The Tiffin tribune. (Tiffin, Ohio) 1868-1887, 1870-06-10
What a Young Woman is Doing.

The Springfield (Mass.) Republican
contains the following accountof Miss
Linda Gilbert, with whose indefatiga-
BILE labor to secure certain measures OF
prison reform, some of our readers are
acquainted:
'Miss Gilbert, when little girl, in
the city of Chicago, used to pass the
Jail on her way to school, and would
sometimes stop and talk to the prison
ers through the iron bars that guarded
the windows. She used to take papers
and magazines from her home and
pass them through the windows for
the prisoners to read.
On one occasion her attention was
attracted to a prisoner who appeared To
her, in her youthful innocence and
purity, TO be q noble looking man.
He possessed a fine, intelligent cOun-
tenance, and his hair and beard was
tinged with gray. He asked her To
let him look at her school books, and
after cOmplimenting her upon her
brightness and intelligence, asked her
to bring him something to read, which
she did, and stopped frequently to
talk to him. He had been a man of
the highest respectability and charac-
| ter, but in an evil hour, under the
pressure of pecuniary embarrassment,
he had been tempted to commit 4 for
gerry. In a short time this prisoner
/ became sick and finally died, but be-
| fore his death he sent for the little
girl who had brought him books and
| papers to read, and asked her to read
a certain chapter in the Psalms, and
told her how much good she had done
in furnishing reading matter for the
prisoners, and drew from her prom
Use that she would continue to visit
the prisoners, and bring them some
thing good to read. When this man
died, this little girl, who had been q
ministering angel To him when sick
and i'll prison, was present, and closed
his eyes in death. True to her prom
Use and the noble impulses of her gen
erOus heart, she continued to visit,
and talk with, and read TO the prison.
ers, and take them delicacics when
sick and the more she saw the misery
consequent upon a system that almost
totally ignored the laws of health,
both of body and mind, the more did
she become strengthened in a resOlu-
ton to make it 4 labor of love to de-
vote herself to the work of bringing
about reform in the treatment of the
inmates of jails and prisons.
Miss Gilbert has visited many of the
Eastern prisons to learn from compar-
ison of the different systems in prac-
tice in different States, what expert
ence has demonstrated, that would be
valuable to her in her great and phil
anthropic work. She found that in
many States, especially in Michigan
where that noble apostle of prison
reform, Mr.. Brockway, has accom-
plished a great wOrk-they were far in
advance of us in theory and practice
upon this subject. In Chicago Miss
Gilbert has obtained hundreds of vol
umes for the use of the prisoners there,
by soliciting voluntary contributions
of money and books. In the course
of her work she has many times to
endure the gibes and sneers and ar
rows which "patient merit of the un-
worthy gets when its energies are di-
rected against evils which the world
has either sanctioned or acquiesced in,
until it is almost regarded as breach |
OF the peace of society to speak against
them. But every opposition has serv-
ed but to strengthen her in her in the
determination to press on in the work
which in her heart she feels God has
marked out for herr