Told by the Colonel

by W. L. Alden

HOSKINS’ PETS.

“Yes!” said the Colonel reflectively, “I’ve been almost everywhere in my time except in jail, and I’ve been in a great deal worse places than a first-class American jail with all the modern improvements. The fact is that philanthropic people have gone so far in improving the condition of prisoners that most of our prisons are rather better than most of our hotels. At any rate, they are less expensive and the guests are treated with more respect.

“I never could understand a craze that some people have for prisoners. For instance, in New York and Chicago the young ladies have a society for giving flowers to murderers. Whenever a man is convicted of murder and sentenced to be hanged, the girls begin to heave flowers into his cell till he can’t turn round without upsetting a vase of roses or a big basinful of pansies and getting his feet wet. I once knew a murderer who told me that if anything could reconcile him to being hung it would be in getting rid of the floral tributes that the girls lavished on him. You see, he was one of the leading murderers in that section of country, and consequently he received about a cart-load of flowers every day.

“HEAVE FLOWERS INTO HIS CELL.”

“I had a neighbor when I lived in New Berlinopolisville who was President of the Society for Ameliorating the Condition of Prisoners, and he was the craziest man on the subject that I ever met. His name was Hoskins—Colonel Uriah Hoskins. He was the author of the Hoskins Bill that attracted so much attention when it was before the legislature, though it never became law. The hill provided that every prisoner should have a sitting-room as well as a sleeping-room, and that it should be furnished with a piano, a banjo, a library, a typewriter, a wine-cooler, and a whist-table; that the prisoner should be permitted to hold two weekly receptions, to which everybody should be allowed to come, and that he should be taught any branch of study that he might care to take up, books and masters being, of course, supplied free. Colonel Hoskins used to insist that the only thing that made a man go wrong was the lack of kindness, and that the sure way to reform a criminal was to treat him with so much kindness that he would grow ashamed of being wicked, and would fall on everybody’s neck and devote the rest of his life to weeping tears of repentance and singing hymns of joy.

“While Colonel Hoskins was fond of all styles of criminals, burglars were his particular pets. According to him, a burglar was more deserving of kindness than any other man. ‘How would you like it,’ he used to say, ‘if you had to earn your living by breaking into houses in the middle of the night, instead of sleeping peacefully in your bed? Do you think you would be full of good thoughts after you had been bitten by the watch-dog and fired at by the man of the house, and earned nothing by your labor except a bad cold and the prospect of hydrophobia? There is nothing more brutal than the way in which society treats the burglar; and so long as society refuses to put him in the way of earning an easier and less dangerous living, he cannot be blamed if he continues to practise his midnight profession.’

“I must say this for Colonel Hoskins. He did not confine himself to talk, like many other philanthropists, but was always trying to carry out his principles. He really meant what he said about burglars, and there isn’t the least doubt that he had more sympathy for them than he had for the honest men of his acquaintance.

“When people asked him what he would do if he woke up in the night and found a burglar in his house, and whether or not he would shoot at him, he said that he would as soon think of shooting at his own wife, and that he would undertake to reform that burglar, then and there, by kindness alone. Once somebody said to Hoskins that he ought really to let the burglars know his feelings toward them, and Hoskins said that he would do it without delay.

“That same day he drew up a beautiful ‘Notice to Burglars,’ and had it printed in big letters and framed and hung up in the dining-room of his house. It read in this way: ‘Burglars are respectfully informed that the silverware is all plated, and that the proprietor of this house never keeps ready money on hand. Cake and wine will be found in the dining-room closet, and burglars are cordially invited to rest and refresh themselves. Please wipe your feet on the mat, and close the window when leaving the house.’