might take all he desired. But woe betide him if he took and did not eat! In State prison wastefulness on the part of an inmate is a cardinal sin. Following the man before me, I mounted three flights of stairs, and walked along a gallery until another guard indicated my cell. I stepped in and pulled the door to; he threw the bolt, and I was sealed in for the night in a room seven feet long, seven feet high, and three and a third feet wide. It was dimly lighted by a worn-out electric lamp. I took off my coat and looked at it. It was a dirty gray in color, its only distinguishing mark being a white disk on the left sleeve. This was significant, for it meant that I had never been imprisoned before, and that my record in the prison was without a blemish. Had the disk been blue, it would have meant that I was suffering a second incarceration; had it been red, it would have meant that at least twice before had I heard a prison lock thrown from the wrong side. Had it been a circle of any color instead of a disk, it would have meant that already I had infringed the rules. As the years go by a man by good behavior earns a bar for each year; and when five have been won, the five are exchanged for a

star.

But the disk is kept until some act of disobedience forfeits it, and then it is gone forever.

Nine o'clock came, a bell sounded, and a few minutes later every cell light was extinguished. Then night began in earnest, and into it was concentrated every form of mental and physical misery. The place was alive with vermin, and I had no sleep whatever, while with me constantly was the unavailing regret for my wrong-doing. If the sole idea of a prison is to punish, I was punished enough that night to last through time and eternity. It is fair to say that since that time white enamel paint has replaced whitewash in the cells, and that this much-needed improvement has practically eliminated ver

min.

At last morning came, and at seven the guard unlocked my cell and I marched with my fellow-misdoers to the shop. Here an opportunity was given to wash, and then we marched again to the mess-hall, where a breakfast of oatmeal, skimmed milk, and coffee was given us. Here it should be said that, while the menu was monotonous, a greater variety of better-cooked food was served than in the county jail. On holidays especially a very sincere and successful effort

But break

was made to serve good meals. fasts of hash, alternated with cereals, become wearisome after one has partaken of them for a year or more. It is well that it is so. Were the tables more attractive, probably other prisoners would do as an old Italian did—refuse to leave when his term had expired. He was put out by force, and then sat down on the curbstone and wept.

Breakfast over, we returned to the shop. In a few minutes "doctor's call" was announced. The phrase was a strange one. Briefly, the warden, the chaplain, the physician, the dentist, and the oculist have certain days when they may be interviewed. In each case, except the physician's, an officer is sent to each shop to get the men; they are then formed into one company and marched to the administration building, where they are halted and required to wait until their names are called. The doctor prefers to go to the shops, and, accompanied by a group of nurses from the hospital, all inmates, he hurries from place to place. Military in appearance and manner, he snaps out his questions so peremptorily as almost to terrify one into declaring himself well. But when the illness is genuine and serious, a man is sure of as careful treatment as in any hospital.

After the doctor had gone I was required to undergo the most trying ordeal of all. I was escorted to the Bertillon gallery, where I was required to dress in a suit of citizen's clothes kept for the purpose and submit to having my photograph taken, both front view and profile. Then detailed measurements of my person were made, such as the length, in millimeters, of my ears, and the distance from temple to temple, measured by calipers. Finally, printer's ink was smeared on my hands and was I required to make impressions on sheets of heavy paper, first of the whole of each hand, then of each finger. One set is sent to Albany, the other is retained in the prison.

It is not a grateful thought, when one is trying to recover one's place in the world, that, no matter how decently behaved one may be, his features and physical characteristics are forever a part of the State's record of its malefactors. Yet there is comfort in the knowledge that that fact does not make one a scoundrel, any more than the absence of some faces therefrom which should be there makes them good men.

The next day a pleasanter experience was mine, for some groceries I had ordered came,

and I was called to the "box office," as it is termed, to get them. This is an interesting place, for here all mail for and all mail from the prisoners is examined, each man being required to sign an authorization for such examination to avoid any controversy with the United States Post-Office Department. Here, too, all supplies bought with the private funds of the prisoners are delivered. During his first year a prisoner may purchase three dollars' worth of eatables every other month; thereafter he may purchase that quantity each month. In July, November, and December, because of the holidays occurring in those months, he may spend an additional dollar.

When the voucher was handed me to sign in receipt for the price of my groceries, I learned for the first time that I had a number. No more ridiculous statement appears in the press than that a man in prison is known by his number and not by his name. The numbers are serial; those at Sing Sing are now over 60,000, those at Auburn over 31,000, and those at Clinton over 10,000. Imagine how cumbersome it would be to employ such numbers as names! The guards would be candidates for a madhouse if such a task were theirs. John Jones remains John Jones throughout his prison experience, and only knows he has a number when he has business with the administration officers, when the number is used, in addition to the name, as a further means of identification.

The days jogged on, each like its predecessor. At first they went slowly, but, once accustomed to the routine, and with one's time occupied, it was surprising how they flew. This seems incredible, but it was strictly true in my case at least.

Sundays constituted a most unwelcome break. The familiar words of the old hymn, "Where congregations ne'er break up and Sabbaths have no end," are terrifying to the prison inmate after he has spent one or two of them behind those forbidding walls. At the regular hour the men are released from their cells and take a brief walk in the yard, followed, as on week days, by breakfast. Immediately after breakfast a mass is solemnized for Catholics by a Catholic priest. The Protestant service, conducted by the chaplain, immediately follows. Many men attend both services, for a reason which will presently appear. An orchestra, composed of inmates, plays as the men file into the chapel. When all are seated, the guards station themselves about the room, ten feet apart, the

chaplain enters, passes swiftly up the middle aisle and to the platform. Divine service with an armed guard at one's elbow is not particularly comforting, yet it is far preferable to a cell. When the second service is over, the men march out and to the cellhouses, being handed a light cold lunch as they pass, which they carry to their cells. It is only ten o'clock in the morning, but the men will not leave their cells again until the following morning. Is it any wonder that they flock to church to escape for an hour confinement in a place only seven by three and a third? Occasionally real treats are theirs at the services. Some eminent clergyman or accomplished singer will give his or her talent to cheer the shut-ins. No man or woman who ever so served has failed of an enthusiastic thank you, uttered in the only possible way the men can, by tremendous applause, which is never checked by those in authority.

On holidays a still greater effort is made to make the day enjoyable. For this whatever shows are in town are relied upon to furnish an entertainment. To the credit of the generoushearted dramatic profession let it be recorded that they never fail to volunteer, though it involve them in both trouble and expense.

I shall never forget the first execution which took place after my incarceration. The culprit was a young fellow who was guilty beyond a doubt, but that fact made the event none the less terrible. I saw the heartbroken mother as she was led away by her other children from the last sad good-by. I saw the young man himself as he was taking his final bath, the State being determined that he should be clean before being slain. Then, on a Sunday afternoon, the lights in the cells were extinguished while all the electric power was turned toward the dreadful chair, in a final test to determine if all was in order for the tragedy of the morrow. Monday morning came. It was a little after six. I lay awake on my bed, knowing that over yonder, hardly a hundred yards away, a boy was waiting to die. Then the hall lights grew dim, and every one of the fifteen hundred prisoners awake-and few were not-knew that the spirit of the lad had gone out into the unknown. Daylight came, and while the men yet marched about the yard the undertaker's wagon came, the wicker casket was taken into the death-house, to be borne forth a little later with all that was mortal of the boy of three hours before. Thus the State

teaches the sacredness of human life. If the old vindictive code must still be the law of New York, in pity's name let the executions be held where they will not be a lesson n brutality to fifteen hundred caged men.

One day, shortly after I was assigned my shop, I spoke of the city of Cleveland to a man, over forty years of age, who worked near me, and was surprised to hear him ask me where Cleveland was. I could scarcely believe that one who looked so intelligent could be so ignorant. I resolved then that, of all work in prison, I should most like to teach. So I made an application for a position in the prison school. The following week the guard told me to get my things, and I was transferred to the school-house. has seven class-rooms, an office for the head teacher, who is a citizen, and one for the two guards stationed there. It also has a library of two thousand volumes, which is distinct from the prison library. Its books are selected to meet the needs of the pupils as they progress, and it is none too large for the use of the five hundred men enrolled as students.

It

School begins at nine in the morning, with classes of from eighteen to twenty-five in each of the class-rooms. They stay an hour, and then return to their shops in charge of a guard. Each man has only one hour's instruction a day, so he must study at night in his cell if he wishes to progress. After being enrolled as a teacher I was assigned to a room to observe the methods of the teacher at work, who was, as are all the teachers save the one in charge of the whole school, a prisoner like myself. The class was doing first-grade work, and was made up of Americans, Irish, Germans, Italians, and Poles. They varied in age from eighteen to fifty. It was pathetic indeed to see those full-grown men, some of them gray-haired, striving to read such sentences as I am a man," · I see a cat," or "This is my hand." After this each man was sent to the blackboard, the teacher would dictate some simple word, and the pupil would try to form it with chalk.

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After four days of observation I was given a class to teach. I found that the men were eager to learn, and that they would behave as well as pupils in any outside school. True, on one occasion, an Italian refused to recite, and, when I insisted, came for me with the expressed determination of cutting my heart out, but that is the only instance of a serious outbreak that I now recall. Even

those who came to the 'school for no other purpose than to escape for an hour the rigor of the shop were susceptible to persuasion, and often became bright pupils. An appeal to their sense of fair play, amazing as the fact may appear to those whose knowledge of misdoers is gleaned from the daily press, was nearly always effective, and the overwhelming majority were so glad of the chance to be helped to knowledge that they needed no urging.

Having been successful with the lower grades, I was given complete charge of the higher ones. These are easier to teach. Not only are the men more intelligent, but their attendance is not compulsory, as it is upon all those who have not completed the sixth grade or its equivalent in the free world. These higher-grade men are put on their honor; no blue-coated guard stands over them. They have such studies as history, civics, and debating, in addition to the more common ones. Debating was introduced to create interest in and to teach fairness of opinion on public questions. In this aim it has been singularly successful.

I taught school for many months. During that time I found that all the teachers, even though they were prisoners, were greatly interested in their work. As a result the school is a powerful factor in imparting information. A foreigner can, if he will, secure a common school education and come forth a better man than when he went to prison. The world has at last come to the just conclusion that ignorance begets crime.

A

After some time I was changed to another occupation. In the offices of administration much of the clerical work is done by inmates. This work is, of course, especially agreeable in every way. It is a great economy for the State, too. Many highly competent men go wrong and are imprisoned. Their services at a cent and a half a day and board make unnecessary the hiring of many clerks. competent office man whose moral sense is not so blunted but that he can be depended upon to do careful work is sure of excellent treatment. Naturally these places are the prizes of the prison. To gain one of them is to be envied by one's fellows. So I was a happy man indeed when I learned that I had been appointed. It is difficult for a prisoner working in one of the offices to realize that he is in confinement. His immediate superiors treat him with perfect courtesy, he has complete freedom of intercourse

with those with whom he works, and a pass that will take him anywhere he needs to go within the prison inclosure. It may be wondered if such treatment does not tend to impair the salutary lesson the man was sent to prison to learn. So far from that, I believe the precise opposite to be true. Latent in any man not hopelessly bereft of decency is a good impulse which, rightly guided, will again make a man of him. In evidence of this fact let me say that it was the proud record of my chief that no man who had ever worked as a clerk in his office had ever again violated the law. Tasks in which a man for a few hours each day may forget that he is a prisoner inspire him to look forward with hope and courage to the fight that lies ahead when he leaves prison. The hardest penalty the misdoer pays he pays after he is released. The haunting specter of his prison experience is with him constantly. He has the certain knowledge that, with very few exceptions, his fellow-men will shun him, not because he did wrong, but because he has been to prison. Anything that will help to stiffen the man for that fight, that will make him look the world in the face without flinching, is an invaluable service.

At last the time drew near when I should be eligible for parole. The parole system is so little understood, I regret to say, even by some of the judges, that it should be explained in detail. All prisoners convicted for the first time of a felony and sentenced to State prison in punishment thereof must be sentenced thereto under an indeterminate sentence, the minimum of which must be not less than one year nor exceed one-half the longest sentence which may be imposed for the crime of which the offender stands convicted. When he has served the minimum term, he is eligible for parole.

A month before my minimum expired two blanks were given me to fill out. One was a formal application for parole, the other a series of questions as to my previous career, containing space also for the names of those I was willing to refer to for a good word, and the name of the man offering me employment. No man can be paroled under any circumstances unless work awaits him on release from a responsible employer who is willing to agree under oath to continue to employ the parolee for a full year, if he shall conduct himself properly. As soon as my papers were filed the warden sent letters to my references requesting information

regarding me, and an investigation of my prospective employer was made. The answers to the letters and the result of the investigation of my employer being satisfactory, I next, with over fifty other applicants, made calls on the warden, principal keeper, chaplain, and physician. Each of these officers makes a report favoring or opposing a man's parole, while the head teacher reports, in the case of those lacking a common school education on entering, what progress they have made during the prison term.

These preliminaries safely passed, we awaited the meeting of the Board of Parole, which then consisted of the Superintendent of Prisons and two citizens not otherwise connected with the prison department.

On

a warm summer afternoon the Board met. One by one we entered the room, were briefly interviewed, and left again, without knowing whether or not we had "passed.” In a little while, however, the fortunate ones, about one-half of those that sought parole, were assembled in one of the corridors to listen to a speech from the Superintendent of Prisons, Cornelius V. Collins.

Mr. Collins is no longer in office. No possible advantage can accrue to me from saying what follows. I write it because it is due. The things that have done the most to make the prisons reformatory institutions—the abolition of stripes, the lock-step, and the cropped head, the introduction of military drill and the establishment of the school—are enduring monuments to his administration. In this last speech he struck so true a note that it will long remain in my memory. A single extract will show its character. A parolee asked: "Mr. Collins, I am paroled to go to K. My mother lives in Y, a hundred miles away. Can I go to see her?" Mr. Collins replied: "Use your common sense. Of course you may. You may do anything that is decent and right. All that I ask, all that the State asks, is that you play fair. Be men, and you'll never have to come back here. Do otherwise, and you will. A violator of his parole promise will be followed the world over and brought back, and each one of you that is so returned hurts the chances of every man who wishes to be paroled in the future. I shall not see you again; good-by, and God bless you all." No man that heard him could for a moment doubt the sincerity of the speaker.

Now began the final stage of my prison experience, brief in point of time, but trying.

I was paroled, but my actual release was forty-eight hours away, for Sunday intervened. It was a long day. True, I had been most kindly treated; had, in truth, no word of complaint to offer; but just outside the gate, and plainly visible, people were walking about free, and I wanted to be with and of them.

Monday came at last. I went to the tailorshop and dressed myself once again in citizen's clothes. Then, with six others, I was escorted up the yard to the clerk's office, where my compensation was paid me, and the ten-dollar bonus which the State allows was also given me. Then, after bidding the officials good-by, I walked out, free.

No, not free. Loose is a truer word, for I was on parole. So my first duty was to hasten to the town of my employment, report to my employer, an old and valued friend who still had faith in me, and get to work. I remained on parole for a year, making monthly reports to the Superintendent of Prisons, and then received my final discharge.

The parole system is a splendid thing both for the man and society. It is good for the

man because, coming from a place where he has not had to be concerned about food and lodging, he desperately needs the suggestions of a kindly friend and hard work to keep his mind off himself. It is good for society because its conditions compel many men who might otherwise again offend to hew to the line of right endeavor. Some fail, but they are surprisingly few, and some of the successes are signal. It is the most salutary method of reclaiming men yet devised.

When a man comes forth from prison is the hour when he needs sympathy and help a thousandfold more than while behind the bars. He feels himself an Ishmael, with every man's hand against him. He needs a friend; a friend who will put him to work, trust him a little, and more as he proves worthy. If this article shall stir the heart of some good man or woman to feel a personal interest in some man so situated, it will not have been written in vain. Fifty per cent of the nearly five thousand men now in the State prisons of New York are easily reclaimable, and their reclamation would prove the best investment either State or individual ever made.

M

RS. SPECTATOR has had a change of heart about Christmas shopping. The Consumers' League counts her as one of its most loyal members this year-indeed, she is some sort of an officer in the organization-and she started out last January to do her shopping for next Christmas, thus showing her zeal by her works. Christmas presents have never been a bugbear to the Spectator, because she has always done the buying for both. But he has often wondered at the whole performance-the stores blossoming out in November with outlandish and unprecedented amounts of decorative and useless stock, the rush that mounts in a vast, hurrying, discordant crescendo week by week, the final smashing chord on the day before Christmas, and the wailing diminuendo afterward as almost every one gets what he or she didn't particularly want.

Therefore Mrs. Spectator's new departure has been interesting to his mind. It began with the January sales. "Everything that is really worth while giving," she announced, as she brought her first gifts out in triumph for inspection, "is just as good ten days after

Christmas, in a bargain holiday sale, as it was ten days before for twice the price. Look at this lovely leather writing-case for Aunt Emma. I looked at them before Christmas, but they were just twice what I could afford. So I got Aunt Emma a card-case, and I don't believe she cared about it. Now I have this writingcase all ready for next time—”

"But suppose Aunt Emma should die before next Christmas," the Spectator captiously suggested.

"Why, Aunt Charlotte would just love it! And, besides, anybody might die suddenly the day before Christmas-not to mention that Aunt Emma has a Vermont constitution and will live to bury us all; and you've often said so when I was worrying over her rheumatism."

This reasoning appearing to cover the situation, Mrs. Spectator went on and picked up some really lovely brass things at a special sale in February-the Spectator put in an urgent request for one of them as a Christmas surprise, but is still left in suspense-and, as the summer came along, the possibilities of the plan became more and more alluring. Mrs. Spectator has drawn up a long and businesslike