The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-11-22
THE PRISONER

I attention, humbly staring at us. He was like an owl surprised by daylight.
 Have you ever seen a little child ill
 for the first time-full of bewider1nent at it sown' suffering? His face was like
 had seen many of the prisoners, and he
 was the only one that had that awful gentieness. The sound of his voice. too :: Ja, Herr Drel.tor-nein, Herr Direktory
 soft and despairing-I remember it now therc wsa not a breath of will power
 left"
 Our friend paused. frowning in his ef- fort to recreate the scene. He held in his hand, he went on presently "a sheet
 of stiff paper on which he had been
 transcribing the New Testament in letters from a code of writing for the deaf and dumb When he passed his thin fingers over the type to show us how easily the deaf and dumb could read it, you could. see that his hands were dusty like mil lers. There was nothing in the cell to
 produce that dust. and in my belief it was not dust on his hands, but some ex-
 erection from that human plant running
 to seed and when he held the sheet sf paper up II ifeInDleu Ike d 1nOLnS NlnS- / One of us asked him who invented the system he was working at, mentioning some name or other 'Nein, nein. he said, and stood shivering with eagerness
 to recollect the right name. At last he
 dropped his head and mumbled out: 'Ah.
 Herr Direktor, ich kann nicht. But all
 of a sudden the name came bursting from his lips. At that moment, for the first time he actually looked like man. |
 never before then realized the value of freedom; the real meaning of our rela-
 tions with other human beings: the ne-
 cessity for the minds being furnished
 from minute to minute by sights and
 sounds. by the need for remembering and using what we remember This fellow had no use, you see, for memory in his 1 life; he was like a plant placed where no
 dew can possibly fall on it. To watch that look pass over his face at the mere remembrance or a name was like catch | ing sight of a tiny scrap of green leaf | in the heart of a withered shrub Man is really very wonderful-the most enduring creature that has ever been produced!' Our friend rose and began pacing up and down
 His world was not large one-about
 14 by s. He lived in it for ? years. with
 out mouse even for friend They do things thoroughly in prisons Think of | the tremendous vital force that must 20
 to the making of the human organian-
 for a man to live through that {.
 What do you imagine he went on. turn ing to us suddenly. kept even a rem nant of his reason alive? You don't
 know? While we were still looking atA his deaf and dumb writing. he suddenly
 handed us a piece of wood about, the size
 of large photograph-the painting of a Eyoung girl, seated in the very center of
 garden, with >pright colored flowers in her hand; in the background was a mar
 row twisting stream with some rusAes,
 and a queer bird, rather like a raven,
 standing, on the bank. And by the side
 of the girl a tree with large hanging fruits, strangiy symmetrical. unlike any tree that ever grew. yet with something \ in it that is in all trees. a look as if they Nhad spirits and we're the friends of man The girl was staring straight at us with her perfectly round, blue eyes, and the flowers she held in her hand seemed also to stare at us. The whole picture, it ap- peared to me, was full of--what shall I say?-a kind of wonder/ It had all the crude color and drawing of an early Italian painting. the same look of diffi- culty conquered by sheer devotion. One of us asked him if he had learned to draw before his Imprisonment; but the poor fellow misunderstood the question. 'Nein.
 nein,'' he said. the Herr DireStor knows had no model. It is fancy picturev
 and the, smile he gave us would have made devil weep, He had put into that picture all that his soul lonsed for-woni an, flowers birds, treess blue sky. rum ming water: and all the wonder of his spirit that he was cut off from them. He 7 (Continued r,a usr> Ss<s