"My dear Little Mother:—I am most happy to be able to write you a cheering letter. I am afraid my letters the past two or three months have been rather 'blue' reading to you, but now, thank God, I am feeling very well and want to chase that sorrowful expression from your face which I suspect has been there of late on receiving my letters. I want to write you a cheering letter, first because I am cheerful, hopeful and happy myself and then because I know it will cheer and comfort you to hear that I am fighting the battle bravely, and that the victory we all look forward to so intensely is mine. I have indeed experienced the new life, and God has been my guide and refuge for two years now and I tell you, Little Mother, I would not exchange it for my old sinful life for the world. My past bad name and misdeeds sent me to this place for ten years, but I have gained by it something I never realized or had before, the love of our dear Saviour. I cannot help but think of the bright happy future in store for me. Although the state holds my body, my spirit is free, thank God, and though clouds do gather at times in this dreary place I have One to go to who is all sunshine and always understands and comforts me. Now Little Mother, I am feeling very well. Good Dr. Ransom, God bless him, has been like a father to me, you will never know how much he has done for me. He asked me the other day when I had heard from you. I told him and he said I must never forget you. Little Mother, I guess you know whether I could or not. God bless you. I wish you every success on your western trip. Pray for me," etc.
I give the letter just in the natural outspoken way in which it was written. Shortly afterwards the Doctor wrote me that his patient was undoubtedly suffering from the first inroads of tuberculosis. I immediately set to work on the case, though, as a rule, I do not help men to regain their liberty. They know that is not my mission. Here however was one whom I believed innocent, who had served two years and who in all likelihood could not live out the other eight, a man whom I believed thoroughly safe to trust at large.
President Roosevelt, then governor, gave me his pardon the following New Year, and when the "boy" received my wire with the news the joy was too much for him, and he fainted away in the prison hospital. We welcomed him home, put him under excellent medical treatment and afterwards kept him for a spring and summer on the farm at Hope Hall. The disease was checked, he was perfectly restored to health, and went out into the world to work. He is still leading an upright life not far from New York and keeps in touch with us.
Could I give space to the hundreds of happy letters that tell of the change from gloom to brightness, from soul-bondage to freedom and new strength, it would be clearly seen that, though the men deeply appreciate their Home and friends and are intensely grateful for all that may be done to help them, they fully realize the power behind the work. It is this power that has given them new hope and from it they have drawn their deepest consolation and surest certainty for the unknown future. Often in life the human friendship is the stepping-stone to the Divine. The moonlight makes us realize that the sun still shines.
Sometime since the Chaplain of Auburn, a devoted shepherd to that big flock wrote me as follows: "When you were so very sick three years ago the men here were very much alarmed and anxious for your recovery. Among them was an old-timer who had spent over twenty years solid in prison out of forty-nine years of life, the longest time of liberty between his incarcerations being seven months. When he heard that fears were entertained that you might not recover, he felt impelled to pray for you. In relating the story he said, 'I dropped on my knees to pray for her and as I did so I was overwhelmed with the thought that God would not hear such a sinner as I was. I began to pray for God to have mercy upon me and in my pleading forgot where I was and everything but the fact that I was a sinner and Jesus Christ my Saviour.' His sympathy for you was the means of leading him to Christ." The sequel of this story made another record of successful right-doing on the outside as well as in prison.
Divine truth is not only whispered to our hearts from the leaves of the forest, sung to us by the mountain brook and flashed into our mind by the glint of the sunbeam, but sometimes it looks out at us from the wonders of science. A nerve has been severed by accident or during an operation and has remained for months or years perhaps useless and atrophied. Yet operative skill can resurrect the buried nerve ends and unite them again restoring perfectly the lost function. To this end especially when there has been much loss of substance it is necessary to interpose an aseptic absorbable body such as catgut or decalcified bone tube to serve as a temporary scaffolding for the products of tissue proliferation. Sutured to this connecting substance the nerve reunites using it as a bridge over or through which the union can be affected. When this end is accomplished the bridge or scaffolding is no longer needed and disappears through absorption. This it seems to me is the relative position of the soul-seeker to the unsaved. The poor soul has wandered far from God, is lost, buried beneath numberless hindering obstacles. To a great extent the functions of soul and conscience are destroyed, the power to serve God, to feel aright, to be pure and good, and honest are gone; even feelings and aspirations for things Divine in many cases seem wanting, but we believe that all this can be reawakened if only the soul is brought near to God. A helpless human atom reunited to the Divine compassionate power above. The human friend and messenger or the organization that has the privilege of stretching out the helping hand to those thus needy can serve as the bridge or connection, the link useful in the right place but worse than useless if unaided by the loving miracle-working power from above.
As I turn the pages of our little Day Book a verse smiles out at me, the truth of which I know, and the sweet realization of which hundreds of happy hearts in prison to-day attest with earnest acclamation, "Their voice was heard and their prayer came up to His holy dwelling place even into Heaven."