There are many convicts in prison who lie awake at night concocting stories about other persons, accusing them of the vilest of actions. If the prisoner can get hold of a Sunday newspaper he invariably reads the society news very carefully. He can tell more about the Four Hundred than the swells will ever know about themselves; and he tells very little good of them. Such stories are fabricated in prison and repeated out of it.
When I was in Auburn stir I knew a young fellow named Sterling, as straight a thief as ever did time. He had the courage of a grenadier and objected to everything that was mean and petty. He therefore had many enemies in prison, and they tried to make him unpopular by accusing him of a horrible crime. The story reached my ears and I tried to put a stop to it, but I only did him the more harm. When Sterling heard the tale he knocked one of his traducers senseless with an iron bar. Tongues wagged louder than ever and one day he came to me and talked about it and I saw a wild look in his eyes. His melancholia started in about that time, and he began to suspect everybody, including me. His enemies put the keepers against him and they made his life almost unbearable. Generally the men that tip off keepers to the alleged violent character of some convict are the worst stool-pigeons in the prison. Even the Messiah could not pass through this world without arousing the venom of the crowd. How in the name of common sense, then, could Sterling, or I, or any other grafter expect otherwise than to be traduced? It was the politicians who were the cause of Christ's trials; and the politicians are the same to-day as they were then. They have very little brains, but they have the low cunning which is the first attribute of the human brute. They pretend to be the people's advisers, but pile up big bank accounts. Even the convict scum that come from the lower wards of the city have all the requisites of the successful politician. Nor can one say that these criminals are of low birth, for they trace their ancestors back for centuries. The fact that convicts slander one another with glee and hear with joy of the misfortunes of their fellows, is a sign that they come from a very old family; from the wretched human stock that demanded the crucifixion of Christ.
This evil trait, suspiciousness, is something I should like to eliminate from my own character. Even now I am afflicted with it. Since my release I often have the old feeling come over me that I am being watched; and sometimes without any reason at all. Only recently I was riding on a Brooklyn car, when a man sitting opposite happened to glance at me two or three times. I gave him an irritated look. Then he stared at me, to see what was the matter, I suppose. That was too much, and I asked him, with my nerves on edge, if he had ever seen me before. He said "No", with a surprised look, and I felt cheap, as I always do after such an incident. A neighbor of mine has a peculiar habit of watching me quietly whenever I visit his family. I know that he is ignorant of my past but when he stares at me, I am rattled. I begin to suspect that he is studying me, wondering who I am. The other day I said to him, irritably: "Mr. K——, you have a bad habit of watching people." He laughed carelessly and I, getting hot, said: "Mr. K—— when I visit people it is not with the intention of stealing anything." I left the house in a huff and his sister, as I afterwards found, rebuked him for his bad manners.
Indeed, I have lost many a friend by being over suspicious. I am suspicious even of my family. Sometimes when I sit quietly at home with my mother in the evening, as has grown to be a habit with me, I see her look at me. I begin immediately to think that she is wondering whether I am grafting again. It makes me very nervous, and I sometimes put on my hat and go out for a walk, just to be alone. One day, when I was in stir, my mother visited me, as she always did when they gave her a chance. In the course of our conversation she told me that on my release I had better leave the city and go to some place where I was not known. "For," she said, "your character, my boy, is bad." I grabbed her by the arm and exclaimed: "Who is it that is circulating these d—— stories about me?" My poor mother merely meant, of course, that I was known as a thief, but I thought some of the other convicts had slandered me to her. It was absurd, of course, but the outside world cannot understand how suspicious a grafter is. I have often seen a man, who afterwards became insane, begin being queer through suspiciousness.
Well, as I have said, I found the guns suspicious of me, when I told them I had squared it, or when I refused to say anything about my doings. Of course I don't care, for I hate the Bowery now and everything in it. Whenever I went, as I did several times with my editor, to a gun joint, a feeling of disgust passed over me. I pity my old pals, but they no longer interest me. I look upon them as failures. I have seen a new light and I shall follow it. Whatever the public may think of this book, it has already been a blessing to me. For it has been honest work that I and my friend the editor have done together, and leads me to think that there may yet be a new life for me. I feel now that I should prefer to talk and associate with the meanest workingman in this city than with the swellest thief. For a long time I have really despised myself. When old friends and relatives look at me askance I say to myself: "How can I prove to them that I am not the same as I was in the past?" No wonder the authorities thought I was mad. I have spent the best years of my life behind the prison bars. I could have made out of myself almost anything I wanted, for I had the three requisites of success: personal appearance, health and, I think, some brains. But what have I done? After ruining my life, I have not even received the proverbial mess of pottage. As I look back upon my life both introspectively and retrospectively I do not wonder that society at large despises the criminal.
I am not trying to point a moral or pose as a reformer. I cannot say that I quit the old life because of any religious feeling. I am not one of those who have reformed by finding Jesus at the end of a gas pipe which they were about to use as a black jack on a citizen, just in order to finger his long green. I only saw by painful experience that there is nothing in a life of crime. I ran up against society, and found that I had struck something stronger and harder than a stone wall. But it was not that alone that made me reform. What was it? Was it the terrible years I spent in prison? Was it the confinement in a mad-house, where I daily saw old pals of mine become drivelling idiots? Was it my reading of the great authors, and my becoming acquainted with the beautiful thoughts of the great men of the world? Was it a combination of these things? Perhaps so, but even that does not entirely explain it, does not go deep enough. I have said that I am not religious, and I am not. And yet I have experienced something indefinable, which I suppose some people might call an awakening of the soul. What is that, after all, but the realization that your way of life is ruining you even to the very foundation of your nature?
Perhaps, after all, I am not entirely lacking in religion; for certainly the character of Christ strongly appeals to me. I don't care for creeds, but the personality of the Nazarene, when stripped of the aroma of divinity, appeals to all thinking men, I care not whether they are atheists, agnostics or sceptics. Any man that has understanding reveres the life of Christ, for He practiced what He preached and died for humanity. He was a perfect specimen of manhood, and had developed to the highest degree that trait which is lacking in most all men—the faculty humane.
I believe that a time comes in the lives of many grafters when they desire to reform. Some do reform for good and all, and I shall show the world that I am one of them; but the difficulties in the way are great, and many fall again by the wayside.
They come out of prison marked men. Many observers can tell an ex-convict on sight. The lock-step is one of the causes. It gives a man a peculiar gait which he will retain all his life. The convicts march close together and cannot raise their chests. They have to keep their faces turned towards the screw. Breathing is difficult, and most convicts suffer in consequence from catarrh, and a good many from lung trouble. Walking in lock-step is not good exercise, and makes the men nervous. When the convict is confined in his cell he paces up and down. The short turn is bad for his stomach, and often gets on his mind. That short walk will always have control of me. I cannot sit down now to eat or write, without jumping up every five minutes in order to take that short walk. I have become so used to it that I do not want to leave the house, for I can pace up and down in my room. I can take that small stretch all day long and not be tired, but if I walk a long straight distance I get very much fatigued. When I wait for a train I always begin that short walk on the platform. I have often caught myself walking just seven feet one way, and then turning around and walking seven feet in the opposite direction. Another physical mark, caused by a criminal life rather than by a long sojourn in stir, is an expressionless cast of countenance. The old grafter never expresses any emotions. He has schooled himself until his face is a mask, which betrays nothing.
A much more serious difficulty in the way of reform is the ex-convict's health which is always bad if a long term of years has been served. Moreover, his brain has often lost its equilibrium and powers of discernment. When he gets out of prison his chance of being able to do any useful work is slight. He knows no trade, and he is not strong enough to do hard day labor. He is given only ten dollars, when he leaves stir, with which to begin life afresh. A man who has served a long term is not steady above the ears until he has been at liberty several months; and what can such a man do with ten dollars? It would be cheaper for the state in the end to give an ex-convict money enough to keep him for several months; for then a smaller percentage would return to stir. It would give the man a chance to make friends, to look for a job, and to show the world that he is in earnest.