The Latest Thing in Joy Rides.—Edward Smith, a lifer, and James McGee, sentenced for seventeen years, escaped from the Joilet Penitentiary recently, in Warden Allen’s automobile. After riding around Chicago all night they decided to return to the prison. Guards had been hunting the men in three States.
Smith was the Warden’s chauffeur and drove in and out of the prison without attracting attention.
“We could have got away without much chance of being captured,” he said, “but we got to thinking that our escape might interfere with the good treatment given the other honor prisoners.
“Warden Allen treated us mighty well and we thought it best not to violate the confidence he placed in us. We certainly had a fine time while we were away. We rode all over Chicago and saw all the sights.”
Advice in the Shadow of the Gallows.—Several years ago there was executed at Trenton State Prison, New Jersey, a very intelligent man, who had committed a fearful murder. A day before his execution he was asked to leave some word for the young men of this country. Here is what he wrote, in a firm hand, without tremor:
“I can add but little to what others have said. I would suggest early religious training. It should begin with the lisping of the child and be continuous and never end until death. The child should be given to know the dangers of environment that is not religious. His associations should be only those that reverence God. The parental responsibility comes in here. The child looks for examples. As the example set before it by its parents or associates are good or evil, so it will in most cases grow.
“If the boy be disciplined in religion with environments good, associations good, and with love as his teacher till he is come of age, to the age of reason, the point of the early training will be invariably a moral religious life. Not all of these came into my early life but of those that did my one regret is that I did not use them to my advantage, for the wages of sin is death, and the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord.”
Progress at Bellefonte.—According to the Pennsylvania Prison Society (the 127th annual meeting of which was recently held), “about 75 prisoners from the old Western Penitentiary at Pittsburgh are at Bellefonte, busily engaged in taking care of the farm and in various preliminary operations. (Pennsylvania is to build a farm industrial prison on 5,000 acres). They have been employed in the repairing of the old buildings on the estate, in quarrying stone for roads, and for other construction. There have been erected a number of new buildings, among them a machine shop, blacksmith shop, power house, large dining room and a dormitory. The work done on all the buildings was almost entirely by the prisoners themselves, superintended by an experienced outside foreman. It would be difficult to get together on the outside an equal number of men who worked as zealously or faithfully. There have been but three attempted escapes since the men arrived in the summer of 1912. The prisoners are allowed to go to all parts of the large farm in gangs of from three to twenty, under the care of one guard or trusty. The population is transitory, as almost weekly some are paroled, while new ones take their places.”