"I suppose I'd been serving my fifteenth sentence, to say the least, in Branch No. 3, and they'd put me down in the dungeon, as usual, as they most always had to do for the first few drays, 'cause I wanted the drug so bad (they give you some there, but it never was enough) that I used to disturb everybody, and besides, was very troublesome. I'll never forget the day when I tried to knock my brains out on the dark cement floor, but couldn't; so I cried, 'O God! if there is a God, and some of these missionary folk that come here say there is a God, and a Christ what can save, save me, save me, please save me! I don't want to go to hell! I've had hell enough! I don't want to go to hell!'
* * * * *
"There was a little quiet-looking old lady visiting the jail that day, and she asked Matron Kincaid if she couldn't go down and try to help that poor afflicted soul in the dungeon, and Mrs. Kincaid gave permission.
"Mother Roberts, her very presence was soothing, and pretty soon she put her arm around me and prayed. Oh, how she prayed to her God and Savior to come, and come quickly, to help and save me through and through! By and by she told me of Jesus who died for sinners. I couldn't bear to part with her, but I had to let her go soon, she promising to come back again. I was still suffering, but after hearing her, and her being so kind to dirty, loathsome me, I made up my mind I'd try to 'grin and bear' the misery if it took my very life.
"Next time she came, I was out of the dungeon, up on the next floor in my cell. Say, Mother Roberts, you wouldn't have known me if you had seen me then and as I look now. I didn't weigh ninety pounds. Now I weigh close onto one hundred and seventy. Praise the Lord!
"I was always a mass of filth and rags whenever the cops [police] would run me in.
"What did they arrest me for? Why for stealing of course. We'll swipe anything to supply ourselves and our chums with 'dope' [morphine, cocaine, opium, etc.]. That last time I'd been sentenced for three months. When my time was up, my missionary friend called for me, and we came down on the train to San Jose. She hired a hack at the depot; wasn't she considerate? God bless her!
"When we reached this home, the matron [Sister Griffith] met me at the door, and, said she, 'Welcome, dear child, welcome in the name of the Lord.' Then she put her arm around me, and led me into this very room we are sitting in now. I fell in love with her right on the spot. She had a lovely face and the beautifullest white hair I ever saw.
"I asked her to please let me go to bed, and would she gave me a room where I couldn't escape; also to please take away all my clothes, all but the bedding and a nightdress. I told her I'd come there to fight it out, that I'd been in hell on earth for years, that for twenty-seven years I'd been a 'dope' fiend, and that I wanted all of them who knew how to pray to pray for me, 'cause I knew there was a Christ and a God, but I hadn't found him yet. She did as I asked, and after a while tried to get me to eat, but I couldn't. Did you know the 'dope' fiends lose their appetites for everything but the drug? Yes, they do. I often wondered what kept us alive. It surely wasn't the food we ate.
"My, what a struggle I had! what a fight for the next three weeks! for I was determined from the time my sentence expired, never, if it killed me, to touch the poison again, and I was bound to keep my word. God alone knows what I suffered. One morning a little before daylight (I'd heard the clock strike one, two, three, somewhere) all of a sudden the room was lit up with a strange soft light, and somebody was whispering (or it seemed like whispering), 'Daughter, be of good cheer. Thou art healed.' Oh but I felt beautiful, beautiful! and soon slept the sweetest. Not an ache or pain. Just like a new-born baby. When I woke up I could tell the girls were at breakfast. I took my stick and knocked on the floor. Pretty soon Sister Griffith came up, and I told her. She cried with me for very joy, and knelt by my bedside to thank God for answer to prayer, then went down to tell the family. Glory, glory be to God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit! I was saved and I knew it—saved through and through.