"Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee;
E'en though it be a cross
That raiseth me,
Still all my song shall be,
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee."
No matter where they go, this hymn, and others like it, shall go with them; cleansing and purifying, like a breath of sweet air, all the dreadful remembrances of that foul home from which they were rescued. Think what it were to change the life, temporal and eternal, of one such child! And God be praised, the number of the saved is Legion. How like a dreadful dream to the girl, in a happy home of her own, with her own innocent baby on its father's knee, will be the pit of degradation, where, but for this charity, she might have been lost. She realizes it fully now, when she looks into her little baby's face, and grows chill with fear as she kisses it. And her brother! the hale, sturdy-honest, well-to-do farmer, who comes in of an evening to talk about his farm and his crops, and his barns full of plenty—can that be Johnny? once with the hat guiltless of a brim, the coat with one flap, the trousers with half a leg, and the mouth full of oaths and obscenity! Can that be Johnny, who dodged policemen so adroitly, and was on the high road to the gallows in short jackets? This is not fiction. This is not imagination. The biographies of great men and women will yet adorn your library shelves, whose childhood had such rescuing as this. One gets the heart-ache at every step in New York, if he has eyes or ears for aught save Mammon; and yet how like sun-beams, now and then, across this darkness, comes some noble charity, of whose existence you knew nothing, till some unpretentious sign arrests the eye, in some street never before travelled by you in your daily rounds—some "Asylum," or "Retreat," or "Home," or Hospital, at whose gate Mercy stands with outstretched arms, nor asks the poor unfortunate whom it shelters, its creed or its nationality, but says only—Here is comfort and help.
This much concerning organized Charities. But of the noble women, and men, too, who daily and quietly stretch out helping hands, giving time and money, without other reward than the satisfaction such acts bring to a kind heart—of them, surely there is One who will keep record.
I see other signs of the millennium. In Massachusetts they have Evening Lectures for the benefit of the convicts in the State Prison. I shall never forget my tour through a State Prison, one bright summer day. The hopeless faces of the men in the workshops. Their sullen looks when by twos they marched in long procession across the yard, under guard, to their dinner. I shall never forget the poor wretches in the carding-room, breathing all day, and every day, the little fuzzy, floating particles, which set me coughing painfully the moment I entered the door; and when I asked the attendant if it did not injure their lungs, the cool matter-of-fact manner in which he answered, "Yes—they didn't live very long." I remember well the horrid, contracted cells, against whose walls I know I should have dashed out my brains, were I locked in long enough. And well too could I understand what a horror Sunday must be, imprisoned there, all day, with only the interval of an hour of church; alone with torturing memories; till they prayed for the light of Monday morning and work—work!—ever so hard work, so that it only brought contact and companionship with their kind, speechless though it were.
I remember, too, being told, on inquiry, that the convicts were allowed books to read in their cells on Sunday; but on examination of the cells, I found many so dark that even at midday the offer of "books to read" would have been a mere mockery. I remember, too, the emaciated, hollow-eyed sick men, lounging on benches in the yard, and, when I pitied them, being told that they often "feigned sickness." Heaven knows I should not have blamed them for feigning anything, when humanity so slept that visitors were told in their hearing of their crimes, as they were severally pointed out, and their names and former professions and places of residence given; here a doctor, there a minister, who had fallen from grace.
Surely, thought I, there must come a time when a better way than this shall be found to "reform" men. Surely it can never be done by driving them mad with unrelieved severity like this. For I remembered a letter I received from a convict, to whom some printed word of mine had accidentally floated through his prison bars, and "helped him," so he wrote me, "to bear up till the time for his release came, when he hoped to be a better man."
Had I never written but that one word, I am glad to have lived for that man's sake.
And now what a change! These poor creatures, instead of darkness and solitude—with hate, and revenge, and despair maddening them—have evening lectures for their profit and encouragement. Something to think about in the long hours of wakefulness and sickness; something to look forward to when the day's unrewarded toil is done; something to rout the demons that crouch in their cells and wait their coming at night, till any other hell than this would seem heaven. Let us hope that the example of good old Massachusetts in this and many other praiseworthy regards may be widely imitated.
Surely as God lives, there is a window in the soul of every debased man and woman, at which Love and Mercy may knock and whisper, and be heard. Nor can warden or overseer or chaplain ever be sure that from those convict cells is not issuing the stifled cry—No man cares for my soul.