in liberty. They hope and plan, they appeal and pray for pardon, though it would send them from the familiar sheltering walls into a strange, cold world, but the world of free men. In every cell are men who count all dates by one date, the day coming to them in the future when they will be free again. Sometimes it is very far away and yet that does not make it any less vividly present in their thought. The chief use in the calendar is to mark off the passing days and some have even figured off minutely the hours that stand between them and liberty.

There is a weird cry that breaks out sometimes amid the midnight stillness of the prison cell-house, the venting of a heart's repressed longing, "Roll around, 1912," and from other cells other voices echo, each putting in the year of his liberty. I heard the cry break out in chapel one Christmas day as the gathering at their concert broke up, every year being called by the "boys" who looked forward to it as their special year of liberty. "Roll around, 1912." How far away it seems to us even in liberty, but how much further to the man who must view it through a vista of weary toilsome prison days.

Having talked with many just before their dis when the days and hours leave but a few grains to trickle through the glass of time they have watched so closely, I know just what a strain and tension these last days represent. Often the man cannot sleep for nights together under the excitement and the nervous strain proves intense. Through the dark nights of wakefulness he puts the finishing touches to the castles in the air that he has been building through the weary term when with his body in prison, his mind wandered out into the days to come, and hope, battling with fear, painted for him a rainbow in the storm clouds of the future.

Can you imagine how hard and bitter is the awakening for such a man when he returns to life to find himself a marked and branded being, one to be distrusted and watched, pointed out and whispered about, with all too often the door of honest toil shut in his face? The man discharged from prison is not unreasonable. He does not expect an easy path. We do not ask for him a way strewn with roses or a cheer of welcome. He has sinned, he has strayed from the right road, plunged over the precipice of wrong-doing, and it must at best be a hard climb back again. The men do not ask nor do we ask for them an easy position, the immediate restoration of the trust, confidence and sympathy of the world on the day of their return. They know they cannot expect, having thrown away their chances in an evil past, to find them awaiting their return to moral sanity. I have not found them unreasonable and certainly very few have been lazy or unwilling to prove their sincerity. What we do ask for the released prisoner and what we feel he has a right to ask of the world is a chance to live honestly, an opportunity to prove whether or not he has learned his lesson so that he may climb back into the world of freedom and into a useful respectable position where he may be trusted.

When God forgives us He says that our sins and transgressions shall be blotted out like a cloud or cast into the sea of His forgetfulness. He believes in a buried past. The world alas! too often goes back to that wretched old grave to dig up what lies there, and flaunts the miserable skeleton before the eyes of the poor soul, who had fondly hoped that when the law was satisfied to the last day and hour, he had paid for his crime, and might begin afresh with a clean sheet to write a new record.

How often we hear the term "ex-convict." Do the people who use it ever stop to think that the wound is as deep and the term as odious as that of "convict" to the man who has been in prison? When he is liberated, when the law has said, "Go in peace and sin no more," he is a free man, and no one has the right to regard him as other than this. Any name which marks him out is a cruel injustice. If the State provided for the future of these men; if they were not dependent on their own labors for their daily bread, it would not be quite so ghastly, but when one thinks that this prejudice and marking of discharged prisoners, robs them of the chance of gaining a living, and in many instances forces them back against their will into a dishonest career, one can realize how truly tragic the situation is.

Many a time one can pick up a daily paper and see the headlines, "So and So to be Liberated To-morrow," or, "Convict ... will return to the world," or some such announcement. If a man who is at all notorious has finished a term in prison, the article tells of the crime he committed five, six or even ten years before; what he did; how he did it; why he did it. Some account of his imprisonment—with an imaginary picture of himself in his cell—may be added, with the stripes in evidence, and even a chain and ball to make it more realistic. This heralds the day of his discharge. What a welcome back after his weary paying of the penalty through shame and loneliness, toil and disgrace, mingled often with bitter tears of repentance during those best years lost from his life forever! This raking up of the past reminds his friends and acquaintances of the wretched story which had been nearly forgotten, and tells it to many more who had not heard of it. Is this fair? Perhaps it may be said that this is part of the penalty of doing wrong. I answer that it should not be! In a civilized land our wrong-doers must be punished by proper lawful means. The law does not require this publicity after release. Why should the world ask it? Besides that, could we not quote the recommendation given of old that only those who are without sin have the right to cast stones, and, if that precept were lived up to, very few would ever be cast at all, for the saint in heart and life would be charitable.

It does not take many days of tramping in a fruitless search for work, or many rebuffs and slights, to shake for the most sanguine man the foundation of those castles he saw in the air before his term expired. When money is gone, and there is no roof to cover the weary head, no food to stop the gnawing of hunger, and no friend at hand to sympathize, the whole airy structure topples to the ground amid the dust and ashes of his fond hopes, and the poor man learns in bitterness of heart an anger against society that makes him more dangerous and desperate than he ever was before.

Much is said of the habitual criminal. Some contend that he is born, that, as a poor helpless infant, he is doomed to a career of crime and vice. Others believe that such lives are the outcome of malformation of brain and skull, and yet others have their own pet theories to account for the large number of "repeaters," as they are called in some states, "old-timers," or "habituals," as they are known elsewhere. I have personally known many of these men and have traced their lives, talked with them heart to heart, and I can tell the world, as my profound conviction, that the habitual criminal is made, not born; manufactured by man, not doomed by a monster-god; that such criminals are the result of the lack of charity, of knowledge or thought or whatever else you may like to call it, that makes the world shrink from and doom the sinner to a return to sin, that treads further down in the mire the man who has fallen.

What is a man to do on leaving prison with his friends dead or false to him, with no home, little money, the brand of imprisonment upon him, nervous, unstrung, handicapped with the loss of confidence in himself, and with neither references nor character? The cry of the world is, "Let the man go to work; if he is honest, and proves himself so, then we will trust him and stretch out a hand to help him." Ah, then if that day ever comes to him, he will not need your outstretched hand. Your chance to help and strengthen him will have passed forever; the credit of his success will be all his own, but few can reach that happy day. It is easy to say, let the man work, but where shall he find occupation; who wants the man who can give no clear account of himself? If in honesty of heart he tells the truth and states, "I am straight from prison," he is told to go on his way, and often the voice that gives the command is harsh with indignant contempt and loathing, and yet this man has one inalienable right in common with all his fellow-men, the right to live, and to live, the man must have bread. Some have said to me that it is cruel that the right to end their lives is denied them, for should they commit suicide they would only be condemned, and if they attempted it and were not successful, they would be imprisoned for trying to do away with that which no man helped them to make endurable.

These released men are not of the beggar class. Their hands are eager for work. Their brains have a capacity for useful service, yet they have to stand idle and starve, or turn to the old activities and steal. Does the world say this is exaggerated? I declare I have again and again had proof of it. I believe that with hundreds who are now habitual criminals, and have made themselves experts in their nefarious business, there was a day when they truly wanted to be honest and tried to follow up that desire, but found the chance denied them.

Of course the man who has a home, who has friends standing by him or who is a very skilled workman can escape this trial in a great measure, but I speak of the many who are friendless, and hence must face the world alone. It has been said by those who would excuse their apathy and lack of interest in the question, that, while there are honest workmen unemployed, they do not see why people should concern themselves about the returning criminal. This is very poor logic. You might as well argue that it is sentimental to feed with care our sick in the hospitals, because there are able bodied folk starving in the streets of our cities. The Spartans took their old and sick and weak to the caves of the mountains and left them there to meet death. Perhaps that was the most convenient way of getting out of their problems and shirking a care that meant trouble and expense. But we are not in long-ago pagan Sparta but in twentieth century Christian America. Quite apart from his claim on our sympathy as followers of Christ, in the purely selfish light of the interest of the community, it is dangerous to deprive men of the chance of making an honest living. Naturally they will then prey on others and the problem will become more and more complicated as they go farther from rectitude and honesty.

I know some writers of fiction have played on this theme of the poor worthy workman and the unworthy "ex-prisoner" with telling effect. They have made those who tried to help the latter appear in the light of foolish sentimentalists while the workman is depicted as starving for want of the friendship they refuse him. This however is but a stage trick of literary coloring. The honest workman has his union behind him; he is often out of work through its orders; if he does not belong to the union, he at least has a character and, in this age of philanthropy, charity and many missions, he can apply for aid which will be speedily given, if he proves that he is deserving. He may be unfortunate but he has not behind him the record, around him the almost insurmountable difficulties of the man from prison. We ought to help the latter because in most instances he cannot help himself. Alas, there are very few ready to render practical help, writers of fiction to the contrary.

I do not advocate carrying him and thus making him dependent upon others. I do not believe in pauperizing any one. Give him a fair start and then let him take his own chance with any other workman and by his own actions stand or fall.

I was visiting my Hope Hall on one occasion after a lengthy western trip. Many new men who had returned during my absence were anxious for personal interviews and so I spent most of the day in this occupation. One man who was ushered into my presence was considerably older than any other of the newcomers. Grasping my hand he told me with tears in his eyes of his gratitude for the Home. I asked him if he was happy. "Happy," he answered, "why I am happier than I have ever been in my life." As we talked I studied his face. I could recognize no criminal trait and I wondered at one of his age with hair already white, being friendless and homeless and at the place where he must begin life all over again. I came to the conclusion that he had probably served a very long term for some one offense committed in his early manhood. It is not my custom to bring up the past. We do not catechise our men concerning their deeds of the past. If it will help a man to tell me in confidence any part of his story, I gladly listen, but I never make one feel that I am eager to learn the wretched details that in many instances are better buried and forgotten. In this case, however, I diverged from my rule sufficiently to ask this man whether he had done a very long term, that I might answer to myself some of those questions that would better help me to prove myself his friend in the future. "No," he answered with a smile, "I have that to be thankful for; I have never been sentenced to any very long term. I have only done five short five year bits." Just think of it! Twenty-five years in all! The record of an habitual criminal indeed. Speaking afterwards to one of my workers, who knew the man well, I asked him how it was that this had happened. He told me that it was just the old story, that could be recorded about many others. In his youth this man had committed a crime which called for a five year term of imprisonment. He had been overwhelmed with shame and regret, and during that first term in prison had learned his lesson. During that period his father and mother both died; he came back into the world homeless, friendless, a stranger. In his pocket he had a few dollars given by the State and he started out hopefully to look for work. He was met by rebuff, disappointment and failure; then came hungry days and nights, when he had no money to pay for lodging, and had to sleep in any sheltered corner where he might hope to escape the vigilance of the police. Then followed starvation, and he returned to what seemed the inevitable; he stole that he might live; was arrested and sent back to prison. This was repeated after each discharge, until at last he had Hope Hall to turn to, a haven of refuge from the miserable sin and failure of his life.

A story even more startling was told me by a chaplain of one of our State Prisons. The man of whom he spoke was brought up in the most wretched environment; his parents were drunkards, his home did not deserve the name. As a mere child he was cast out on the streets to earn his own living by begging or theft. If he did not bring back enough at night to suit his parents, he was beaten and thrown out on the streets to sleep. He became early an expert young thief; from picking pockets he advanced to a more dangerous branch of the profession and became a burglar. When about eighteen years of age he was arrested and given a long term in prison. During that term he was for the first time taught the difference between right and wrong; he learned to read and write in the night school and thus was opened up a new world before him. He heard the teachings of the chaplain from the chapel platform and for the first time, he understood that it was possible even for him to live a different kind of life from that which had seemed to be his destiny. On his discharge from prison, he was a very different man from what he had been on his admission. He went out with the firm resolve to do right. He laughed at difficulties, saying cheerily that he was going to work and feeling in his heart that with his earnest desire to do so faithfully, he must make a success of the future. After a few days of effort in the big city, he found that it was not so easy to obtain employment as he had anticipated. Day after day he sought it earnestly, always meeting with the same disappointment. Leaving the city, he tramped out to the surrounding towns and villages; for several weeks this man sought for an honest start in life, but no hand was stretched out to help him. His money was long since spent; he had to sleep at night under some hedge or in some secluded alley way. The food on which he subsisted was the broken pieces and partly decayed fruit picked from the ash barrels of the more fortunate. At last flesh and blood could stand the strain no longer, and he returned to Boston, his strength gone, his mind benumbed and a fever raging in his blood. Crossing the Common on a bleak rainy afternoon, he stumbled and lost consciousness. Hours passed and in the shadow he was unnoticed. The poor, lost, unwanted outcast lay there, with the great happy busy world rushing on within a few feet of him. A man who was crossing the Common chanced to stumble over the prostrate figure. He stooped to see what lay in his path and finding that it was a man, he turned him so that the lamplight fell upon his face and then with an exclamation called him by name.

Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. This poor, dying, friendless man had been found by perhaps the one man who knew him best in that great city. Thinking that he was sleeping or perhaps drunk, the man shook him, saying, "Who's going to build a monument for you that you lie out here on the Common catching your death of cold?" Finding no answer, he repeated his question, adding, "Trying to be honest, are you? Who cares enough to build your monument, I want to know." Then he realized that the man was past speech, and lifting him from the ground, he tenderly guided the staggering foot-steps to his own home. True, his home consisted of rooms above a saloon; true, this Samaritan was himself the leader of a gang of burglars, and yet the deed was one of charity, and his was the one hand stretched out to help this sick and helpless man. For weeks he was carefully nursed and tended. The doctor was called to watch over him. When the fever left him and strength returned, nourishing food was provided, and when he was well enough to dress he was welcomed in the room where the gang met and not in any sense made to feel that he had been a burden. All this time no effort had been made to draw him back into the old way of living. One night as he sat at a little distance he heard his friends plan a burglary. They had a map stretched out upon the table before them and had marked upon it the several positions to be occupied by different members of the gang, some to enter, while others watched and guarded the house. One point was unguarded and while they were seeking to readjust their company to fill this place, the young man rose and coming to the table, he laid his finger on the spot and said, "Put me down there." The leader of the gang, who had proved so truly his friend, laid his hand upon his shoulder and said quickly, "Don't you do it! You have been trying to be honest, stick to it! You have had a long term in prison and are sick of it. Don't go back to the old life." But the boy turning on him (and there was much truth in his answer) said, "When I was sick and hungry, who cared? When I was trying to be honest, who helped me? When I lay dying on the common, who was it stretched out a helping hand, who paid my doctor's bill and who nursed me? You did and with you I shall cast in my lot." He would not be dissuaded. That night he not only went out and aided in the burglary but was caught by the police. In his trial the fact came out that he had only been a few months out of prison. The fact that he had been so soon detected in crime with his old gang was evidence of his criminal propensities and he was returned to prison for an extra long term as an old offender.

There is, however, a court above where all cases will be tried again and there the Judge will take loving cognizance of the hard struggle, the awful loneliness and suffering, the earnest desire to do right that went before this fall, and His judgment will be tempered with divine mercy.

The watching and hounding of men to prison by unprincipled detectives is not unknown in this country. In fact, you can find such cases often quoted in the newspapers and every prison has its quota of men who could tell you terrible stories of what they have endured. I do not want to appear hostile to the Detective Department, for detectives are necessary and many may be conscientious men. The criminal element know and respect the conscientious detective, but they have a most profound contempt for the man who vilely abuses his authority and seems to have no conscience where one known as an "ex-prisoner" is concerned. Revelations have been made in many of our big cities of the blackmail levied upon criminals and the threats which have been used to extort money. There is no need of my quoting cases to prove this point, as it has been clearly proved over and over again in police investigations which are fresh in the memory of the public.

The man from prison is a marked man and hence an easy prey to the unscrupulous detective. Jean Val Jean, the hero of Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables" is perhaps looked upon as a fictitious creation of the great novelist's brain, but he is a reality! There are Jean Val Jeans in the prisons of this land and many a man struggling to remake his life, longing to forget the disgraceful past, has been dogged and haunted by his crime, to be taken back at last to the horror of a living death which, he had hoped, would never claim him again.

The impression and opinion that there is no good in one who has been in prison not only robs him of sympathy on the part of the good and honest and makes him an easy prey to the unscrupulous, but lessens the compunction of society for the wrong it does him. "Oh, well," cry the righteous in justification of their actions, "he would probably have done the first job that offered, so it makes no odds. Criminals are safer in prison anyway." So justice is drugged with excuses and the helpless one she should have protected is handed over to rank injustice, with the excuse that he deserves his fate. Has not the sword of justice once been raised over him, setting him aloof from his fellows?

Some years ago a young man who had fully learned his lesson in prison was discharged from Sing Sing, with the earnest desire to retrieve the past. At first it was difficult to find a position, but at last he obtained employment with a large firm where he served some months, giving every satisfaction to his employers. As time wore on, he felt that the sad shadow of the past was gone forever. One day as he walked up Broadway carrying under his arm a parcel which he was to deliver to a customer, he felt a hand suddenly fall on his shoulder. The cheery tune he had been whistling abruptly ceased. It seemed as if a cloud passed over the sunshine obscuring it as he turned to recognize in the man who accosted him, the detective who had once sent him to state prison. "What are you doing?" asked the detective. "I am working for such and such a firm," he said. "What have you got under your arm?" was the next question. "Some clothes I am taking to a customer." "We'll soon find out the truth of this," said the detective and despite the entreaties of the man, he marched him back to the store, walked with him past his fellow-employees and accosted the manager. "Is this man in your employ?" he asked. The question was answered in the affirmative. "Did you send him with these clothes to a customer?" Again the satisfactory answer. "Oh, well," said the detective, "it is all right but I thought I had better inquire and let you know that this man is an ex-convict." Then he went on his way, but his work had been well done. The young man was disgraced before all his fellow-clerks and was promptly dismissed, not for dishonesty, not for laziness, not because he had proved unworthy of trust, but simply and solely because he had once been in prison. Once more he was made to suffer for the crime which the law said he had fully expiated.

The following instance I give from one of our daily papers, only the other day.

"How far a policeman may go in an effort to arrest persons charged with no specific crime, but who have their pictures in the Rogues' Gallery, may be determined by Commissioner Greene as a result of a shooting in Twenty-third Street yesterday, when that thoroughfare was crowded.

"A detective sergeant, while in a car, saw seated near the rear door two men whom he recognized, he says, as pickpockets. The men's pictures and descriptions being, as alleged, in Inspector McClusky's private album. The detective therefore determined to take them to headquarters.

"When near Lexington Avenue the two men left the car, being closely followed by their pursuer. The detective sergeant called upon them to halt, which they refused to do, and he fired. One of the men says the detective sergeant fired at him, but the detective insists that he fired in the air. Women screamed and men took refuge in entrances to buildings. Two policemen then arrested the men, who gave their names as John Kelley and Daniel Cherry. Commissioner Greene has ordered an investigation."

I need add no comment. The story is merely an illustration of the old adage, "Give a dog a bad name, and you might as well hang him." I do not want my remarks to be one-sided. The detective officer is needed. Some of the officers are very able, bright men and I have known some who have been fair-minded and good at heart but that great abuses of power have been practiced and many men made victims to the old idea that the once marked man has no rights, no honor, and can come to no possible good, is an incontestable fact. Public opinion, steered by Christian charity regarding the rights of those who cannot protect themselves, is the safe-guard to which we must appeal.

Perhaps the bitterest experience is that of the man who succeeds in getting a start, who strives hard and in time makes for himself a position by faithful, honest work and who after it all, has the building of years torn down, and his life blasted by the unjustifiable raking up of the past. A story startling the state of Ohio was flashed all over the country not long since, which very pointedly illustrated this fact. A man in his youth had committed an offense which had sent him to prison for five years; I believe it was the striking of a blow in a moment of anger; he served his term and it proved the lesson of his life. Coming out of prison, he moved into the state of Ohio and found work in Columbus. It was humble work at the very bottom of the ladder, but, as years passed, his industry was rewarded by great success and at last he became a very prominent and wealthy business man. He had had to confide his past to one or two people in the city, so that when he commenced to work, he would not be doing so under false colors. As time went on and wealth, social position and important business connections became his, these people in a most unprincipled manner commenced the levying of blackmail. For many years his life was made miserable, and he was thus robbed of thousands of dollars.

There was nothing dishonorable in his life; he was a perfectly straight, successful business man, but he knew well that the prejudice against the man that has been in prison is so great that his successful career would be ruined and he himself ostracized, if these blackmailers published the fact which they threatened to reveal, that he had once been in prison. At last when he could stand this wretched position no longer, he made a statement to the papers, through his lawyer, publishing to the world the fact of his early imprisonment, that he might thus break the weapons of his enemies. If the world's attitude to the returned prisoner were more rational and its judgment were passed on his after life and conduct instead of the mere fact of the past penalty, such a state of things would be impossible.

Many will have read of the case that came up in the New York papers, of the fireman who had served faithfully for fifteen years in the fire department, receiving honorable mention for his bravery. In his youth he had been in a prison, had served part of his term, from which he had been pardoned by the then governor of our state; during the investigation in the fire department this man was called to the stand, and immediately his past was probed into by the opposing lawyer. He pleaded with tears in his eyes, that the fifteen years of faithful service should have lived down that one offense of his youth, but mercy was not shown him and the head lines of the papers on the following day announced in the most glaring type the "Ex-convict's" testimony. Faithfulness, honesty, courage were all as nothing compared to the stain which years of suffering and hard labor in prison ought to have obliterated.

I had watched with interest the career of one of our "boys" who had been a most notorious prisoner, living a desperate life and having long experience in crime, which had brought him to the position where many spoke of him as beyond hope. He had been out of prison over a year and was doing well; he had been graduated from our Home and held a position to which we sent him, most creditably, and was now living with his wife in a little flat in Harlem, working in a shop where his service was giving thorough satisfaction. Some flats were entered and property stolen in the upper part of the city. There was no trace of the perpetrator of the crime. A detective who had known this man in the past, learning that he was in the city, started out to hunt for him. He discovered the fact that he lived in Harlem: without a scrap of evidence against him, he went to the house and put him under arrest, and the first I knew of the case was a flaring account in the papers headed, "Mrs. Booth's Protégé Gone Wrong." We received almost immediately a letter from him from the Tombs, and one of my representatives went at once to see our "boy." The second newspaper article gave an interview with the detective, in which he mentioned the fact that he had been at my office and that I had told him that I had long since suspected this young man of wrong-doing; that I had no faith or confidence in him, and could no longer help him. At the time the interview was supposed to have taken place, I was fifteen hundred miles away. When the case was brought up for investigation, my representative was present to stand by the man, and to tell the judge what we knew concerning him. There not being a particle of evidence to connect him with the crime, the judge, with some irritation, was about to dismiss the case, when the detective stepped forward, and asked that the man be held to enable him to make further investigation. "What are you going to investigate?" asked the judge, "you have no evidence to go on." "Oh," said the detective, "I want to look up his past; he has been many times in prison." Then, I am glad to say, the judge meted out justice, and turning to the detective, reproved him most severely. He told him that he was there to judge present facts and evidence, not to condemn a man because of his past, and that it did not matter what the man had been, if there was no evidence that he had perpetrated crime, no one had any right to hold him or to investigate records that did not concern the case. The man on his discharge went back to his former employment, but it had been a severe and bitter trial, for naturally he felt in his own heart the injustice of the whole incident. He has, however, courageously fought through his dark days and now for years has been a successful and prosperous man.

Of course there are men who come out of prison planning to do evil. They are those who have not learned their lesson, and to whom imprisonment has proved merely a deterring influence instead of a reforming one. Some men deliberately go to the first saloon to celebrate their discharge and some may be found in the old haunts the first night of freedom. But even with these cases, which are apparently utterly hardened and careless, there may have been a time before they drifted so far, when they also longed for the friendly hand, which might have helped them back from the deep waters to the safe ground of honest living. Careless and hardened as they may seem to-day, we have no right to think that there may not be an awakening to better possibilities to-morrow; so while there is life, we should see to it that so far as our part of the question is concerned, there is the possibility of hope also.

[VII
WELCOMED HOME]

"Home, home, sweet sweet home,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home."

How often and how fervently are those simple words sung out by earnest loyal hearts from end to end of the English-speaking world. The refrain has burst forth at Christmas gatherings, at home-comings from school, on every festive occasion, around all true home hearths, and its echo has been heard on plain and prairie, amid mountain peaks and forest fastness, as wanderers have in thought turned homeward. There is perhaps no place where the old tune and well loved words sound with more pathos, than when the refrain is raised in a prison audience and rolled through the chapel or around the gallery by a thousand manly voices. Heads are bowed, eyes grow dim with tears and sometimes lips tremble too much to frame the words. I have heard it thus and have tried to read the faces of the men as the song called up to them the past. Some have sung with a longing and yearning in which still lingered the note of glad possession, while for them arose a picture of a dear home-spot where they were still held in loving remembrance and to which in the future they would again be welcomed. Others under still deeper emotion have seen a vision of the home that was, the memory of childhood's happy hours gone forever with the passing of the mother-heart into the far-away grave. Fathers sometimes drop their heads upon the seats before them and strong men though they are, give way to bitter tears as they picture the little white-robed tots who kneel up in their beds to pray that papa may some day come home, and ask the mother over again in childish perplexity why he stays away so long, and then drop to sleep wondering at her tears. But some of those in the great audience know no home as a future bright spot, for they have never known the sacred influence which should be every man's birthright. Even in their hearts there is a longing to possess that which they have missed, and the song awakens a strange, untranslatable thrill that makes them feel lonely and forsaken without knowing why.

Quite early in the history of our work the need of practical help for men on their discharge from prison became very evident. They had given us their confidence and accepted our proffered friendship, had made resolves to live honest lives in the future and would go forth to be met by the difficulties and sometimes almost insurmountable obstacles awaiting them in an unfriendly world. Was it not natural to foresee that they would turn in their difficulty to those who had been their friends in prison? What then were we to do? Give them advice, bid them trust in God? All very well in the right place, but, to the penniless, homeless man, cold charity. We realized that to make our work thoroughly practical, we must be as ready and able to help the man on his discharge, as to counsel him during his incarceration. To do this successfully, we soon understood that for the homeless and friendless man we must provide a home. Some who have concerned themselves with a scientific discussion of plans to help discharged prisoners have argued against the wisdom of such a step. They speak of the danger of congregating men and would, I suppose, advocate the finding work for the man on the day of his discharge from prison. It is always easy to theorize, discuss and argue when you are not in the midst of an urgent need and obliged at once to face the subject and to decide by the circumstances instead of by your own worked-out conclusions. Practical experience is that which proves and alone can prove the wisdom or folly of any step. We have found in our work that it is not possible or practicable to find work for these men on the day of their discharge. Many a one coming from State Prison is absolutely unfit to take his place in the busy working world so soon after his prison experience. On the other hand, is it wise to ask business men to take men whom we have not tested and of whom we know nothing? Some men, indeed many are in downright earnest, but a few may not be, and if one recommends a man without knowing his capacity, suitability or sincerity, one is asking of the employer that which few would care to undertake. If men thus placed at work directly after their discharge fail through inability or lack of nerve and strength, they become utterly discouraged and it is a sore temptation to turn aside to an easier way of gaining a livelihood. If on the other hand, they go wrong, the employer is prejudiced, and the door is shut against others who might have made good use of the chance. I believe this is one of the causes that has brought prison work into disrepute and has made business men adverse to lending a helping hand to men from prison.

That the gathering of men together for a time in a well conducted happy home is not in any way detrimental, but exceedingly helpful, we have had ample time to prove. If there is no home for these who are homeless, where are they to go? Respectable boarding houses and hotels would not willingly receive them and would be beyond their means. They would have to go down to the common lodging houses where they would immediately be liable to meet old companions and be faced again with the temptation of spending their evenings on the street or in the saloon. The rapid improvement physically, mentally and spiritually of those who have come to Hope Hall has spoken more loudly than any arguments or theories could have done. That many men come out of prison in a terribly nervous, unmanned condition is incontestable. Far be it from me, knowing of the improvements made during the last few years in prison management, to cast any reflection on the care of our prisoners, still, the fact is here and must be faced. If we were dealing with horses and cattle, proper care in feeding, exercising, and in the planning of hygienic surroundings would suffice to keep the subjects well and would insure their good condition, for there one has only the body to deal with. In the case of human beings, we must reckon with the heart, brain and sensitive nervous system. Well fed, well clothed, well housed and yet with the mind and heart crushed and sore and anxious, at times almost insane with despair, a man may become a wreck however well treated, and as years pass, he will lose the nerve and force he so much needs for the efforts of the future. Even the most phlegmatic of dispositions, coming out into a world after years of the strictly ordered routine prison life, feels strangely cut adrift and utterly bewildered in the rush of the world that has forged ahead in its racing progress while he has been so long side-tracked. Fresh air, a good sleeping place, friendly faces and cheering Christian influence with elevating surroundings mean everything to a man in these early, anxious days.

Thank God some have homes to go to, where a loving mother or a tender wife stands between them and the gazing, critical world. There they can regain self-control and can have a breathing space, before they face the struggle which is almost sure to await them. But what of those who have no home, no friends, no place to turn? Especially does this need confront us in the case of the long time prisoner. Think of coming back into life after fifteen or twenty years' imprisonment! After six weeks in a hospital room, the streets seem to us a roaring torrent of danger. One feels as if every car were bent on running one down and the very pedestrians are possessed to one's imagination with a desire to collide with one at every step. The weakened nerves are alarmed at the unusual stir and noise; one's eyes are dazzled at the glare of light and one's feet seem to move, not with one's own volition, but with some notion of their own as to where they should stagger and it is a relief to creep away into some quiet corner. Now picture the return of one who has been banished behind high gates and kept in the close limits of cell and prison workshop for twenty or thirty years. The "L" road, cable cars, electric trolleys, sky scrapers and countless other wonders of the age are absolutely new to him, and in the crowded streets, the throngs of human beings pressing hither and thither are all strangers to this man from the inside world. Added to this is the knowledge of his own condition, and he is an easy prey to an abnormally developed fancy. He imagines that every man who meets him can tell whence he has come. His very nervousness and lack of confidence make him act suspiciously.

Then there are the sick. The fact that a man has been more or less ailing for months is not a cause for detention in prison. When his term expires, the authorities have no power to keep him and naturally such a man would bitterly resent the lengthening of his term; and yet he may be far too ill to undertake work and in just the condition when kindness and care would mean everything to both present and future.

Surely it is needless to picture more causes for the step that we felt led to take as the second phase of our work. The "boys" needed a home and the need called for speedy action. The home was planned and opened six months after the work in prison had started, and hundreds to-day look back to it as a blessed haven of rest; a bright spot which has been to many the first and only one in life. When we first started, the plans were all talked over in prison. I took the men, not the public, into my confidence. The idea was warmly welcomed and every item of news about the project looked for with keenest interest. Our idea was to have a place that would be a real home and not an institution. We did not want a mission in the city with sleeping rooms attached; certainly not a place placarded "Prisoners' Home," "Shelter for Ex-convicts," etc. Our friends were no longer prisoners, our guests were never to be called ex-convicts. It was to be a home hidden away from the public, and as much as possible patterned after that to which the mother would welcome her boy were she living and able to do so. In Sing Sing Prison we named our Home, and the name chosen was "Hope Hall." We felt that that name would have no brand in it and we earnestly prayed that it might prove the threshold of hope to those who passed through its doors to the new life of the future. In the matter of furnishing, the same idea of homelikeness and comfort without extravagance was carried out. Pretty coloring and light cheeriness have always been aimed at as affording the best contrast to the gloom and dreariness of the narrow prison cell.

The house we first opened was a large frame building on Washington Heights, that had once been a Club. After two years we moved into the country on Long Island, that we might have a home of our own and more ground to cultivate. We purchased a ten acre farm and by degrees have enlarged and improved the house, reclaimed and cultivated the ground and made a home which proves a veritable surprise to the many who have looked forward to it for years, and yet even in their dreams have not painted it as brightly as it deserved. If you give, give freely, that the receiver may feel that you have done your best and then you will appeal to his true heart gratitude. If your giving is with many limitations the receiver will say, "Oh, I see they think anything is good enough for me," and your intended blessing may lose all its value. We have realized this fact and borne it in mind in all our work. As our superintendent showed a newcomer around the Home on one occasion, the man turned to him and with eyes filled with tears exclaimed, "Oh! I ought to be good after this." The same thought has been seen in many lives and we have wanted our Home to so truly fulfill its purpose that it might form a veritable barrier between the men and their past.

Of course the undertaking was not an easy one. We had no capital behind us, the Volunteer movement was then but a young organization and our work in the prisons was at a stage where people looked at it as a doubtful experiment. Money was gathered slowly and very uncertainly. Some months, through our meetings we received very cheering returns; during others, especially in the heat of summer we had to face grave anxiety and often did not know where the next dollar was coming from. On one such dark day, when bills were due and the funds exhausted, at a meeting of my League in prison, I told the "boys" of the burden I was bearing. Already we had so truly become sharers together of this work that it seemed natural to lighten my heart by talking freely to the "boys" and asking them to pray with me for the financial help we so needed. Some weeks after this as I opened the pile of mail that lay on my desk, I came to an envelope marked as coming from the warden's office. Laying other letters aside I hastened to open it, thinking it might be the news of some home-coming or other urgent business connected with one of our many friends. There were only a few words on the sheet of paper, but the enclosure proved to be a check for four hundred and forty-seven dollars. This was the result of a collection taken up by the men among themselves, in token of their appreciation of and confidence in our work. This money represented a sacrifice the outside world can hardly compute, for it was spared from the small sums they had on deposit, which could furnish them with little comforts or necessities during the long years of prison life. To say how much comfort and strength my heart received from this thought and love so practically expressed, would be impossible through the poor medium of type and paper, but together with many subsequent signs, it made it possible for me to realize how truly the "boys" were with us. To have them in full accord with the work means more to me than would the plaudits of the public or the patronage of the wealthy.

As years have passed, many dear friends have been raised up to help us and they have done nobly. A large number have joined our Maintenance League, paying a given sum monthly or yearly, and some very helpful and generous donations have been received. Still the raising of the funds is our one dark cloud and appears our hardest problem. For five years past, this has forced me to spend much of my time on the lecture platform, earning money to meet the growing needs of the work. Fortunately through inheritance I am personally independent, so that my husband and I take no salary for our services, but even giving as I do all my earnings to the work, the fact remains that time thus spent is taken from my direct purpose and is a great expenditure of effort and strength sorely needed elsewhere.

When the Home was first started we laid down a few simple rules to guard and govern it. It should be borne in mind that it is not a home for criminals, it is a home for men who earnestly desire to do right. They come there because they have done with the old life, and our first condition is that those who come to Hope Hall must come direct from State Prison. This is to guard our family of earnest men from those who might come to Hope Hall as a last resort after spending their money in the old haunts. We drew no narrow lines of eligibility. The Catholic was to be as welcome as the Protestant, the Jew as the infidel. It was not necessary for a man to have been a member of our League, though of course we feel that the League can but prove a most helpful preparation for the Home. Another strict rule that the men have very deeply appreciated is the exclusion of the public. From the first, we wished the sacredness of their home privacy to be respected. All too long have these our friends been marked men, pointed out and associated with their crimes and made to feel that they are the lawful prey of the morbidly curious. The rule was therefore made that no one who had not served at least one term in prison was to have admission to the Home. Very few of our most intimate friends have ever been there and they have been selected from among those who, having known the work within prison walls, were somewhat acquainted with the men. We have no public meetings at Hope Hall. The family prayers and Sunday services are often attended by men who have returned for an hour or two's visit. The testimonies given by such are most helpful and encouraging, but we do not believe in inviting the outside world to hear these one-time prisoners relate the history of their crimes.

Chancing to pick up a book the other day which dealt with the reaching of "the submerged," I found the following account. A worker amid these "under-world" scenes had smuggled in some wealthy and charitably inclined people and while his poorer guests were eating, he enlightened and entertained his rich acquaintances as follows: "This gentleman with the bullet head very closely cropped, returned home only forty-eight hours ago, after two years' absence for harboring mistaken notions of the privileges of uninvited guests who make stealthy and forcible entrance. This other gentleman with the foxy face and furtive eyes has the distinction of being the cleverest jewel thief in London. As with all children of genius his demon is at times too much for him. Would Mrs. —— therefore look to her gems and precious stones? That slip of a girl in the back recently faced the law for pocket-picking and in the dock picked the pocket of the guardian who stood beside her, a pretty feat which gave rivals a thrill of envy. Yonder youth with the well anointed head and the fore-lock curled over his eye is the promising leader of a band of Hooligans. They could see the belt buckle gleam at his waist; that buckle has knocked three men senseless within ten days. The distinguished looking individual in the corner with the large aggressive jowl wore the broad arrow for ten years because of a sportive freak which an illiberal law construed as manslaughter, and the man next to him likewise with a striking countenance stood his trial on a capital charge and came off unscathed, though moral certainty was dead against him." Now all this may be very clever from the pen of a novelist and the speaking flippantly of crime and criminals may be looked upon as literary license. The book in all likelihood will never be read in the "under-world" where feelings would be outraged by such a travesty on charity, but when one comes to the reality, what could be more ghastly than the treating of one's fellow-men as though they constituted some strange species to be studied, exhibited and joked about. On the other hand the harm is quite as grievous in allowing men to exploit in testimony before the public the evil deeds of the past. Let them say all they like about the love and mercy and power of the Christ, but let the evil, shameful past be buried in the grave of the long ago.

Having been in the past for years connected with a movement that encouraged the recital of such testimonies, I know of what I speak when I say that they are harmful, and that talking of wrong-doing is often the first step to feeling one can do it again. The shame and humiliation that should be felt are soon lost to those who talk much of what they have been, and a spirit of exaggeration and almost boastfulness takes its place.

No reporters have been permitted to visit Hope Hall. I was assured that the accounts I could thus secure of the work, would be most helpful and would give our Movement wide public recognition, if I would consent to waive this rule. On the other hand it would do incalculable harm in prison, making the men feel that the work was done more or less for the advertising of the Movement, and it would keep from us the most self-respecting and earnest of the men. In this work the foremost thought has been and must always be the "boys." We view questions through their eyes, try to enter understandingly into their feelings and in so doing the work must be kept on lines that hold their approval and endorsement.

No discrimination as to crimes is made in the welcoming of our guests; that is a matter of the past. Sin is sin, and we do not ask if it has been little or big, when the sinner has repented. The number of terms served, the nationality or the color of the man make to us no more difference than their creed. All men who come straight from prison and need Hope Hall are eligible. When they have come, they are expected to behave as gentlemen. The rules are only such as would govern any well regulated family and are made for the protection of the men against those who might spoil the peace and comfort of the Home. We strongly urge silence regarding the past and as far as possible the forgetting of its sad memories. During the day all the men able to work are busy. We have no industries such as mat or broom making, which we feared would spoil the home aspect of the place, besides robbing the men of their ambition to strike out in work for themselves. They are employed in the work of the house; some are busy in the laundry, some at painting, carpentering or building; others have the important position of cooks; still there is also the garden, farming and care of horse and cow to be remembered. The extension to our building with the twelve new rooms was built entirely by the men. When there is no building or farming to be done other occupations can easily be found.

In the evening they can gather in the music room to play games, of which we have a good supply, or to listen to the phonograph or amuse themselves with songs around the piano. We have already a rather nice library and those who wish to read or write quietly in the parlors can do so, while on summer nights the broad piazzas offer a quiet, cool and inviting resting-place. There is no regulation as to the length of stay of any man who comes to us. Some can obtain work much more readily than others. The able bodied laborer and skilled mechanic have the best chance; in spring time farm hands are in great demand, while the man who has never done honest work in his life before or the one who has been a bookkeeper or held some other position of trust are the ones most disqualified for the next new start in life. Many are well able and willing to work after a week or two weeks with us; others may need months to strengthen and nerve them for their life struggle. I was told by those who foretold disappointment that I should have to deal with many men too lazy to work, who would come and stay at the Home as long as we would support them. This has not been my experience. On the contrary the difficulty has been to instill patience, so anxious are they to launch out for themselves and prove their sincerity.

I remember the case of a man who came to us in the early days. He had held a good paying position in the past before the yielding to temptations which gave him his term in prison, but of course that record was now against him. To work with pick and shovel, however anxious he was to do so, would have broken him down in a few days, for his health was wretched. During his stay with us his conduct was above reproach and his work in charge of our dining-room was most systematic and helpful. When he was graduated, it was to take the position of dish washer in a restaurant, which he filled faithfully for over a year. It meant long hours and small pay, yet he persevered and held the position. From this he went to a better place in the country. There the character given him helped him yet higher and now after six years he is in a fine position and is receiving good wages. He is married and is settled in a very comfortable little home. He feels that it was worth the year of dish-washing to climb steadily to the position he now holds.

Not long since a man came to us who was a gentleman by education and training, a very bright and able fellow, whose fall had come by getting embroiled in corrupt politics and by extravagant, intemperate living. He thoroughly learned his lesson in prison, and showed the most earnest desire to start right in the new life. As no suitable position opened, his stay at the home had to be a long one, but each week saw a marked improvement in his character. Finding that the officer was in need of a man to take charge of the laundry, he volunteered and from early to late was as faithful over the wash tub and ironing-board as if they had been double entry or the balancing of office books. He graduated to a humble position in a big New York house where we confidently expect him to rise by his hard work and ability. Though his salary is as yet small, he writes to us letters full of contentment and gratitude, showing in every way that the new spirit has entered into him, proving clearly that he realizes that life is a thing that must be made, not merely spent.

To many the Home brings back sweet memories of a past long lost to them, but perhaps those to whom it means the most, are those who have never had much of a home to remember. It is to them a revelation, and it is wonderful to watch the development in disposition and character that takes place under the new experience. My secretary was driving away from Hope Hall after one of the evening gatherings, and as the carriage turned out of the driveway into the road, there was a pause that she might look back at the brightly lighted windows gleaming hospitably through the shade-trees which so prettily surround it. After a long look the man who was driving turned and said, "Ah! you don't know what this means to us 'boys'; the Little Mother does not, well as she understands us. No one can know but an old-timer. I tell you when you have never had a place in all your life to call home, it means something to pass through these gates and say, 'This is my home,' to go into a room at night and feel, 'This is my room,' to lie down on a bed of which you can say, 'This is my bed.'" Then, as they drove on, he spoke of his past, and coming to the last imprisonment, which in his case was, I believe, five or six years, he added: "When the Little Mother came, I used to go into the chapel and listen with the other 'boys.' I liked to hear her talk, and I respected the men who joined the League, but I did not think of joining or becoming a Christian. I felt religion wasn't in my line. One day, however, she said, 'Boys, I've got a home for you.' That is what first made me think. I said to myself, 'Here is a woman who thinks enough of me to offer me a home, something I never had before, and if she cares that much, it is time I began to care a little myself.' So I began from that day to try and get ready for my home. When the day of liberty came, the officer on my gang said, 'I shall keep your job for you, for we expect you back before three months are out.' And no wonder he said it, for I had never been able to keep out that long before; but this time I knew it would be different."

A fine tall fellow walked into my office years ago, and the greeting that he would have spoken died on his trembling lips. He could only hold my hand in his, and battle with the tears that unnerved him. When he had taken his seat by my desk, and I had told him how glad I was over his home-coming, he said, "Little Mother, I don't know what I should do, were it not for Hope Hall to-day. I am so confused and bewildered by the rush of the great city. So strange to outside life I feel as helpless as a new-born child." Truly he was unnerved. The trembling hand, the nervous start at every sound, the stammering tongue all told the tale too painfully for any mistake. He was not naturally a nervous, emotional man. There was nothing weak or cowardly about him. I was told by companions who had known him that he was a most desperate criminal; nothing thwarted him in his past deeds, even if he had to force his point with the threatening muzzle of a revolver. He was a man of education, could speak and write several languages, was a thorough musician and had much talent and ability in other lines, but he had misused his gifts and had become a notoriously successful forger. Though for years an infidel he had proved himself an earnest Christian as a member of our League and naturally he turned to us after an experience of fifteen years within the walls. The prison from which he came was one from which no part of the surrounding town can be seen. The high walls and close confinement bury the men absolutely from the world they have left. From years of service, he was turned out to face life with but one dollar as capital with which to start in honest living. In his case the warden supplemented the bill with five dollars from his own pocket, which however the man lost in his confusion and hurry at the station. I am glad to add that when I brought the matter to the notice of the governor, and told him that our prisoners were being sent forth into the world in that state, with absolutely no means between them and starvation, he saw to it that better provision was made for them; but even where five or ten dollars is given, it is a very slender barrier between the one-time criminal and the temptations of the old life. The money is soon spent for food, lodging and car fare hither and thither, as they seek work, and what then can they do if they do not find employment? In many stores and factories the men are not paid until the end of the second week after obtaining employment, and during those two weeks while working, they must have money for food and lodging. The man of whom I have just spoken went to Hope Hall and remained there until he was thoroughly able to cope with life. He has since held a position of trust where he had the control of many men and the oversight of responsible work. He won the confidence of all who knew him in the town where he settled. They backed him in starting in business for himself and he is now married and happily settled in life. The prison experience is six years away in the shadow of the sad almost forgotten past.

Not long since, the chaplain of Charlestown, Massachusetts, wrote me of a man whom he very much wanted me to help. He said he believed the authorities would give this man a chance in liberty, if there was some one to vouch for him. He believed that the man was sincere and earnest in his desire to do right. He further stated that the Board whose duty it was to look into the cases of men who might be paroled had expressed their willingness to turn him over to me, if I were disposed to try him and give him a chance. Though only forty-six years of age, this man had spent thirty-one years in prison, counting a juvenile reformatory as the first place of incarceration. The last sentence was for thirty years under the Habitual Criminal Act. We wrote at once offering to take him to Hope Hall and the authorities gave him over to us, thus saving him twelve weary years he would otherwise have had to serve. He was unnerved and strangely restless when he first arrived. The hammock in the sunshine seemed the best place to put him that first day. In six weeks he was a new man, physically and mentally; he had gained fifteen pounds in weight and when I came across him down on his knees weeding the flower-beds, the face that looked up into mine was brown with summer tan and bright with new hope and courage. It could be truly said of this man that he had never had a chance. When his mother died, he told the chaplain he wished he could weep. He wished there was one thing in her life that could be a sweet memory, something he could think of as done for his good, but there was not one bright spot. Mother, father, sister and brother are buried in drunkards' graves and the same curse so wrecked and ruined his life that in the past he thought there was never to be any escape for him. How much Hope Hall with its fresh air, quiet surroundings, good food and cheery companionship mean to such a man only the men themselves can understand.

It is difficult in a work of this kind to chronicle its growth. To us who have been in the midst of it, the development and improvement, advance and victory are very evident, but it would need a carefully-kept journal of many volumes to impart its history to others.

The old farmhouse on Long Island has been altered and enlarged. Old walls and ceilings have been torn down to be replaced by new plaster and paint. The new wing has given us a longer dining-room for our increased family, new kitchens, laundry and storeroom, with overhead a number of new bedrooms. The farm which was somewhat of a wilderness has been put under cultivation; fruit trees, rose-bushes, vines and shrubs added each spring and fall. Each addition means much to us, far more than if we had had large capital to expend. This Home is not only for the "boys" of New York State, but for all the Eastern prisons. They come to us as readily from Charlestown and Trenton as from Sing Sing. Even the prisons we have not visited send to us some, who through the reading of the Gazette have come to realize that they too are welcome.

The Western Home in Chicago has meanwhile been doing a splendid work for the "boys" from Joliet and the middle Western prisons. There we have men mostly on parole; men who would have no chance of getting their parole were it not that we are willing to be sponsors for them. We find them work, keep in touch with them month by month, and report to the prison, until we have the pleasure of handing them their final discharge papers.

The third Hope Hall is in Iowa, and has been founded and given to the "boys" of that state by our dear friend and co-laborer, Hon. L. S. Coffin. Mr. Coffin was one of the pioneers of the state and a large land owner. For a lifetime he has been earnest in temperance work and has proved himself especially the friend of the railroad men. Sometime since, his heart went out to the "boys" in prison. He met and talked with me about the work and expressed his longing to see a Hope Hall opened for them in his state. Being convinced of the wisdom and success of the Hope Hall scheme he came to New York to study our Home. Going back to Iowa he dedicated the choicest piece of his own farm to this purpose and built upon it, at a cost of over ten thousand dollars, a beautiful home.

I went on for the opening of Hope Hall number three and shall never forget the scene. Judges, lawyers, ministers and farmers, the warden and chaplain of State Prison and the members of the Prison Board of Control were all present, and in their midst an old man of over eighty whose face shone with joy, and whose voice trembled with emotion, as he realized that the day for which he had worked so faithfully single-handed had come at last. When our League work was started in Iowa, we enrolled Father Coffin (as he is lovingly called) as a member of the League, giving him its oversight for that state. When we think of his energy and devotion at his advanced age; of the new and heavy responsibilities he has shouldered in facing this great problem, we can but feel that he sets a valiant example that others will follow some day in the many other states where there is a similar need.

Statistics are not of very great interest, for they often fail to convey anything like an idea of the work accomplished. They are of course added to as months pass by, so that while the printers are at work, they have materially changed. We can say briefly, however, that of those who have come to our two Hope Halls (Hope Hall number three is only just opened), seventy-five per cent. have done well; twenty per cent. may be all right, and are often found to be so after we have apparently lost track of them; five per cent. have perhaps returned to prison. Over three thousand have passed through the two Homes. This of course does not speak of the many hundreds who were once League members and are to-day doing well all over the country, who did not need the shelter and help of Hope Hall.

The real loving pride the "boys" feel for their home has been to me very touching. Often when a man comes to say "good-bye" he can hardly do so for the tears that make his voice unsteady, and the first letters are full of homesick longing for the place that has so truly become "home, sweet home."

For the graduates who are working within reach, it is possible to run "home" for a visit on holidays, and then many happy reunions take place. On the occasion of our seventh anniversary, over seventy sat down to supper together. It had been a very bright sunny day and the grounds represented a pretty picture. The teams composed of Home "boys" and graduates were playing each other on the baseball ground; little children whose fathers had been given back to them played in the shade of the big trees; wives who had come to see the much talked of starting place that had made all life different to their dear ones, walked about the farm or listened to the music on the broad piazza and from each glad face and each cheery voice came the same expression of unutterable thankfulness for what God had accomplished.

[VIII
THE SAME STORY FROM OTHER PENS]

The idea of this book has been to show the subject as far as possible from the standpoint of the cell. My life has become closely enough linked with those in prison to see and feel, to know and understand the problem from their view-point. I have tried to speak for them. Now I will let them speak for themselves, that the touch may be closer and more direct than it could be through the medium of my thought and pen.

The following letter was written to the editor of our Volunteer Gazette in the early days of the work, by one who had fought his own way out of difficulty, but who knew well the hard path that his one-time companions still had to tread.

"Dear Mr. Editor: I have been reading much lately in your paper, and also in the daily papers about the 'Little Mother's' work in providing a home for the fellow just out of prison. I am very glad indeed that such a work is being carried forward, for if ever there existed a class of men who need looking after it is the ex-prisoner. I recently attended one of Mrs. Booth's meetings and was deeply impressed as she made plain to her audience the great need of 'her boys.' It is very probable that I was all the more interested in view of the fact that I, many years ago, was sentenced to a term of eighteen months in the —— Penitentiary and to-day, after the lapse of years, I very vividly recall the utter friendlessness that was my lot at that time.

"The prison was one in which the prisoners were compelled to observe the rule of silence; and my sentence carried with it also the requirements of hard labor. No person can realize fully the meaning of such a sentence except he pass through it. To sit at a work bench day after day touching elbows with your fellows, not daring to say a word becomes exquisite torture as the months pass slowly by.

"I understand that the Little Mother not only looks after the 'boys' when they come out of prison, but takes to them a gospel of love and light and peace. I do not want to disparage the work done by other Christian workers. God bless them; they mean well, but some of them fail to grasp the fact that what we wanted to hear were words of love and sympathy.

"But what I want to bring out in this is the decided contrast between coming out of prison years ago and coming out now.

"The majority of the men confined in that prison had no hope of being met at the prison door by a friend or a relative when the day of their discharge arrived, and I was one of that number. When my sentence had expired, I was given a suit of clothes and a small sum of money, and was told I was free. So I reentered the world. Free; but where could I go? My first thought was to find employment. Need I tell you of that weary search? I could furnish no recommendations. The prison pallor showed all too plainly on my face. The shuffle of the lock-step still clinging to me, with the instinctive folding of my arms when spoken to, told plainer than words where I had last been employed.

"After many days I secured work only to be dismissed when my employer was warned by a detective that he was employing an ex-convict.

"Then, at last discouraged, I joined that great army of men, known as tramps, and for a time I wandered over the country, living an aimless, hopeless life. That I am not now a tramp is due to my having been saved by the precious blood of Jesus Christ.

"So much for my experience as an ex-prisoner; but if reports be true, and if the stories told me by former associates in crime are to be believed, there has in the past four years been a very great change in the attitude of the world towards the ex-prisoner. A new sentiment has been formed and where, in my case, practically no hands were held out to help; now the world stands ready to help the ex-prisoner, who really desires to live an honest life once more.

"Years ago no door was open as a home for the ex-prisoner. To-day Mrs. Booth's three Hope Halls are spoken of all over this country of ours where the prison-weary men may find rest. Indeed I have met and talked with several of the V. P. L. men and all spoke of 'Home' in the most endearing terms. I am glad this is the condition of to-day. The vast majority of men in prison really desire to live honest lives again. But they need a champion who will help them in their new-made resolution, one who will aid them, while in prison to be true to God and themselves. One who will meet them at the prison gate upon their discharge and take them home. One who will stand between them and the frown and censure of a world which forgets that they have already been fully punished for their misdeeds. One who will aid them in finding honest employment and to whom they can always turn for help and counsel. This has in the past been the problem the prisoners had to solve. To-day it is no longer a problem.

"And yet it seems to me that the work Mrs. Booth has undertaken is still in its infancy. There are still prisons that are unreached. The serious, thinking world has recognized in this work the true solution of this mighty problem, and is grandly rallying to its support.

"I believe the day is fast approaching when every state shall have its Hope Hall and no man shall step out of state prison but that he shall find in one of them a way of escape from the temptations of crime. God hasten the day."

The next message comes from the pen of one who can truly be said to have gone through the bitterness and darkness of prison experience. In the old days, when prisons were hard, he suffered for days and nights in the dungeon. He went through the days of shame and sorrow to those of bitterness and cynicism and after his conversion, when liberty became his, he knew what it was to take up the hardest, most menial work and do it faithfully and patiently that he might regain the confidence that the life of wrong-doing had lost him. To-day these hands that have been unshackled are stretched out lovingly to help others and he goes as a messenger to homes that are bereaved and saddened, to bring practical help to the little ones of our "boys" in prison.

Speaking to me of that cry in prison which he mentions so graphically, he said, "But what is the use to write about it. The people will not understand. What we have felt and been through in prison is a foreign language to them."