After Prison--What?

by Maud Ballington Booth

I was very much touched by a mark of appreciation of our work shown by a number of the men who subscribed nearly one hundred dollars out of the money they had on deposit towards our Hope Hall fund. Does not this show how truly they appreciate our plans and schemes and efforts for their future? I think this should make the fortunate and wealthy outside the prison eager to follow their example in generous and loving sympathy with the good work. The officers of the prison among themselves subscribed fifty-five dollars as a testimony of their indorsement of the movement.

From men all over the country, in prisons not yet visited, comes the plea to go to them and my heart longs to answer it, but so far we have had to go slowly.

I was visiting recently for the first time a new prison, and was much touched by a remark made by one of the men to the chaplain. He is serving a life term and has proved himself to be an earnest Christian. Meeting the chaplain the day before my expected visit he said, "Chaplain, when there is some special request I have made in prayer, I write it down and when the answer comes, I put O.K. against the prayer. To-day I can do that again, for I have prayed so long that the Little Mother might come to us, and at last my prayer is answered." Is it a wonder that my heart turns longingly to the great wide field where the harvest awaits us, to the many whose call to us is as clear as ever the Macedonian call could be from heathen lands?

Alas, all too much of my time has to be filled with money-raising lectures, so that long lecture-trips for this purpose keep me from the work where I know I could do so much to cheer and comfort these waiting hearts.

We do not want our labors in the prisons to be a mere evangelizing effort, but we wish to establish a permanent work, and hence of course we have had to move slowly. On the other hand the effect has been much more lasting. How much it has meant of cheer and sunshine to the men, can only be realized as we gather from day to day the news that comes to us from all over the country. It must be remembered how shut off these men are from friendship, from the world, from all matters of interest that can carry them out of their dull, dreary routine in cell and workshop life, to understand what this link with the outer world has proved to many of them. We send to each prison a large number of Volunteers' Gazettes, the official organ of our movement and its pages are read with deepest interest giving, as they do, news of progress of each prison League, and also constant reports of the successes of men once their fellow-prisoners, who are now living free and honest lives in the path that lies before them also. They look forward intensely to their League meetings. The whole tendency of the work is to stir up a new interest in life.

When one thinks of the men who are incarcerated for a lifetime, many of whom have perhaps outlived all ties of friendship and relationship, one can gain some idea of the help it proves to them in enduring their position, to realize that they belong to something and some one, and can still look for bright spots in the monotony of prison life.

The question may be raised as to the relationship of this work to the labors of the chaplains in state prison. I want it most emphatically understood that in all things our wish is to work harmoniously with prison officers, not only with the spiritual advisers, but also the wardens, and so far we have had the greatest help and sympathy from them. Our work could not be construed into a reflection on that of the chaplain. It is to help and to back up his efforts, to bring in an outside influence which I have found the chaplain most ready to welcome, a link to the outside world. The chaplain is of necessity of the prison world and though he has a splendid sphere for helping and blessing the men while under his charge, he cannot go with them into the new life. We may come in and form a friendship and tie to which they can turn after the chaplain has bidden them farewell, and they are once more facing life's battle on the outside. In almost all the prisons where the V.P.L. has been established, the chaplains have most cordially welcomed us and are working heart and hand with us, some of them even wearing the little League button and becoming officially associated with the movement.

Chaplain Barnes of Massachusetts has an experience of twenty-three years of devoted toil for the "boys" and he has often told me he feels that a new era has come to the spiritual life of our prisons through the establishing of the V.P.L. It has been wonderfully interesting to us to watch the spiritual growth in grace, and the mental and moral development of the men after they have started in the new life. Often the most unlikely have seemed suddenly to wake up and develop possibilities never dreamed of by those who had known them before. As letter after letter has come to me from such I have felt as if I could read here the unfolding of a better nature long dormant, between the lines so simply and naturally telling of struggles and victories in the passing days. I have seen over and over the birth and growth of a soul.

Just recently a little Day Book came into my hands by chance, and knowing what I do of the owner, its record is a very pathetic glimpse into a heart story. He was by no means a first offender but an inmate of the prison of the old timers, Dannemora. Burglary had been his special line and he had started in it quite young, as did his brother whose story I shall tell elsewhere. My first acquaintance with him was an urgent letter entreating me to care for his wife and little one, who, he feared from news just received, were facing dire need. My interest in them evidently touched a tender chord in his heart for he became one of my warm friends and champions, though at that time neither a Christian nor a League member. Many of the men who make no profession of being good are still most heartily with us in sentiment, and I have been looked upon as the "Little Mother" and stood up for as loyally by these as by our own V.P.L. "boys." As time went on and this man came more and more under the influence of the work, he began to weigh well his future and at last took his stand with good determination for the new life. When he joined the League I gave him this little book which all our boys are supposed to read together each morning and night. Five years afterwards it came into my hands by accident and I read what he had written on the fly leaf the day he had received it. "In accepting this little book I do so with a firm determination and a promise to try and live faithfully a better and purer life with God's help." Underneath his name and number are signed, and then the words "seven years and six months" chronicled the length of his sentence. Turning the leaves I found one verse marked that had evidently proved his greatest comfort, "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise as some men count slackness, but is long-suffering to usward not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance." Then came the record of the passing days and years, marked off at the head of different daily portions blending the interests near and dear to his heart and future, with his daily devotion. "I am twenty-nine years old to-day," headed July 21st. On July 27th, "My wife is twenty-three years old to-day," and yet later on the same page three years after he chronicled, "My wife is twenty-six." In the shadow of that cell the baby face with golden curls came often to smile upon him in fancy and on one page we find "My little girl is two years old, 1897." In prison the days pass all too slowly. We find on another page May 2d, "Eight hundred and fourteen days more." Further on "Five hundred and seventy-two days more," then "three hundred and sixty-five days more" and yet again "two hundred and seventy" is marked and then the last entry "I go home to-day, July 27, 1901." So the Day Book, his little companion and guide, held on its pages the record of the passing days in which he was preparing for the future. I knew something of the fierce struggle he had with old habits, evil temper, past memories and disappointments that had to be faced, for during those prison days I sometimes talked with him personally, but I also know how he conquered and how truly he came out "a new man in Christ Jesus." He thought he was coming to a glad, bright, joyous experience on his discharge and was met by a blow and sorrow that would have staggered many a stronger man. I cannot chronicle the awful test through which this soul passed, for there are confidences that cannot be betrayed even to show the keeping grace of the new life, but I can say this, he manfully stood the trial and is to-day a happy, earnest, honest, Christian man. He has proved himself a good husband and a most tenderly devoted father. He works hard all day, receiving excellent wages and in the evening walks or reads with his little girl. He has a bright, well furnished home and over a thousand dollars in the bank laid by for a rainy day. He has never returned to the saloon or in any way mixed with the old life which he considers buried with the dead self, for truly he is living in a new world after a veritable resurrection.

The little Day Book has proved a great comfort to many. At first we used to send a copy to every League member, though now regretfully we have had to desist, because we could not afford it with the great increase in membership. Many of our "boys" had never taken any interest in the Bible before and some are as indifferent and ignorant as the heathen abroad, but this "Daily Light" collection of passages has been to them a veritable revelation. Many feel towards it as one "boy" wrote to me, "As I kneel down to pray and read before going to the workshop in the morning it seems as if my Saviour sent me a direct message to guide and warn me through the trials of the day, and at night when I come in tired and read again, I find a message of comfort and a promise from Him that cheers and encourages my heart." The writer of these words died in prison a triumphantly happy death, leaving behind him a record, the truth of which every officer could attest, of earnest Christian living after having at one time been the terror of the prison, for from childhood he had been absolutely ignorant of the first rudiments of goodness and Christianity.