The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1895-12-05
As Seen by An Outsider.

! had occasion while ago to visit a
penitentiary. 1t is an awful place: the
repository of such an aggregation of
human weakness, error, vice and wrong
as exists together nowhere else. And
! as | stood for a moment and looked
over the sea of faces as they all sat to-
gether, for the first time in my life the
beautiful force of that magnificent
principle laid down by the Savior of
man that it was for the weak and sim
full that help was sent, and not for the
righteous, came back to me out of the
early teachings Of my youth. There
were faces there upon which was
written with pen as clear as type, the
story of hardened vice-but they were
few. The great majority bore in their
eyes the reflection of load of sorrow.
They are the weak ones. do not say
that they will come out from those
walls and be pure and upright citizens.
Probably the most of them will not.
But how many Of us who thank God we
are not like them are at peace with our
cOnsciences? How many of us upon
whom the law has never placed it's
brand are not daily guilty of meaner
things than those which condemn these
criminals to their cells? | have in
mind today man who was tlreless IN
his energy to prosecute man whose
crime was the rObbing of another of
his money. \ crime, of course, but
money lost can be regained. Yet this
same man-himself moral purist of
high degree-hesitates not, on occasion.
to 60 out behind the backs of others,
and under the protecting mantle of
secrecy put stab after stab into a per-
sOnal reputation. which when gone
cannot be replaced like stolen money.
and out of which the scars can hardly
grow within the space of time marked
off for man. Isn't the robber cleaner
criminal than the slanderer? The
world is full of men in all walks of
life whose thought, and, SO far as
cOWardice does not restrain them,
whose deeds are constant and living
insult to the sanctity of homes and the
purity of woman. Society places upon
them the label Of gentlemen, but it
cannot make them as honorable as the
man who bears upon his reputation the
stigma of the prison. The ass is not
SO dangerous as the snake. | would
not for moment appear as an apollo
gist for the criminal. But if there is
left of the old-time spirit of
fair play, let not the condemnation of
him come strongest from those whose |
weaknesses of character are a deeper |
menace to society than the open crimes |
he fights, and let not our condemnation
of those who are expiating the crimes
of which they stood convicted blind |
our eyes to the wider qualifications of |
those more subtle assaults rather upon
oursocial fabric itself than upon it's mere
incidents, which do not come
within the pale of crime. but are left
for the punishment which honest man.
hood and upright womanhood may
mete out to it in the social execution
of its own judgment.
And as I stood and watched these
men, could not but wonder what their
future will be. What hope have they?
Many and many of them will go out of
those walls, weighted down with the
stigma of crime, filled, as in their weak
way best they can, with honest resolu-
ton, and buoyed up by the everlasting
Well-spring of hope. But they have
The mark of the law upon them, and
hey go out in their honest endeavor,
1ot to meet with the kindly hand of
1elp which society ought to extend to
my hayward member of it who wants
20 come back, but to meet with the ;
,corn of the Pharisee and the rebuff of ]
The Philistine. 1t is that which makes
more second term men than anything