ARRAIGNMENT OF GAMBLING IN ITS MORAL ASPECTS.
“Did you ever see the autograph of the President?” said Warden B., of the I. State Penitentiary. He had been a member of my congregation for years, and at his request I had visited the prison to preach to the convicts. The wagon which brought me from the station carried the mail bag, and, while looking over his letters, he held up a large official envelope with the above question.
“No,” I answered, taking my eyes from the intelligent convict who sat in striped clothing writing at a desk, and whose shaven and shame-flushed face was persistently turned from me. “I would like to see his signature, as my vote helped to put him in the White House.”
“There it is,” said the warden, handing me the document, which I soon discovered to be a pardon for a certain youth, who had served three years of a six years sentence for theft from the Post Office Department.
“Why is this pardon given, warden?” “Well,” said he, “this young man is of good family, and has dependent on him a widowed mother, a wife and child. He became the dupe of gamblers who fleeced him, and then the Devil, I reckon, suggested that he might recoup his loss by stealing from the Government, and in an evil hour he fell, was detected, convicted, and with other United States men sent here. I remember the day he came; how heart-broken he stood in the corridor till the sheriff gave me the papers, unloosed his shackles, and turned the gang over to me. They were coupled in irons on the cars, and John was paired with a hardened felon who had done time before, as had most of the lot. They glanced defiantly around at the officers with a braggart insolence as the iron gates clanged on them, but he paled and trembled, tears silently flowing down his face to the stone floor. I followed to the bath-house, where they are washed, shaved, cropped and dressed in stripes. At the registry, when asked his age, name, etc., with great effort he managed to answer, but when asked his father’s name, a vision of the dead seemed to rise before him. Overwhelmed with shame he tried thrice with choking utterance to tell the name, and then faltered it with such a moan of agony that even the clerk, used to such scenes, felt his hand tremble as he wrote it down. You know our rules require the reading of all letters before they reach the prisoners. The chaplain, at my request, read those sent to him. We found such woe, such evidence of his former honor, such testimony to his previous good character, that friends became interested in him. I helped them, thinking it a case for Executive clemency. The President, who is a merciful man, looked into the case, pondered it a month, and sends this pardon.”
“Now,” I said when the sad story was ended, “warden, I want to ask a favor. Let me present this pardon to him in person. I understand that it makes him free from this hour; I wish to study the human face in the moment when the revelation that he is free dawns on his mind. May I do this?”
“Certainly,” was the answer, and striking a silver bell, a “trusty” appeared. He said, “Tom, bring John R. to my office at once.”
While waiting, I said, “Does he expect a pardon?”
“No,” was the answer, “he knows nothing of the efforts to set him free. It will be a total surprise to him.”