In the lower basement there are admirably constructed baths, immersion in which is compulsory on the prisoners once a month. The dark cell above referred to is also in these lower regions. Refractory subjects are consigned to it for three, five, or seven days, as the case may be, for insubordination or idleness. It must be a very obdurate spirit indeed, one would imagine, which this awful punishment could leave unbroken. The darkness is like that of the grave, so dense that it is suffocating; and when the warder, to show how utterly every ray of light was excluded from the cell, suddenly went out, and locked the double doors upon us as we stood in the gloom, we all felt a chill of indescribable horror creep over us. The ventilation is, however, perfect, though we could not see how it was contrived.
The kitchen department is as bright and as complete in its appointments as the rest of the building. Great and desirable reforms have of late been effected in the prison fare, which a few years ago was so luxurious as to call loudly for remonstrance from all wise rulers and thoughtful men. The thief and the burglar a little time ago fared far better than the poor working-man struggling to put honest bread into his children's mouths, and infinitely better than the inmate of the workhouse. All this is happily changed, and the hospitality of the jail is now proportioned to the quality of the guests. The bread is coarse and brown, but sweet and wholesome. Each prisoner gets six ounces of it at breakfast, with a pint of gruel; eight at dinner, with a pound of potatoes; and on three days in the week three ounces of bacon; the other four he gets cheese instead; at supper, bread and gruel again. The quantity is less for a short-period man, namely, those who are condemned for a week or a fortnight; the reason being that the constitution could not resist for a lengthened period the low diet, which acts with salutary effect on the spirit for a short time. In answer to our inquiries how far the present system or any system acted as reformatory on criminals, the warder said he believed it very seldom attained that end. A man who once came to jail was pretty sure to come twice. "When a man gets the name of a jail-bird," he said, "it is all over with him; he can never hold up his head again amongst honest folk, and so he goes back to his old ways and haunts." He added that the one chance he had was to go out of the country to a place where he had no past to live down; and for this reason he observed that the Prisoners' Aid Society ought to be upheld by all humane people. It offered the only plank to the shipwrecked that was possible.
Amongst the two hundred prisoners which the jail accommodates, there happens at the present moment not to be a single Catholic. We were surprised to hear this, for we noticed more than once that the men into whose cells we entered cast a wistful look at the young priest who was with us; and when he smiled and nodded to them on turning away, their faces relaxed into a smile too. Mr. S—— told us that this was no uncommon thing; that, as a rule, the prisoners, whatever be their religion, welcome the Catholic priest with a smile, and seem thankful for the chance of speaking to him. The parson, on the contrary, they look on with suspicion, and even with aversion, frequently listening in sullen silence to his questions, and refusing to answer them. This does not betoken any dislike to the Protestant minister personally; it arises from the fact of his having a sort of official character, and being thus associated in their minds with the cruel strength of the law; whereas the priest only comes in the capacity of a helper—one who pities them, and would serve them in body and soul if he could; his errand is purely one of mercy and kindness. Our companion told us that this jail has for him many beautiful memories of grace and repentance. He has gone there frequently in the course of the winter to hear the confessions of penitents who have approached the sacraments in their little cells with sentiments of the most touching humility and sorrow. These prodigals are almost invariably Irish. "Wherever you find a Paddy, you find the faith," observed Canon R——; "and where is the spot on earth where you don't find one?" To illustrate the truth of this remark, he told us a curious anecdote, which was related to him many years ago by the priest to whom it occurred. This priest went on the mission to America, and for some years his labors lay in the wild regions of the far West. The missionary led pretty much the life of the children of the virgin forests that he traversed, and where the footprint of the white man was never seen. He rode for miles and miles through the wilderness, feeding, like the anchorites, on what he could gather by the way, and sleeping in the branches of some thick-foliaged tree, to the stem of which he tied his horse; and at daybreak he was off on his rambles again. One morning, as he was riding through a wood in search of food, he descried a little wreath of smoke curling above the trees. He made for the spot, thinking he had come on a field of labor in the shape of a little colony to be baptized; but, on approaching, he found only a solitary wigwam, at the door of which a wild woman was squatting with a brood of small children about her. The good father was exhausted with hunger, and managed, by signs and a few words of the Indian dialect, to convey this fact to the woman. She rose at once, and placed before him her frugal store. While he was doing justice to it, the lord of the wigwam returned, and great was his amazement to behold the guest whom his lady was hospitably ministering to. The priest was trying to air his small store of words, when his host, who was attired in the scanty costume of his tribe, with a plentiful crop of feathers sprouting from his head-gear, after surveying him silently for a moment, exclaimed, "Your reverence is a Catholic priest, I'll be bound, and an Irishman into the bargain!" His listener nearly capsized with astonishment. But it was neither a vision nor a delusion. The wild Indian was himself an Irishman, who, with two older companions, had come to those remote forests many years before in search of fortune in some form or other; the trio had been captured by the Indians, who put two of them to death, and only spared the youngest on account of his expertness with the bow and arrow and other kindred accomplishments which made him useful to the tribe. He learned in time to speak their language and adopt their mode of life, even to the extent of marrying a wild woman of their race. But the faith of his childhood survived amongst the vicissitudes of this strange career. He welcomed the priest with joy and the reverence of a genuine Irish heart; and before the missionary left his wigwam, he received the wife into the church, married the pair, baptized and instructed the children, and administered the sacraments to the father. Then he sallied forth once more on his life of danger and self-sacrifice, which, though it afforded many consoling and romantic episodes, never furnished such another as this. "Now," exclaimed Canon R—— triumphantly, "just tell me if such an adventure as that could happen to any two men under the sun but a pair of Irishmen!" And no one contradicted him.
But to return to the jail. We visited the church last. It was the saddest spectacle of all, though the building itself was bright and just then full of sunshine. The seats rise in the form of a steep amphitheatre, almost touching the ceiling at the last tier; and they are so contrived that each prisoner is as isolated in his own seat as if he were the only one looking up at the bare pulpit, where no crucifix, nor pitying Madonna, nor kindly angel face looks down upon him, but only the wooden box, where the preacher once a week tells him of the message of mercy, and points to the home where the Father awaits each prodigal son. There, locked up between four narrow boards that rise high above his head, the prisoner assists at the service on Sunday. So rigorously is the separate system maintained that the two men who were employed in washing the stairs and floor of the church were masked, so as not to recognize each other even in passing, while a warden stood by to prevent their exchanging a word together. The men are exercised in batches every morning from six to a quarter past seven in the prison garden—a dreary place to call by that flower-suggestive name. They wear masks, and walk at a distance of four yards from one another, holding a rope with the left hand. Such a system naturally disarms the dangers of agglomeration, and makes mutiny or concerted rebellion impossible. The strength of union is not theirs, and they are as feeble as if, instead of being two hundred against nine, the proportions were reversed. Attempts to escape are almost unknown. The reason of this may be that the inmates are never condemned to a longer term than two years, which would be trebled, both in duration and in severity, if the attempt failed; so, in face of such a risk, it would hardly be worth while to make it. We did not visit the female department, which is conducted on precisely the same principle, the only difference being the greater lenity of the enforced labor. It was painful enough to see strong men brought to just humiliation for their misdeeds; but our hearts failed us to look at women in the same position. On the whole, we left the Reading jail with our minds disabused of many illusions concerning the strong hand of the law. Its application is as humane and merciful as is compatible with the interests of justice and the professed object of legal punishment. There is nothing to demoralize or to harden a culprit whose misfortune it is to undergo a term of durance within its walls. Before, however, such punishment can be really reformatory, the whole community must be reformed on the highest Christian ideal. We must learn not to despise or unduly mistrust the weak brother who has fallen once, but to practically recognize the vital truth implied in the prayer taught us by our Master: "Lead us not into temptation;" remembering that if we have not fallen it is from no merit or strength of our own, but of the gratuitous mercy of God, whose providence has prevented us in temptation, and saved us from our own weakness; and that the measure of our preservation from evil should be the measure of our charity to the fallen. When we have all learned this, we may see our prisons reformatory as well as penitential; we doubt if we ever shall otherwise.
THE LUTE WITH THE BROKEN STRING.
I took the lute I had prized so much
In my day of pride, in my day of power,
And wiped the dust with a tender touch,
And wreathed it gaily with ribbon and flower.
And the tears from my heart were falling fast
For the bloom that had faded, the fragrance fled,
As I thought of the hand that had wreathed it last—
The hand of my darling now cold and dead:
And I put it aside with a passionate fling,
And something was broken—a heart or a string.
And again I essayed, when the tears had dried
And the tumult of sobs in my bosom was still,
To touch it once more with the olden pride,
That the hearts that yet love me might hear it and thrill:
But a soft low note, with its melting power,
A tone of deep pathos, had trembled and gone;
And my hopes died out in that silent hour,
And left me in darkness and sorrow alone.
What wonder, beloved, that I cannot sing
A song of the heart with a broken string?
What worth is the lute when its music hath fled?
What worth is the strain when its alto is lost?
What worth is the heart with its tenderness shed,
And all its warm feelings laid waste by the frost?
But love cannot die. There is comfort in this,
That Love is eternal, though passion controls.
And what, then, is heaven, with its glory and bliss,
But the union of hearts and communion of souls—
When saints shall be minstrels, and angels shall sing,
And lutes shall have never a broken string?