Afterward it was told in the prison that Evans died of joy at the prospect of release. For him to be carried into the new life on this high tide of happiness seemed to me a gift from heaven. For in the thought of the prisoner freedom includes everything to be desired in life. The joy of that anticipation had blinded Evans to the fact that his health was ruined beyond repair. He was spared the realization that the life of freedom, so fair to his imagination, could never truly be his; for the prison-house of disease has bolts and bars which no human hand can withdraw.
But that mother! If she could have read only once again the light of his love for her in the eyes of her son! But the sorrows of life fall alike upon the just and the unjust.
FOOTNOTE:
[11] The good time allowed on a twelve years' sentence reduces it to seven years and three months.
CHAPTER XI
The psychological side of convict life is intensely interesting, but in studying brain processes, supposed to be mechanical, one's theories and one's logical conclusions are likely to be baffled by a factor that will not be harnessed to any set of theories; namely, that something which we call conscience. We forget that the criminal is only a human being who has committed a crime, and that back of the crime is the same human nature common to us all.
During the first years when I was in touch with prison life I had only occasional glimpses of remorse for crimes committed. The minds of most of the convicts seemed to dwell on the "extenuating circumstances" more than on the criminal act, and the hardships of prison life were almost ever present in their thoughts. I had nearly come to consider the remorse pictured in literature and the drama as an unreal thing, when I made the acquaintance of Ellis Shannon and found it: a monster that gripped the human heart and held it as in a vise. Nemesis never completed a work of retribution more fully than it was completed in the life of Ellis Shannon.
Shannon was born in an Eastern city, was a boy of more than average ability, and there seemed no reason why he should have gone wrong; but he early lost his father, his mother failed to control him, and when about sixteen years of age he fell into bad company and was soon launched in his criminal career. He broke off all connection with his family, went West, and for ten years was successful in his line of business—regular burglary. He was widely known among men of his calling as "The Greek," and his "professional standing" was of the highest. The first I ever heard of him was from one of my other prison friends, who wrote me: "If you want to know about life in —— prison, write to Ellis Shannon, who is there now. You can depend absolutely on what he says—and when one professional says that of another you know it means something." I did not, however, avail myself of this introduction.