Never, in all May-blossom's unmothered life, has there been a night like this. The warm cuddling in tender arms, two fairy tales, the tucking up in bed, and, last of all, the singing of a Scotch ballad, sweet as April rain, upon whose soothing rhythm the weary little soul floats awhile in semi-consciousness, and, at last, falls deliciously into the soft arms of sleep.
We may be sure that all the veteran funeralgoers (those irrepressible "mutes") were on evidence at the funeral of Warden Flint; that his most sequestered virtues were brought to the front, and put on parade for the occasion, and that the usual number in attendance pronounced the remarks "excellent." After the service the coffin is borne uncovered through the guard-room, and deposited in the prison yard. The convicts filing thither, in reverent procession, are permitted a last look at their warden. Hodges, the murderer, taken from his rayless dungeon, and blinking dazedly at the light, is (after the old-time experimental fashion) brought face to face with the corpse. He neither weeps nor smiles. His face wears the blank expression of utter imbecility. After much prodding from his attendants, he recognizes the warden, and babbles, "O dear! have I killed him?" When bidden to put his hand on the body, he recoils and shudders. He exhibits no other emotion, and, clanking his irons, is led supinely back to the "Lower Arch." The convicts retire in slow, orderly procession, and the coffin is returned to more private quarters. The lid is screwed down. Mrs. Jones, standing at the front window, counts the carriages, and, as the body is being adjusted on its hearse, Mrs. Miller, in a resonant whisper, asks Mrs. Brown, "How soon they expect to get into the new house, and if she's weaned the baby?" Amid this easy chit-chat, the mourning carriages fill, the procession starts. After this, the Joneses, Millers, and Browns go their ways. The funeral is over.
Warden Flint's successor, an oldish man with grown-up sons, promptly appointed by the governor, arrived upon the scene directly upon the heels of his departure (death's widest gaps are soon filled!), and, as there were none to say her nay, Miss Parker tacitly adopted his homeless child, and made ready for her departure. Miss Paulina (admirable as she was) had her limitations. The convict, viewed through the disparaging lens of her own immaculate spectacles, was not an eligible associate, and the tender, all-round leave-taking, permitted between her innocent charge and her attainted friends, was an heroic stretch of good-will on the part of this excellent lady.
At last, it was all well over. May-blossom had given her farewell hug to Peter Floome and "Uncle Tim," and her sweet eyes yet wet with tears, and hanging, as to a last plank, upon the cage of a fluttering yellow canary (the parting souvenir of the inconsolable turnkey), was safely bestowed in the two p. m. train on her way to Saganock,—now no longer a "prison child."
The general depression incident to the withdrawal of this sweet familiar presence from the gray old prison was slightly relieved by speculative interest in the new warden. It might reasonably be hoped that this bran-new broom would sweep away some time-honoured abuses—such as the iron crown, the ball and chain, the lash, and the parti-coloured prison attire. It was also inferred that he would reduce the number of consignments to the "Lower Arch," since a recently dungeoned culprit had gone stark mad in that unsavoury place, and refusing, on the expiration of his term of detention, to vacate in favour of an incoming tenant, had been, like some elusive rat, actually smoked out of his hole![2] As to that forceful incentive to propriety, the penal shower-bath, it was whispered that even the commissioners themselves had become shaky in regard to its usefulness, since the sad taking off of a prison warden had been the latest result of that mode of disciplinary torture, a description of which is here subjoined for the curious.
[2] A fact furnished by an aged officer who witnessed this unique eviction.
The refractory wretch, his arms, legs, and neck confined in wooden stocks, is seated, nude, in a small, dark closet. From three to four barrels of water are placed above his head, at an elevation of six to eight feet. Unable to change in the slightest degree his position, he receives upon the top of his head, drop by drop, in sudden shower or heavy douche (as may best suit the fancy of his tormentor), this terrible bath. As a devilish after-thought of the inventor, a trench-like collar is made to encircle the victim's neck; as the water descends, this collar fills, and it is so contrived that at the least movement of the sufferer's head the water shall flow into his mouth and nostrils, until he is upon the verge of strangulation. By order of the Board, the shower bath was, in 18—, set up in the State Prison. Could that criminal institution have furnished an unlimited supply of waterproof brains, it might have flourished there indefinitely; but mad convicts are troublesome, nay, sometimes dangerous, and insanity behind the bars is, therefore, not to be wantonly induced.
Hodges, a provokingly incorrigible sinner, had been, time out of mind, "under treatment." At the command of Warden Flint, he had (putting it in Peter Floome's own forcible English) "ben showered out of his wits, and into his wits, an' then showered right over agin." In the abnormal mental state induced by this prolonged torture, the wretched creature had finally turned upon his tormentor. Discouraged by this unlooked-for practical result of the shower-bath, the Board subsequently ordered the discontinuance of its use in the prison; and Hodges was the last subject of that infernal contrivance.
He was brought to trial for the murder of his keeper, and acquitted on the ground of insanity; and finally made good his escape from this troublous life, by a leap from an upper window of the State Insane Hospital.