The Man Behind the Bars

by Winifred Louise Taylor

While a prisoner Willy had made no complaint of the condition of things in the jail, but after paying the note of his indebtedness, he proceeded to buy straw and ticking for mattresses, which were made and sent up to the jail for the other prisoners, while I furthered his efforts to make the existence of those men more endurable by contributing various "exterminators" calculated to reduce the number of superfluous inhabitants in the cells.

At the time I supposed that Willy was an exception, morally, to the usual material from which criminals are made. I do not think so now, after twenty-five years of friendships with criminals; of study of the men themselves and of the conditions and circumstances which led to their being imprisoned.

Willy's was a kindly nature, responsive, yielding readily to surrounding influences, not so much lacking in honesty as in the power of resistance. Had he been subjected to the disgrace, the humiliation, and the associations of a term in the penitentiary, where the first requirement of the discipline is non-resistance, he might easily have slipped into the ranks of the "habitual" criminal, from which it is so difficult to find an exit. I am not sure that Willy was never dishonest again; but I am sure of his purpose to be honest; and the last that I knew of him, after several years of correspondence, he was doing well, running a cigar-stand and small circulating library in a Western town.

From that beginning I continued my visits to the jail, usually going on Sunday mornings when other visitors were not admitted. And on Sunday mornings when the church-bells were calling, the prisoners seemed to be—doubtless were—in a mood different from that of the week-days. There's no doubt of the mission of the church-bells, ringing clear above the tumult of the world, greeting us on Sunday mornings from the cradle to the grave.

I did not hold any religious services. I did not venture to prescribe until I had found out what was the matter. It was almost always books that opened the new acquaintances, for through the library I was able to supply the prisoners with entertaining reading. They made their own selections from our printed lists, and I was surprised to find these selections averaging favorably with the choice of books among good citizens of the same grade of education. There certainly was some incongruity between the broken head, all bandages, the ragged apparel, and the literary taste of the man who asked me for "something by George Eliot or Thackeray."

A short story read aloud was always a pleasure to the men behind the bars; more than once I have been able to form correct conclusions as to the guilt or the innocence of a prisoner by the expression of his face when I was reading something that touched the deeper springs of human nature. And my sense of humor stood me in good stead with these men; for there's no freemasonry like that of the spontaneous smile that springs from the heart; and after we had once smiled together we were no longer strangers.

One early incident among my jail experiences left a vivid impression with me. A boy of some thirteen summers, accused of stealing, was detained in jail several weeks awaiting trial, with the prospect of the reform school later. In appearance he was attractive, and his youth appealed to one's sympathy. Believing that he ought to be given a better chance for the future than our reform schools then offered, I tried to induce the sheriff to ask some farmer to take him in hand. The sheriff demurred, saying that no farmer would want the boy in his family, as he was a liar and very profane, and consequently I dropped the subject.

In the jail at the same time was a man of forty or over who frankly told me that he had been a criminal and a tramp since boyhood, that he had thrown away all chances in life and lost all self-respect forever. I took him at his own valuation and he really seemed about as hopeless a case as I have ever encountered. One lovely June evening when I went into the corridor of the jail to leave a book, this old criminal called me beside his cell for a few words.

"Don't let that boy go to the reform school," he began earnestly. "The reform school is the very hotbed of crime for a boy like that. Save him if you can. Save him from a life like mine. Put him on a farm. Get him into the country, away from temptation."

"But the sheriff tells me he is such a liar and swears so that no decent people would keep him," I replied.