As to our true religious success this year, or the real good accomplished, none but that Being who knows all things can decide. One thing is certain, much earnest, prayerful effort to that end was made, much hard labor performed. But it is difficult rowing against wind and tide. Still, we probably shared in as large success as could reasonably be looked for under all the circumstances.
42. Lack of truthfulness at the prison. We are often told that no confidence can be placed in the word of a prisoner. But in my experience under the new rule, I was taught the sad lesson that I could place no greater confidence in the assertions of some of the officers. A complaint of this character had repeatedly been made by released prisoners. Still, it required personal experience to enable me to appreciate its full and lamentable force. Hence, the shock I felt at the virtual request of the warden for me to join in the falsehood course, by telling the prisoners that Henry Stewart, when removed to the insane asylum, was taken out to be tried for attempts to murder his overseer.—Then, again, there were the assertions I repeatedly heard the warden make to prison visitors, on passing through the cook-room. "We give the prisoners good food and enough of it. We purchase the best of articles the market affords, and have the food well prepared." He would repeat this in earnestness and apparent sincerity, as though he really believed it himself.—Subsequently, a gentleman of the city, of undoubted veracity, being about to visit the parents of a prisoner, called and asked the warden how he was, with the answer, "He is all right; you may tell his folks that he is all right." In a few days after, it was found that, at the very time of this assertion, the man was so sick that the doctor had nearly given him over to die.
Then I would sometimes smile and sometimes feel sorrowful at his changeable appearance; perhaps if one of influence and authority came in, he would put on peculiar airs of suavity, and expatiate upon how things were and should be in prison, while one without that influence might enter and receive entirely different treatment. I here see how our rulers may have been led on at times, unaware of the true state of things in the institution. How easy to cover up!
Then in the female department, I called for a convict in order to arrange for her disposal on leaving prison, and was told, "The assistant is in the city with the key to their apartment, therefore you can not see the woman." But how was I surprised shortly to learn that, at the moment of this assertion, the assistant was in the kitchen at work, and known to be there by my informant.
Is it any wonder that such people disbelieve in prison reform?
43. Reported quarrel between the warden and chaplain. The idea has been circulated, how extensively I know not, that the warden and chaplain had a quarrel between them at the prison. It seems to have pervaded some minds in the legislature at Concord in '71, being used to the disadvantage of a bill before that body in regard to the prison, the fate of which perhaps was made to turn on that. No doubt a certain Concord gentleman, who had an ax of his own to grind in connection, knows very well how this report was made so prevalent. Whether he or another started it, I know not.
But that idea had not the slightest foundation in truth. The circumstances of our official intercourse in all that passed, have been faithfully set forth in the preceding pages, and the reader can see for himself that there was no quarreling. When the warden told me to "bring the key back and not touch it any more," I did as required, without uttering a word. When I told him what I should do about fixing up the Maine man before sending him away, his remark was in no fault-finding tone. When he pointed out my work at first, and in our connected colloquy, all our words were civil and courteous, no unpleasantness in tone; and when he informed me on the point of the man's glasses and the sick man's flannels, I gave him no unkind answer. And where was the quarreling? Nowhere. It did not exist. He taught me my bounds after the manner he did, and I accepted them and conformed my moves thereto with not a lisp of fault-finding. He never spoke a word in disapprobation of what I was doing, but that all was agreeable to his mind. Again, where was that place of quarreling? Not in the prison between the warden and chaplain. Whenever we met, it was on the most civil terms, we invariably passing the compliments of the day.
True, we each had our notions on prison reform, he thinking that attempts in that direction are useless, that, when one has fallen into prison we can not reform him, that punishment is the great mission of the prison, and thus on; I, supposing that reform is practicable, that we should faithfully use all available means for it, and make it the paramount object of imprisoning. On the question of prison order we were exactly alike in sentiment,—perfect order, strict discipline,—though, perhaps, varying as to the ultimate results, he securing that as a deterrent to crime; I, as an important and indispensable element in reform, leading the once erring to that state of mind in which he will hate wrong and love right.