The San Francisco call., 1898-04-24

bosom and looks at me from head to foot as if I had just occurred to her.
 You're far too little," she says, suc- cinctly at length
 Kate has a fine figure of her own, barring it is a trif1e too generous about the waist, and a dress must be planned on large lines to do her justice, but she wins a vague ''I'll see what 1 can do" from her captive, and then re- leases him to accompany me on my tour of sightseeing through the build ing.
 see it all from the kitchen to the dark cells, which are not dark, in which refractory prisoners occasion ally spend a few meditative hours.
 There are no very hard cases here" says the matron, just trunks and small offenders, and they behave pretty well generally, but they will quarrel among themselves, and then we have to separate them, of course, and punish the one who is to blame"
 Some way the place, with this excep- tion, looks very little like a prison. Blue and white wrappers have a cozily domestic appearance, and are often worn in the most respectable of fami- ly circles therefore they have not the same depressing effect on my spirits as the striped trousers have, and, be-
 
 cumstances better than their brothers.
 Some of them come back over and oVer," says the matron, a trif1e wear iedly. '"They seem to look upon 1t as home rather than a place of punish ment, and the regular hours, the plain but sufficient food and the enforced abstinence from liquor of all kinds are really beneficial. It seems more like a sanitarium to them than a discipli- nary establishment
 And really, why, since modern thought recognizes that drunkenness and crime are diseases. should it not be so?
 
 It is dark in the Broadway Jail. even though the hand of the house painter has tinted the walls of the courts of a light and heavenly blue. The bars are heavy the cell doors are of solid black iron and the faces which peer at us through the small oblong holes therein are nearly all of them shadowed by an xiety or forebOding. This is a place of uncertainty, for here persons accused of the graver crimes await their trials, or being adjudged guilty take their de- partures for the grimmer prisons, where sentences are measured by terms of years or by life times. Here, as elsewhere the missionary's coming meets with a warm welcome, but here the coveted gift, outside of reading matter, is not spectacles, but candles. Most of these men are young God pity them!-and their eyes are good, but it grows dark early in the box-Iike cells. And when one cannot sleep well'' says one mOurnful-eyed man. not so long since a successful lawyer and politician, now accused of embezzlement and transformed into a human football to be buffeted about from court to court, "the nights are very long"
 It reminds me of weird undertaking seanceS to see these pallid hands-an the prisoners hands seem to be pallid here-WaVing about in those dark l apertures where hands and faces may not in the nature of things, appear at l the same time. When the hands are withdrawn and the faces take their place the effect is still more unearthly. for the human face, the eyes and nose and mouth. entirely separate and dis tinct from hair and ears and neck, pre- sents a rather ghastly picture against background of midnight blackness.
 Four little boys are playing in one corridor, one of them wee little fel- low with the merriest of blue eyes and a jolly dimpled smile. Ferocious burg lars these, I am told, and Itry to shrink from them on principle, for heretofore I have looked at burglars in almost the same light as deliberate murderers, since it generally requires only trif1e or lnI6TleTeHCc NllI tIitlll NAlCll CIA- gagged in their professional capacity to change them into the latter. I can't summon up a shiver at the sight of these small chaps, though, and soon they gather about me and tell me, in loud and interruptive boy fashion, i their several stories. Naughty boys | they are by their own confessions, but ah. the pity of it, that children such. as | these should be locked into the com l panionship of men accused, and many l of them guilty, of shameful crimes, l learning to make of them their heroes, their conf1dants and friends!
 The missionary holds no service, save one of good will, emphasized by an oc- casional handshake, here to-day, so l our visit is brief. DeVine, the burg lar, calls to us, however, as we are go- ing out.
 Wont you say goodby to me-" he asks. I've got ten years, and am going | LID right away" He laughs as he l speaks, but it is a laugh not pleasant | to hear.
 T was lucky" he declares, with a swagger which is directed straight at me- ten years isn't so long-I shall be | out again soon.
 "The same old thing. probably" he says lightly and then his face clouds. What else is there for a man like me? l A man who has done time once must do time till he dies!
 FLORENCE MATHESON. * < * < < < < < < x < * <