My every thought is dedicated to him for whom and with whom I now live, and so I will continue to live without complaint so long as life is granted me. I have looked it all in the face, and have recoiled, shuddering, at the petrifying horror of impossibilities, but I have made my resolve. So long as I inhabit the earth Kelly has a human being who stands in the place of mother to him.
I am not afraid to make any sacrifices. I shrink only from the thought of shirking the responsibility. From the day Kelly came into my life I have made myself answerable for his actions and conduct. Would it not be cowardice and treachery if I now said, “The yoke has become too burdensome, now I will shunt it on to the shoulders of another”?
And yet, Magna, your plan seems to me the one possibility of salvation.
Before I express my hearty thanks, and confide my boy to your care, I must tell you something which I have been compelled to keep to myself till now. Kelly has before been taken care of by others. By force of circumstances. He tried—remember he was only nine years old—to burn me. Of course no one suspected him, otherwise the police would not have been asked to investigate the affair, but then it was brought to light, and he was taken away from me. I could have murdered them for taking him.... It is hard, even now, years after, to talk about it. My one idea was to find a means of getting him back. In America everything possible is done to save children whose feet are set on the downward path to crime. And it is done with a tenderness and love which is marvellous, but I didn’t know it. I thought of what I had read in the papers at home about reformatories for children, about floggings and starvation, and lockings-up in dark cellars. I was ready to help Kelly to escape till the first time that they gave me permission to visit him.
There was no wall round the institution, not even a railing. The main building abutted on the high road, and from there you could see the heaps of smaller red houses resembling a town of villas.
As I came up to the inspector’s dwelling, I was almost run down by a crowd of boys headed by a small negro, who were having a race.
Just as I entered the door, I heard an outcry which made my heart stand still. I thought it was one of the boys being punished. But the inspector showed me from the window what the noise meant. The boys were playing at fire, and at that moment they were letting the hose play on the inspector’s house. My little Kelly—in oilskins and a helmet on his head—held the hose.
And I was told that of the six hundred boys who are in the reformatory many of them on account of gross misconduct, for which but for their tender years, they would have been sentenced to a long period of imprisonment, not a single one had been guilty of doing anything wrong during his detention here. Punishments such as thrashing and being put on bread and water and under arrest, simply do not exist. The boys live in their little villas, twelve in a batch, under the supervision of a pair of foster-parents. The only punishment is that a boy who has been disobedient or lazy gets no cake at five o’clock tea, and is not given permission to sit with the others at the large flower-decked table, but has to sit alone at a small table. And he mayn’t lie before the fire at dusk and listen to fairy-tales.
No mother could have had more delightful letters from her child than I had from Kelly during that year. If I had only been as wise then as I am now, I should have let him stay there as long as the inspector would have kept him.
All the small “prisoners” were taught in succession various industries which they might choose themselves. I saw them baking, ironing, washing, carving, carpentering, binding books, making clothes, and toys, and I saw them planting trees, ploughing, and, Magna, I saw them milking cows. But I was a foolish mother. I didn’t want my boy brought up to a trade; I imagined it was my duty to develop his great gifts in a different direction.