Oh, the cant! the cant one hears in the Tombs.
But there is another kind; there are the real workers who bring gladness and help; there was the “Tombs Angel,” there is “Sister Sunshine,” and “Sister ----”; but it is of her I started to tell this story. I heard it from a court officer over in the Criminal Court Building during my examination before the Coroner.
I was in the “box,” which means the “pen,” that is to say, the “stall” in which you wait till you are called before the judge, and my friend the officer said, referring to a very miserable specimen in the opposite “pen,” who was in convulsions by reason of his anger:
“He’s the worst ever; the worst ever I see; the very worst. Why, what do you think? he cursed the Sister—what? did I? Did I call him down?”
The Sister he referred to is one of the black-robed saints, who for the sake of the lowly Nazarene devote their lives to laboring among the sinners and unfortunates in the city prisons. The object of the keeper’s wrath was the toughest man in the Tombs—to have that distinction one must be hard indeed.
The treatment which this particular Sister of whom I speak had received at the hands of the hard citizen was somewhat as follows, according to my informant: First, he had lied to her; then he had asked of her an impossibility. Of course she had attempted to do it. Of course she failed; then he insulted her, and what he said I am ashamed to write; but tears were in her eyes when she turned away. But for all that—wait, I am ahead of my story.
It seems that previous to this he had abused his own lawyer until that worthy would do little or nothing for him. “Let him go. No one will help him, anyhow—there’s no one who would be a witness for him. He has no friends—there’s no evidence that can save him,” said his legal adviser.
At the trial, which took place that day, the day it stormed so, some evidence did appear which proved him absolutely innocent; never was this expected; it came from an old enemy; he had not dreamed this possible.
How did this happen? She (the Sisters hear much that no one else does) had learned of this witness, and in spite of the man himself and her own outraged feelings, had procured his defence and acquittal.
“He didn’t deserve it, but then that is just her way,” said my friend the attendant. “Whose way?” I asked. “Don’t you know? Why, God bless her, I thought every one knew Sister Xavier.”