The San Francisco call., 1909-02-14

ctr6lghtWay remarkable change OF
conduct began to be apparent in the
convict Some quick metamorphosis
was beginning to take place. The Off
GERS Of the yard and the higher Off
presently to look upon him as a man
who might be trusted. He was watched
for a long period, watched so closely,
although he himself was unaware of
the surveillance, that his slightest and
most insignificant actions were carried
in a nightly report to the warden. The
reports were satisfactory. BY and by
the man began to be trusted-more and
more, in increasingly important mat
ters. One day the warden called Nor
rell to his office and offered him the
head trustyship" of the prison, the
highest position of trust to which a
convict may attain. The man accepted.
Four years later, on the strength of
his conduct during his service as head
trusty." in March of 1908, he was
granted an absolute pardon. The turn
key opened the massive lock. the steel
door swung back and the man who IS
years earlier had entered to serve his
life out in the massive cage v-alked
out into the open.
So much for what it availed this man
to pun on his bootstraps. So much for
externals Now for a glimpse at the
obscure life in the cell, for the under
current of determined striving and
right living which made this consum-
nation possible-the miracle Of liberty
TO the life termer. ] will repeat his
story as he told il to me.
when ] received nay pardon and
was saving goodby to the boys. one of
my fellow prisoners, another life term
er, said to me: How did you ever do
IT, Ed? I remember YOU when you
looked like old Robinson Crusoe with
your long hair and wild eyes down in
tomb IA, doing solitary for life. And
now you're going OUT Tell me how
YOU did IT, 7 certainly thought you
would never see sunlight again
THAT man expressed the general
surprise Of my prison fellows at my
release. Almost to a man they enter
tanned the idea that a struggle toward
better manhood was not alone useless,
but that was a bitter joke an abso-
lutte waste Of energy. To drift along
with the currents of least resistance
lDi lilt must part DIuAdllLlnR currents
that was all they considered left to
them. especially the men who were in
for life: to drift. to plot escapes and
TO give their intervals of thought to the
fashioning of crooks devices. They
used to laugh when they first learned
Of my determination to think right and
to live right in that stagnant life eddy
of the prison. What's the user they
laughed. And in their cynicism was
revealed the general attitude of the
penitentiary convict toward all self
effort at regeneration and wholesome
activity. In fact, this was my own at
titude for the first few years of my
time. ]. with the rest, thought that
manhood and decency had no meaning
unless accompanied by liberty-and for
me there was no hope of ever regain
ing my freedom. Then, very gradually,
] began to see that it was betterpfor a
man to preserve or to regain the faith
with his superior self, even in soli-
tary cell, than to fall into those hor-
rible depths Of degradation that I saw
opening all about me. This was at first
an indirect result of my struggle to re-
tain sanity in the twilight Of my exile
to the solitary tombs
BREAKING. A MANS SPIRIT
when man has been relegated to
the bleak emptiness of the isolated
donjon, there to remain for the rest of
his years. there to remain without
change, without hope, without any in
tercourse with his kind until he dies
and is carried out along the road that
leads up TO the little field of headboards
that mark prisoners parole, madness
begins to leer at him from the cell cor
ners. 1t becomes the paramount issue
to fight II of. Not few OF the so