Transcriber’s Note

• Obvious typos and punctuation errors corrected. Variations in spelling and hyphenation retained.
• A small floral decoration appears in most page headers in the original. This decoration has been preserved in the html and ebook versions at the end of chapters. It has not been preserved in the text version.

The Room

with the

Little Door

The Room with the
Little Door

By

Roland Burnham Molineux

G. W. Dillingham Company

PublishersNew York

Copyright, 1902, by

ROLAND

BURNHAM MOLINEUX

All Rights Reserved

Entered at

Stationers Hall

ISSUED JANUARY, 1903

The Room with the

Little Door

To

My Father

General Edward

Leslie Molineux

With

Reverence

CONTENTS

Introduction

Most of the following is true, or founded on truth. A few are waifs—products of my imagination; little stories that came into my mind from time to time. Some of them are from letters written home while I was confined in the Tombs Prison in New York City, and in the Death-Chamber at Sing Sing.

In them I have not inflicted myself to any great extent upon the reader. Herein is chiefly what I saw when trying to look upon the bright side. There are also glimpses of the side which cannot be made bright, look at it as one may.

But if anything in these pages leads some one to think of what must be endured in either place, let me say, that no suffering was ever willingly caused by the officials with whom I came in contact during my “banishment,” and I take this opportunity to thank them all, without exception, for their consideration, sympathy, and unvarying kindness to me and mine.

The Room with the Little Door

CHAPTER I
The Room with the Little Door

There are few who can describe life in the Death-Chamber at Sing Sing. The officials can, but will not. Visitors there are few; and most of us who know it so well, come and go like our predecessors, saying nothing afterwards about our experiences, for an excellent reason.

The corridor in the Death-Chamber is not large. Ten cells for the condemned men face it, most of them on one side. Their inmates are not supposed to see much of each other. When one of our number walks in the corridor for exercise, curtains are drawn down in front of all the cells, and we see upon them what our fellow-inmate often resembles—a shadow. A shadow, and a voice which calls to us, that is his identity. There are no windows in these cells; three sides are solid wall; their fronts face the corridor, and are barred like cages. In them one can easily imagine himself a bear in a menagerie, even to the sore head that animal is afflicted with more or less occasionally. In front of the bars and curtains are wire nettings to keep our visitors from coming too near us. There are no hand-clasps, no kisses. The corridor and cells constitute the Death-Chamber. It has two doors; an entrance—few of the condemned ever use that door for any other purpose; and an exit—a final one—leading into the Execution Room and to the “Chair.”

It is very light indeed in the Death-Chamber. Glass skylights by day, and gas and electric light by night, throw their beams into every corner of our cages of steel and stone. There is no privacy. The guards pace up and down night and day, always watching. There is no sound while they do this, as their shoes, like ours, are soled with felt. It is like living, eating, sleeping, and bathing in a search-light. It is like being alive, yet buried in a glass coffin. We enter the front door; exist for a year or so, and then go out through the “little door,” as we call it, some morning to a very welcome release. From the moment we arrive the monotony begins, and continues always, broken now and then by such excitement as a half hour’s exercise in the corridor, the weekly bath and shave, and, best of all, a visit, which must be from some member of our immediate family. We see our guest through those miserable bars and netting which divide us. A keeper must hear everything we say. These things are all that ever happen in that chamber of death, except greeting new arrivals, and saying good-by now and then to a fellow we have suffered with. No newspapers come to us, but books from the excellent library, as many as one wants, are supplied. We receive our mail after it has been opened and read, provided it is thought proper for us to have it. If the letter contains the news we are all awaiting—the final news—it is improper. That information is kept from one as long as possible. All the tobacco is provided. It is called “State.” It puts you in a “state” when you first attempt to smoke it. No clock ticks in that room, and none is needed, because the value of time and its relation to affairs is eliminated. Enough for us in there that it is either day or night. What do we care about the hour? To us time is just an endless waiting without expectancy. Imagine it for yourself. Each second seems an hour long—and we are kept in there for years.

This is the life we lead, and who would care to speak or write of such an existence? Is there anything to tell about this living death—this sort of noiseless purgatory in which, as the months go by, past experiences, the hopes and fears and happinesses which were, grow fainter and fainter, till, like the future, they inspire us with nothing but indifference, leaving only the present to be endured?

Yet there is one thing here which interests us intensely; which is before us all the time, and which some day will close behind us. On one side is life—such as it is—on the other instant death.

To pass through will be an experience surely. It is seldom opened; I have observed it so just seven times; but when it is ajar—things happen. Whenever we look out of our cages we see it; we close our eyes—we still see it. When exercising in the corridor one passes and repasses it; though we walk away, we know we are going towards it. Thinking by day and dreaming by night, it is always with us, and irresistible is its fascination. All else here is insignificant; and to us the Death-Chamber is but “The Room with the Little Door.”

CHAPTER II
“The Little Dead Mouse”

It would seem impossible for any one to escape from the Death-Chamber. But there is a story of one man who refused to stay, and who, under the very eyes of his keepers, without any privacy or apparatus, manufactured the poison with which he ended his life; for that is almost the only way you can end your stay in the Death-Chamber.

The man’s crime, his history, does not affect this story, but his personality does. He was the quietest man of all; and men who are waiting death are usually quiet men. A German by nationality, very gentle, almost affectionate one would think, from the fact that he caught and tamed a small mouse to which he seemed devoted. Now a mouse is a rare thing within the precinct of which I speak, for stone and steel do not offer it the crevices it affects. But the German—he was called “Professor” because he wore glasses—had asked when he arrived if any mice had been tamed. “You can teach them tricks,” he said. He used to sleep all day, and at night very patiently lay and watched the bread crumbs he scattered on the floor. He did this for months; and at last the great event occurred. Can you guess what he used for a trap? His stocking. He did teach the mouse tricks. He taught it to eat meat out of his hand, which was not difficult, and to come when he called, which was. It slept with him. This took patience. Remember, he had no string with which to tie it, and had to keep it under his drinking cup at first to prevent its running away.

Time went by. Winter changed to summer, and with that season came a letter to the “Professor” and a death warrant to the warden. This was for the “Professor” also; that is, it was to be read to him, and—was it sympathy, or what? Death came to the little mouse at that time. I suppose that every man would confess that it is disturbing to receive the news that he must go through the “little door” in the Death-Chamber into the beyond, and so it affected the “Professor,” philosopher though he undoubtedly was. Perhaps it was not the news, but the loss of his little friend; perhaps it was both; at any rate the “Professor” took to his bed. The prison doctor came, winked at the keeper, and said, “Fright; let him alone.” So they let the “Professor” alone, and the “Professor” died; but when they went into the cell, they found the cause of his illness had not been fright at all. It was erysipelas. Over his breast were long scratches, deep as little teeth could make them (we have no pins in the Death-Chamber), and flattened down on them and tightly bound lay the putrid remains of “the little dead mouse.”

CHAPTER III
A Forbidden Song

Sometimes in the evenings, the Death-Chamber seemed quite a different place, and we all forgot our ennui because some one started a song. I have heard good singing there, and some of us understood music. So when “Eddy,” with his really good tenor, would start up something we all knew, books would close and pipes go out, and we all would join in and sing ourselves out of the blues.

What did we sing? Everything, from “America,” with special gusto at the “Sweet land of liberty” part, to the last popular song whose strains had been wafted to our “desert island.” How we sang! When we could not remember or did not know the words we sang on just the same. Hours have actually speeded that way, when we happened to be in the mood, and we were all the better for it. Did I say we sang everything? No, not everything. There were strong men there, determined men, who had done and would do desperate things. But there was one song ever in our minds and in our hearts that never came to our lips, and which not one of us would have dared even to hum. Not a voice could have trembled through had it started. Every one thought of it; no one ever suggested it. You know the one I mean.

One night when we were through an especially good concert (I had sung a solo) some one shouted out “Police!” Now, of course, not one of us wanted to have anything further to do with that department. It was only our way of calling for a “light.” We have no matches in the Death-Chamber; there is phosphorus in them, and you might—. So when George, our keeper, had come to my cage with the burning paper spill, and when my pipe was going cheerfully, I said: “George, music certainly does affect the emotions, but under some circumstances, I imagine, it could make one quite blue. Did you ever notice that?”

“I should say so,” was the reply. “I remember once starting a song here that was never finished for that same reason.”

“What was it?” said I, turning away, for I knew the answer before it came.

“It was ---- ---- ----.”

“Damn this tobacco! the smoke gets into my eyes.”

CHAPTER IV
The Murderers’ Home Journal

No newspapers were allowed in the Death-Chamber, therefore the longing for them among its inmates may be imagined. But the law that supply always follows demand, was operative even within the walls of the “dead house,” and properly so; for had we not all become intimately acquainted with Law? Therefore we had a newspaper of our own.

Let me tell you of the happy days (happily past) when I was editor-in-chief and proprietor of “The Murderers’ Home Journal,” sometimes lovingly referred to as “The Dead House Squealer.” The public will never turn over a file of its pages, but they may read here some extracts from its columns. As to the paper itself, it was as artistic as black and blue pencils could make it. We all contributed what and when we pleased. It appeared when convenient, and as nothing was charged for advertisements or subscriptions, no wonder it prospered. Every one in our community read it and read no other. It contained real poetry, jokes—what jokes!—essays on our neighbors’ behavior, and news—local news, together with advertisements which simply compelled attention. The letters therein to the editor-in-chief left nothing to the imagination. And the leaders—ah, I wrote them! How proudly I referred to myself as “we”! Sometimes I used a pencil almost as blue as myself, never a pen—a vein can be opened with a pen.

Every proprietor admires and praises his own publication, and I shall proceed to “Munsey” mine. I can say without egotism, since it is but imperfectly expressed justice, that there has never been another newspaper “approaching” it. “Old Sol” does not affect the Death-Chamber; no sun shone on it, so of course we could not “see it in the ‘Sun’”; but we were as up to date in our own affairs as the “Times” permitted, as sensational in local matters as all the “yellows” combined; nothing in the “World” got ahead of our “Journal” in this respect. Having no “News” we invented it, just as do the newspapers for which you pay, but we never had to take anything back. The “Tribune” from which it issued was my cage, and I, the editor-in-chief, remained as deaf as a “Post” to all abuse (I am used to it). As for a “Press,” we had none. It was printed by my tired fingers. The illustrations were alluring, and though we received neither “Telegram” nor “Mail and Express,” yet we never forgot a text to “Herald” our first column. It was always the same one—“Damn the Jury.” Its politics were “sound.” (All politics are that.) We opposed the government with a capital O, and that institution responded with the only practical solution for restraining the license of modern journalism—it killed the editors. I can truthfully say that it cost me a great deal of money to escape even as far as the “Tombs.” Many of my unfortunate associates have also “passed away” to similar places, and I wish some reporters I know of could be assigned to interview them.

I pass over all the local news which appeared in the “Murderers’ Home Journal.” Such announcements as “John, the Greek, has come back for nineteen years—foolish John!” “Bill Newfeldt caught a mouse in his sock last night—poor thing!” Such as the above, and the chronicled fact that Doctor Sam’s office hours in the morning were from twelve A.M. to twelve P.M., and in the afternoon from twelve P.M. to twelve A.M. (in spite of this he had no “patients”), or a brilliantly worded “ad” advising the reader to take “Molineux’s Bromo-Seltzer”; all these were replete with absorbing interest to us, but not to you.

It was when the “divine afflatus” came upon us, as had the influenza the month previous—we all had it—that you might be interested. Many and varied were the verses that deluged the editorial sanctum; jingles, triolets, lyrics, epigrams, and of course the very first offered was—there, you have guessed it—“Spring.” I give it just as it came to me, leaving it for you to decide whether it be humorous or pitiful.

SPRING IN THE DEATH-CHAMBER.

Sweet Spring is here, and we all know it too,

But not, alas, as outside poets do.

Here are no birds, or flowers, or murmuring stream,

Our Spring arrives—when they turn off the steam.

This is a touching song by some true lover of dumb animals, written upon an occasion when one of them insisted upon sharing his couch:

MY RAT.

I love my rat so tenderly,

He is so gentle, don’t you see?

He guards my slumbers every night,

To keep me from the slightest fright.

No lions or ferocious bears

Can steal upon me unawares,

For there is such a noise in here

’Twould fill their cruel hearts with fear.

I love my rat, if he should die

Great tears of anguish I would cry.

Here is a particularly admired effort. It appealed to every member of our community on account of its spirited and militant sentiment. They say I wrote it. Undoubtedly it will appear in evidence against me in case of a new trial—hearsay evidence is “great stuff”:

DAWN.

When morning comes, and Joe pounds on the bar,

Calling me back from happy dreamland far;

Although “they say” that two were killed by me,

How I regret I cannot make it three!

The following admirable pastoral was written by a gentleman with a longing for the delights of rural life—or life of any other kind:

MY ONION.

I love to see my onion grow

And send its shoots up in the air.

It is a homely plant, I know,

But yet its stalks are green and fair.

They say the rose would smell as

If called by any other name,

And so to make my joy complete;

A rose and onion are the same.

For you may call it what you like,

By any name that’s long or small,

And though you smell all day and night,

The onion has no smell at all.

This is wilful peevishness: the protest of some professional kicker:

MY SOCKS.

My feet are number seven, but the law says I must wear

A pair of socks that are five sizes small;

That’s why I cry aloud and dance and at the keepers swear,

And on the State the wrath of Heaven call.

I wish the Sheriff, Governor, the Judge and President

And the Jury were all here behind the locks;

And that ministers of justice would their living long prevent,

For my toes are packed like sardines in a box.

From one of those detestable individuals who wants everything:

THE BARBER.

The barber with his little chair comes every Saturday,

And after he has shaved us all, he vanishes away.

And once a month he cuts our hair; oh, what an hour of pride!

He cuts so much and well that we all want to go outside.

But when I asked the keeper kind (My, I was awful bold!),

“No, no,” he said, “just see your head, I fear you would catch cold.”

SULKY ROLIE.

I go to Sing Sing public school,

Where naughty boys are sometimes sent,

Receiving as a general rule

A goodly share of punishment.

I try so hard to do what’s right,

I study long and never play;

Why then have I this wretched plight

That they should “keep me in” all day?

It is natural for a man to strive for perpetual success; but we, who are to lose our lives, should bear lesser misfortunes with greater fortitude than is expressed by this poet. The editor is not in sympathy with his contributor:

CHESS.

When I play chess with other boys,

It’s one of all my dearest joys

To hear them rant and storm and tear,

If by my skilfulness and care

They should the losers be.

Sometimes I am not feeling well,

Since I the “honest truth” must tell,

And though you would not think they’d dare,

I’m walloped well. Gosh! how I swear!

If they should checkmate me.

In an early issue a gem of an epigram appeared, and straightway epigrams became the mode—we all affected them. The vogue was hard while it lasted. A dozen times a day I was assured over the wireless telephone (Nature’s) that Bill or Mike or another had a “bird” for the next issue. Here are some of them.

This one was the “first offence.” If you like it, it is mine; but of course if any one is going to get mad about it, then another fellow, one of the dead ones, was its author. Is not its sentiment exquisite?

AN EPITAPH WHICH CANNOT BE USED TOO SOON.

Here lies a judge, whose last words I indite:

“I’ll go to Heaven—I’ll go this very night.”

He died as with himself he yet conversed;

As usual—his decision was reversed.

Another of great beauty and singularly apt. I have a shrewd suspicion that it refers to the same person:

TO A VERY LEARNED JUDGE.

His Honor is wrong, in error, unwise.

He blunders in every case that he tries;

With “Wisdom” he will not compromise.

So I asked him the reason why.

The judge replied, after due reflection,

“To ‘Wisdom’ I have a good objection:

She had nothing to do with my election.”

“I agree with you,” said I.

Still another, evidently referring to the same respected jurist. It is a lofty and improving message from the Bench. I am very partial to this one:

HEARD IN COURT.

I’ve changed my mind. Oh, no, I haven’t! Did I?

What? I charged that way? No, indeed! I did!

I mean that I said, No. Yes, Yes! I did not.

Then I will charge it. What? My meaning hid?

My former rulings? I forget them, curse it!

My opinion is not quite clear, and I reverse it!

Modesty restrains me from mentioning the author of this glittering example of pure idealism:

THE COLONEL.

The colonel lay dying. An angel appeared.

This man of great family and titles he cheered,

“Fear not, to a better place you will be borne,”

The colonel’s reply was—“To Hell with reform!”

After a certain assistant district attorney, noted for his verboseness, had made his closing argument, the jury convicted the composer of this couplet. He seems to resent it:

THE JURY.

To call them twelve trees would be nothing unkind;

They were crooked and green; they were swayed by the wind.

To an assistant district attorney who proved nothing but his own desire for notoriety and his ability to make a noise and keep the Court of Appeals busy. Those who heard him sum up the first important case he ever had, and the one on which rests his reputation (for brutality and unfairness), may remember and see the application to a certain part of his closing address:

He persecutes the charming “Bell,”

His “brazen tongue” has now full “swing,”

With clamorous lies he “told” this “knell,”

Produce, produce, produce the—“ring.”

AN EPITAPH TO AN “ABLE ASSISTANT.”

In him a great philanthropist we see,

The friend of negro wench and stable boys,

He taught the gentle art of perjury,

To get convictions every vice employs.

This reminds me of Longfellow (it is so different):

TO A CERTAIN EXPERT.

I’m an expert. I raise chickens, so I know about a “quill,”

How it writes and what you think of while you sign a note or “bill,”

I’ll appear against or for you; either side without regard,

I can tell my favorite rooster by his claw marks in the yard.

Two wings this fowl possesses; o-“pinions” two have I

There’s one for you, or one for him, for any who will buy.

Like him, I love to “scratch” in dirt. I’m crooked as his walk,

I “plume” myself, and like my hens I cackle when I talk,

I’m “hatching” out a plot just now, really it’s very funny,

It’s all a guess—ridiculous—but then, I need the money.

Some lyrics found their way into those columns. Here is only one of them, for I fear your interest, like the newspaper itself, has ceased:

TO HER PHOTOGRAPH.

Painted by sunlight, all the brightness caught,

From out the sky and to my prison brought.

No vision, essence, song, so sweet by half,

As smiles to me from out her photograph.

CHAPTER V
Fads

The Death-Chamber is well worth studying. Our community is certainly interesting. Already I have made a discovery. Every one of us is busy. Here are many languages, temperaments, and moods, but we all have our fancies and our fads.

For instance, there is the Italian next door who makes gorgeous picture frames from scraps of paper, decorating them with colored pencils; these are considerately furnished by the State to prevent him from going crazy. His creations are wonderful, and as his mood at present is devoutly religious, his cage looks like a cathedral. Many are the saints that smile benignly and beckon hospitably; and yet Larry does not want to join them.

The religious mood is usually the last of a progression beginning with despair. It is in the latter frame of mind that new arrivals appear. Then there is the studious period, with which I struggle just now, when one reads a great deal and works out chess problems with bits of paper on a home-made board.

Yes, I read incessantly, often under difficulties. Recently I had selected “Paradise Lost.” Ah, it was a venerable tome—ragged and bethumbed; dog-eared and tattered was that volume in the Sing Sing prison library. I believe its back was also broken. Many cells had it visited. Apparently it was appreciated by the inhabitants thereof. Poor creatures, they too had lost their paradise; but, alas, others had found it—and had moved into the book itself—generations of them! I perused Milton’s matchless epic. The stately iambus, the exceptional trochee, dactyl, amphibrach, and anapest rolled and sang solemn music in my soul. I read:

“Thus they,

Breathing united force, with fixèd thought,

Moved on in silence----”

What is that! What is that!! On my wrist, up my arm! Another, another! Not that, but those—the myriad hosts of Apollyon’s army. They were starved, they entered their paradise! Ah, that book was unusually lively reading, for while holding the volume, while improving my mind, the inhabitants—the appreciative ones—had improved their opportunity. They ascended my sleeves for lunch—the book was intellectual food for me, I was food for—I will spare the reader’s feelings, the good housewife is their enemy. Just as Satan with appropriate taunts hurled his mighty javelin at the archangel, so I flung the sweet singer’s poem into the corridor, thereby adding to its appearance of usage. It was returned in triumph to the library with a pair of tongs. Some day, perhaps, an interested visitor may see this volume, the librarian may even indicate it with pride, and judging by appearances (which are quite deceptive) will remark how fond the poor “cons” must be of good reading, of classic literature, of standard works. As for me, my fad is new books.

Of the other fads, among the many, is one which the man possesses who makes exquisite paper boxes. His paste was soap, till I taught him to use oatmeal. Then there is the Greek who grows onions. It is for company, surely, for he cannot speak two words of English, and has not a single visitor. The library contains no Greek books, and the English ones are Greek to him. Once a week the great Empire State presents a raw onion to each condemned man. Death-Chamber and raw onions—what a combination for producing tears! Let me inform the commonwealth that the onions are superfluous. Some of us eat them. I give mine away, but the Greek plants all of his. This is vastly exciting. First he makes little paper boxes that just hold them, then packs them round with tobacco, moistens the latter, and then sits down and watches them grow. This is almost literal, for never did “green bay tree” so flourish. From the rapid way they shoot up, I know that if any blossoms or fruit grew on the stalks they would be little balloons. And the color! the most beautiful green you ever saw—this from the tobacco. I have always suspected that “State” tobacco was made from some sort of—fertilizer! So the Greek watches his onions, and the death-watch watches the Greek.

I try to imagine his thoughts. It is easily done. I am sure he sees the little cottage and garden in the far-away archipelago where he helped his mother do just what he is doing now. Perhaps that is the first thing he remembers—perhaps it will be the last. He is not handsome, but how his face lights up sometimes! Then I know that he is living over the days when, as a youth, he worked in the vineyards or among the currant bushes at home. There is a romance behind it all, you may be sure.

Yesterday he was here watching his onions with all his usual care; to-day he is gone, and the keepers are sweeping his onions out and throwing them away, for no one cares for the onions except the Greek, and no one regrets the Greek, except, perhaps, the onions.

Happily this is not a sad ending, for “John, the Greek,” has been given a hope—he has gone to New York for a new trial. His life was never in the slightest danger, he having been tried and sentenced by a judge who has condemned many men to electrocution, and not one of them, I believe, was ever executed, because their trials before this judge have been found by a higher court to have been illegal. This is one of “His Honor’s” little ways—he also has his fad.

CHAPTER VI
The Mayor of the Death-Chamber

I had ruled undisputed for a year—it seemed a century. By common consent I was the acknowledged “Mayor of the Death-Chamber,” and very properly so, for was not I the oldest inhabitant? All questions were referred to me. I was the final court of arbitration; what I said “went.”

This delightful state of affairs was undisturbed, even undisputed, until Benjamin appeared. Benjamin was a gentleman of color, a youth with a penchant for politics. Before he had been among us long enough to learn to appreciate “State” tobacco, he became rebellious. He disputed my authority. He was evidently jealous. His ambition vaunted itself till it seemed as if he would attempt to appropriate to himself the perquisites of my high office. Benjamin was altogether impossible. He knew all about politics; his brother worked for an alderman. Benjamin insisted upon expounding their intricacies and the subterfuges necessary to carry wards and districts. What a mayor could or could not do was an open book to him. Benjamin knew everything. He would hear no reason, listen to no explanation, had no respect for my year in the Death-Chamber. He trampled upon my rights; he was unceremonious, even familiar. He questioned the legality of my claims. He demanded a fair and open election, announcing himself to our citizens as a candidate, the people’s candidate, the poor man’s friend, a Democrat! All that evening he gave us of his oratory. He denounced me in every scathing phrase to which he could lay his tongue. I was an aristocrat, a representative of trusts, a vile Republican.

A rival had presented himself. The issues were joined. I bribed him into silence with a cigar. The next evening he demanded two to stop talking. I refused. It was war to the death. I made no speeches, but consulted with my constituents. “We were seven,” and seven fat cigars left my pocket; but into the same receptacle from whence they came I put the solid and unanimous vote of the Death-Chamber. I did more. I taught Benjamin a lesson. I told him I did not care for that office any more; that it was a burden I would gladly lay down. He wept as he thanked me. He worked hard, and received pledges of support from every voter—they had their instructions.

It seemed a “walkover” for Benjamin. He began to think how “Honorable” would sound before his name. The voting proceeded. The superintendent of elections was the night keeper. He announced Benjamin’s unanimous election to the office of Mayor. The sounds of revelry and thanksgiving from Benjamin’s cage sounded like rival camp-meetings possessed of the devil. He—Ben, not the latter—made an eloquent speech of thanks as befitting the occasion in which, for the last time in his life, he spoke well of me.

In response he heard the announcement of my election as—Governor. Then there was silence in Benjamin’s executive mansion, the “city hall,” as he had just christened his cell. The first official act of “His Excellency” was to exercise his inherent right and remove “His Honor, the Mayor,” from office. Benjamin never recovered. When, a few months later, they escorted Ben through the “little door,” I think he was perfectly willing to go.

CHAPTER VII
A Psychological Experiment
(A Chronicle of the Tombs)

It was in the old Tombs prison and in the old days which are past, when they hung men in its courtyard, and it was a very hot night in summer. Of all the human beings within its walls—keepers and kept—one man alone was there because he wanted to be. Not another beneath its old roof but would gladly have changed his position—on either side of the bars—for the free hot night without. It was blistering, and there was no breeze or beer to be obtained in the Tombs, and very little rest or sleep.

Does it seem incongruous that a man of wealth, culture, and position should be there of his own volition? Not at all; he was trying an experiment. And that was why, after a liberal expenditure of money and the use of some little influence, this young man was the occupant of that particular narrow cell for the night. What he saw there was very little, for the apartments were constructed from a point of view not scenic but secure. What he heard might perhaps better be left unsaid. And what he smelt was indescribable. For this story is of the Tombs in the old days, and really to describe it at night and in summer would be to drive realism insane. The home of misery, revelry, and some repentance—tears and jests six inches apart—romance and death, young sin and old crime; folly, vice, and worse, all mixed together and seasoned with a very little humor.

The Tombs is like a sieve, separating the unjust within from—well, the more or less just without. It is like some great iron net through which the tide of criminal life surges, and many are the strange fish caught therein. If fish, one of my senses assures me that many of them have been out of their natural element for a long while. Some of them were not caught yesterday or even the day before. They are old, and you know it even as you approach.

But it is with this young man’s feelings we have to do. In spite of the investigator’s unpleasant surroundings, his thoughts were those of happy anticipation, and his mood that of extreme satisfaction. All unmindful of the misery on every side, he paced up and down the little cell, in which the faint light from the corridor chased shadows on the stone floor and dim walls. His face bore a look of triumph. He congratulated himself. What to him were the disturbances that assaulted his senses, the noises of those who amused themselves according to their possibilities, or the snoring of some who dully slept, luxuriating in the comforts of the best home they had ever known, the vomiting of a drunken sailor across the tier, an obscene song from a young negro with a falsetto voice heard along the corridor, or the clog dancing of an “artist” directly over his head, who whistled his own accompaniment. These things were nothing. He scarcely heard the shriek of the delirium tremens case in the hospital ward below, nor the curses of the person constrained in the straight-jacket. The remarks of the poor devil occupying the “cooler” were naught. The smell of iodoform was lost to him, for all this had nothing to do with his experiment.

Had you seen the books on theosophy, occult science, reports of psychological societies, etc., in his beautiful apartments uptown, you would perhaps have guessed his object. But only he could have told you properly of his enthusiastic devotion, his absorbing interest in these studies, and, most of all, of his disappointing attempts at personal research. For in spite of closest study, deepest investigations, and widest experimenting, his longing and anxiety to see an apparition had never been satisfied. Such things as ghosts existed, he was sure of that—he knew it. Others had seen them. But his ardent longing to have personal demonstration of their presence remained unsatisfied, despite the many séances attended, desperate colds contracted in churchyards, and heroic pilgrimages to alleged mahatmas. Oh, the bitterness of hearing and rehearing the success of others whose accounts he even found himself jealous enough to doubt!

But at last it had come—this inspiration. Did the doctrine of environment mean anything at all? Assuredly! Here was the key to the situation, and that is why arrangements had been effected by him to sleep alone in the cell, the very bed, and bedclothes of a man hanged that afternoon. That is why he awaited midnight in the Tombs—midnight in “Murderers’ Row.”

He had been careful to attend the execution and to view the remains so as to recognize the astral body when it should appear later, for was it not absolutely certain that the spirit, consciousness—call it what you will—of the departed man would return searching for its body? And where to if not this little space the earthly part had occupied so long and where every emotion had been known? Surely this cell would be the first place to attract the released spirit. Here for the deceased had been the dreamings of past days, the horror of the realized present, the torture of the anticipated future. Long days and longer nights in which the inmate had burned with the fever of hope or shivered with the chill of despair. In this room his mind had been the home of every emotion. What hate, revenge, fear had these walls seen glower from his eyes! What prayers had been heard in weaker moments, confessions perhaps solitude had wrung from his lips! Here had been all passions. Here he had heard the cold voice of the sheriff reading the death warrant. Success was assured. There could be no doubt about it; and it had remained for this adventurer to discover the untrodden path. He was there to note and describe everything. Sublime discovery, method extraordinary, most perfect system of wresting the unknowable from the superhuman! He felt a veritable Columbus of daring. And the envy of his fellow-investigators in turn when he should give his contribution to science and should read his paper! Why, this very experience would be quoted in books! It nerved him to attempt anything.

He took out a note-book and began to prepare the opening of his prospective address. The night keeper on the last round accepted his cigars and said good night. It grew quieter. The singers were hoarse, the hospital patient quiet or drugged into quietness, and the inhabitant of the “cooler” had expressed all his opinions of every one and subsided. The time had come to prepare for the reception of the released spirit. It was his own body the experimenter proposed to submit as the material part to which the murderer’s consciousness might find access. He must undress. He did so, and contemplated the soiled sheets; but it was in the interests of science, and he did not hesitate. And now to compose his mind, to cultivate an abstracted calm, to wait and observe. Such was the success of this attempt that he slept.

Twelve solemn strokes.... He awoke. A dim light filtered in from the corridors. There were low murmurings in the air. The stairway creaked. A chain rattled. And somewhere far off a gate closed with a clang. The proverbial cold perspiration streamed from him. The orthodox goose-flesh appeared. His hair rose as it ought to. His flesh literally crept. Everything was as it should be. All the proper symptoms in their proper order. Something was in the room with him.

Was it the murderer’s spirit returning? The black cap over his gleaming, protruding eyes, groping in the darkness back to his last place of rest, feeling his way, searching the bed, and touching the intruder of his domicile? Yes, he feels something resembling the murderer’s clammy, trembling fingers passing over him. Victory? Success? Eureka? This awful moment should be the happiest of his life.

But a great horror came upon him. With a shriek which awoke the warden and deputy warden, the principal keeper, the deputy principal keeper, the guards, turnkeys, watchman, nurses, messengers, and all the prisoners, every living soul within the walls, he threw back the bedclothes and looked with agonizing eyes at—a score of bloated little red demons running away into the shadows as fast as their innumerable legs could carry them.

CHAPTER VIII
Me and Mike (A Chronicle of the Tombs)

“That’s me and Mike,” he exclaimed, reverently removing the newspaper covering and thrusting an old tintype into my hands. And then I recognized “Mike,” for he came to see my neighbor every day—in his mother’s arms. We (Mike’s father and I) were neighbors, and neighborly—which are two different things—and often walked together during exercise hours, I listening and he telling of the doings of the little “geezer” and the “tricks me and Mike have turned off together.”

Yes, I knew Mike, and he grew to look for the candy I sent him by Apple Mary, but he never thanked us; and, considering his short two years of life, Mary and I did not expect it. His mother spoke to Mike’s father—on the other side of the bars, no doubt about it. I have heard her! Papa talked back, but Mike only smiled and cooed. Among other things, my neighbor told me that the police “had him right,” and so it seemed, and the day of sentence came round. “Me and Mike” and Mike’s mother exchanged kisses and epithets; then the sheriff began his search. He found the tintype and gave it to Mike’s mother despite angry protests; and then my neighbor made a very foolish move. It was towards his hip pocket; he put up a good fight while it lasted. But he was overpowered and handcuffed and the concealed weapon drawn forth—it was Mike’s little blue shoe. Somehow or other I did not see the rest of it very distinctly.

CHAPTER IX
“Old John” (A Chronicle of the Tombs)

Do funny things happen in the Tombs? Lord bless you, yes! Why, you have only to visit it to meet the prince of humorists. Come! He will be at the door to meet you; in fact he is “laying” for you, and will show you through the entire institution and out again—which is not a detail. He is affable to a degree, and you would be vastly amused if, like us, you were on the “inside.” But you will probably listen seriously; and although you will not lose a word of his remarks, you will lose all their exquisite humor. It is Old John who has the fun all to himself, for he is a wag in his way, and combines business with pleasure. He is a true story-teller. How I envy him his imagination! What tales I would tell if it were mine! I could—yes, I would write several novels and do five-act plays, dozens of them. Old John could easily be a poet or a writer. He certainly is an actor. No tragedian who I have ever heard can put such horror into his voice. His sepulchral tones, with just the proper amount of tremolo in them, would make the fortune of any Thespian. Of course it is impossible for type to reproduce it.

Old John shows you through the main building, the Women’s Prison and Boys’ Prison, together with the New Prison, the Ten-Day House, the Hospital, Kitchen, et al. He romances with the ardor of a born raconteur; he knows you will pay him something, but were that not so, I believe he would do it for the love of his art.

“Do you see that man? He’s in for m-u-r-d-e-r!” You shudder and turn away, saying “poor fellow” perhaps, and the sweet girl you are escorting gets a little closer to your strong right arm; and immediately you are vastly interested in this subject, and determined to thoroughly discuss, to exhaust the topic. And yet the unfortunate man may have committed no more heinous crime than the theft of a door mat, or that equally felonious one of peddling clams without a license. Yet I am sure you would readily condone this departure from the exact truth, even were you aware of it. Old John selects the crime to fit the physiognomy of his subject and enjoys your curiosity immensely, but he never smiles. A neat little gloved hand may have slipped into yours, or more likely you have appropriated it—I have known it to be done—and to prolong the moment you ask, “Where is Molineux?” The question is not altogether an unfamiliar one; it has been asked so often that Old John has given it very considerable thought; and in his answer he rises to a high dramatic effect. “I dasn’t show you!” he quavers. “I dasn’t even go near where he is my own self”—each tone is a triumph of horror, the descending cadence drives the blood back into your heart, and that pretty girl—bless her!—imagines a Molineux eight feet tall, who eats raw meat, and can neither read nor write. He winks at me if I am standing by and overhear. How does he keep from laughing?

Oh, the fund of information he will impart to you as he guides you around! “Yes, the men is allowed to walk up and down in their cells or to sit on the bed daily.” All this on one tone and in one breath. What an engineer John is! Listen to his description of the mighty wall which encloses the Tombs: “That high wall around the prison was built at great expense of money, time, and men, so as to put the yard inside of it.” And an architect! “This building and that building isn’t the same building at all.” Ah, there is method in it all! He is leading, as every great dramatist does, up to his climax. Old John approaches it with reverential awe: this great beam of wood, lying in the yard, what stories it could tell! But John anticipates any superfluous remarks this obsolete institution might make for itself.

“Do you see that beam of wood? That’s the last piece of the old gallows; all the rest has been cut up for relics; here the rope was tied.” Old John’s monologue, which follows, closes with these words: “And here you see the marks made by the axe in the hands of the hangman when it cut the rope that sprung the trap, launching the unhappy wretch into eternity. They do not hang yet any more, they make them sit in a chair up at Sing Sing, and kills them with nobody knows what.” He never says electrocution, it’s too much for him; perhaps he does not believe in it—neither do I.

We suspect that every now and then John freshens up these marks himself; should this part of the old apparatus be painted, John would lose half his income—those chips, not his face, are his fortune. How little a quarter must seem, how good is life to a visitor after hearing John and seeing the old gallows! Old John is a judge of human nature: if he thinks you will stand it, he points to a black stone in the side of the old Tombs and tells you it is where a colored man dashed his brains out long ago rather than be hung, and how the successive wardens have tried unsuccessfully to remove the stain.

I remove my hat to his genius when I recall an instance of John’s impromptus. One afternoon a well-known clergyman called and joined me in my walk over the cobblestones in the prison yard. We talked long and earnestly—the dominie and I—and smoked large black cigars. Old John arrived with a party of eager visitors. Old John was in a state of prime satisfaction; business was good and his pilgrims were appreciative. After pointing me out, he was asked if the minister was Molineux’s spiritual adviser. Oh, John, what inspired you to sin, and have you ever confessed it? Was it the dominie’s cigar? “Do you see that reverend gentleman? He was arrested this morning for throwing his mother-in-law out of the third-story window; he will get twenty years at least.” The horror-stricken visitors looked at the calm, intellectual face at my side and gasped. Not one of them had curiosity about me after that. I was a poor worm in comparison with my more awful companion. I wonder what they will say should they enter Dr. ----’s beautiful church some Sunday and see him in the pulpit.

John never “smiles.” Wait a minute! Hold on about that! About once a month he is missed over night; they say he does “smile” periodically, and then very frequently indeed; the next morning every one in the Tombs accuses him of gallantry. No wonder; John has a very handsome goatee, and knows it. We accuse him of gallantry. How immensely pleased he is, and how modestly he protests! “Methinks he doth protest too much.” I asked him once about the matter. “Is it true, John, these things I hear about you?” This was his reply: “Some says I do and some says I don’t.” You will never get Old John to compromise himself. I suspect he has, like many of us, taken the “third degree” at some time during his long life. I said to him, “John, you have been here a long time, and must have acquired quite a lot of money; why don’t you go home and settle down?” Could Solomon excel the reply? “Because they would take away the little I have and send me back for more.” I shall not be more definite about my friend’s age, for two reasons. The first is that he would not like it; the second, that I do not know it—no one does, no one remembers when he first came. There is much speculation in the Tombs as to Old John’s financial status; on this question he keeps his own counsel; he can always change a $50 bill; perhaps he is your landlord.

There is another matter upon which he imparts information to visitors—the most important one—it comes like the catastrophe of a play, just before the curtain is rung down. “Do you see that man all dressed up in brass buttons?” (pointing to a keeper). “He’s a keeper, he gets paid a salary for his services. But I only gets what the kind visitors gives me, and all I gets over a dollar I buys tobacco with for the poor unfortunate men you see dressed up in stripes, who have no money!” Whew! Old John (the rascal) will give the tobacco in the next world—perhaps! and a light with it—maybe.

Out of consideration for many years’ sojourn with Old John, I will not state his salary. But if I ever get out of here (which I never will), and Old John should die (which he never will), I shall apply for his position. Come and see the old Tombs for yourself, where so many good fellows have lived and died, before it is too late. Come and listen to Old John, and pay him well, for it’s worth the money.

CHAPTER X
Her Friend (A Chronicle of the Tombs)

Bridget, alias “The Rummager” (rummager means thief, pickpocket), was incorrigible; had always been so, and there were many reasons for it, such as heredity, environment, opportunity, habit. Bridget had been in the “Pen” (Penitentiary), the work-house, the Tombs. “Had been,” for “The Rummager” was free. She was just leaving the latter prison on the afternoon of Monday, February 24, 1902. There was money in her pocket. She had worked in the laundry doing washing for the aristocrats and millionaires over in the men’s prison.

Freedom and money! This had always before meant a celebration, but to-day Bridget kept on her way towards Chinatown, passing for the first time the side doors of the saloons which had been best loved and most patronized. She did what she had never done before under such circumstances—she hurried home. Bridget was welcomed, was invited to make an occasion of the event. She declined. This behavior caused consternation and criticism in “The Barracks.” Bridget hurried away to the “Bend.” There she haggled with Isaac over the price of a dress—a black dress. Finally it was hers, but it took her last penny—and all her other bills and coins.

Bridget disappeared. This was no novelty, such occurrences were not unusual. No one worried about it. Some hours afterward they learned that she was working. They jeered at and reviled the joker who brought the news. That afternoon, for the first time in her life, Bridget earned an honest dollar. It was perhaps the first money not spent in dissipation.

The next morning was the first time she had ever bought flowers. “The Rummager” laid them upon the coffin of her friend—“The Tombs Angel.”

[Note.—Mrs. Salome C. Foster, of blessed memory, for many years devoted herself to the unfortunates confined in the city prisons. This valuable and beautiful life was lost in the Park Avenue Hotel fire, February 22, 1902.]

CHAPTER XI
Life

All that is enjoyable; all that one would possess, and do if one could, is summed up in this word—Life!

What is it that the young would see? and the flight of which is regretted by the old? It is Life!

This is the almost universal meaning of the word. You speak it, and think of dance and song, women and wine, sunlight, blue skies, and freedom.

To us it has another meaning—try and imagine it.

Sometimes when an important trial is closing and the jury is out till midnight perhaps, we, the inhabitants of the Tombs, sit up and listen for the little bell which rings in the prison, because one of us is being brought back across the “Bridge of Sighs.”

Here he comes! “What did you get?” calls out a friend from the top tier, and there is a clutch at every heart, a horror that you on the outside will never be able to appreciate, when we hear the answer, the sentence most dreaded—“Life.”

CHAPTER XII
My Friend the Major

Without exception, the Major is one of the finest men I have ever met. I like him so much that I am willing to tell a truthful story, or rather, tell a story truthfully (which is a very different thing), at my own expense.

It was this way: Benjamin had got religion. Benjamin preached a long sermon to us every single evening; he preached revival sermons, missionary sermons, and obituary ones on all the fellows who had gone through the “little door.” When he had exhausted these—and us, he would say, “Now this is what I am going to say about you, Mr. Roland, after you have gone.” What followed would depend on how I had treated him during the day.

Another reason why Ben preached. Benjamin had made me this very handsome proposition: He knew a man in Brooklyn who owned a tent. I was to hire that tent, and sing outside to attract a crowd. We agreed that I could do that successfully. Then I should enter and sing inside, and he would stand at the door and collect ten cents from all who entered (if there were any so foolish). Then he would preach, after which I should sing again while HE took up a collection. I tried to suggest other orders of events, but Ben insisted that this was the only one he could agree to; and as it seemed perfectly fair, I consented. If Ben had only lived, how rich and famous we should have become, and happy, too, for Ben enchanted me with descriptions of all the nice colored girls we should meet. Life was very tempting. On account of this arrangement with me Ben thought it necessary to rehearse his sermons every night, so as to get into practice. He addressed them to “youse poor, mean, miserable, damned sinners in here in the Death-Chamber.” His elocution consisted of main strength.

We were tired of it, so Larry swore out a warrant; Shorty indicted him; Eddy committed him to prison; and finally he was brought to trial. John was the jury. I defended my colored brother, and the Major, who was on duty that evening, prosecuted him. Why did I defend him? Because he sent me three oranges and implored my help. I asked him if these were all he had (this is a lawyer’s first duty toward himself). They were, so I accepted his retainer, and told him not to worry about his affairs—neither did I.

The case came up that evening, and I asked for a postponement, for I have observed that all expensive attorneys do this. No adjournment was allowed, however, so I explained to my client that the District Attorney’s office was trying to “railroad him,” and he must raise more funds. He tendered a paper of State tobacco and three toothpicks. I took the tobacco, but refused to consider the toothpicks as collateral—I had seen newer ones. I demanded more tobacco; he had to borrow another package. Then, knowing I had everything he possessed, I was ready to proceed.

“Judge Sparta,” of Binghamton, presided, and a more learned and impartial jurist never wore “sneaks” (felt-soled slippers). The trial proceeded under his just rulings, and with great decorum. The evidence was so conflicting, that it was agreed between counsel that whoever made the best speech in summing up should win the case. I felt sorry, indeed, for my opponent, for the Major is a silent man. I summed up with all my usual eloquence. Even the judge was affected as I pleaded and threatened. I was humorous and scornful by turns, the jury wept or laughed at my pleasure, and when I spoke of Benjamin, I made a bishop of him, dressed him in episcopal robes, and placed him at the head of a great university (the tent). I showed how his white hair would be loved and venerated at this seat of learning—if he lived. There was not a dry eye in the Death-Chamber when I finished this part of my oration. And when I closed with a scathing arraignment of the Major’s legal methods, the great crowd in the auditorium, who had remained spellbound, prisoners to my eloquence, burst into frantic cheers. During all the time I had been speaking not a single man had left the room. “That speech should be put in the fourth reader,” said the judge. I had a right to think that mine indeed had been a powerful effort—I had made a home run. I was number one. I knew I had the Major licked.

The Major’s speech! Words fail me to describe how, from lofty to still more lofty flights his oratory ascended, climax upon climax and further climaxes still! Even I was thrilled. I forgot my case, my client—everything. I may say it was a long speech—yes, I think I am justified in saying so. First came Henry Ward Beecher’s great abolition sermon, then Ingersoll’s oration at the grave of his brother, next Lincoln’s immortal speech at Gettysburg. Heavens! what a memory that man had. The very bars of our cages melted like wax as he proceeded to declaim his own speech of thanks on the occasion when the Tarrytown Fire Department presented him with a speaking trumpet. Here the enthusiasm of my constituents could be restrained no longer. They cheered the Major. They reviled me! I was told to get under the bed. Then followed the Masonic burial service, about our weary feet having come to the end of the toilsome journey before the Great White Throne. When the Major reached this point Benjamin could see, in his mind’s eye, the cemetery, the open grave amid the tombs and monuments; he could see the pall, the coffin under it, and—himself inside the coffin. Blue perspiration exuded from Benjamin’s person. I could plainly hear his teeth chatter as these awful phrases rolled from the Major’s lips as only he can roll them. They made Benjamin sick—I didn’t feel very well myself.

Of course the jury, who was another Mason, convicted Benjamin of the crime of—heresy in the last degree. But Ben maintained to the very day of his death that the Major “conjahed me with churchyard dirt,” and I believe the Major always has a rabbit’s foot concealed about him; at least I hope so, if it brings him good luck.