The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1913-07-03
HAWTHORNE AIDS
FELLOW PRISONERS
Son Of Famous Novelist a Cheerful
Prisoner.

New York World:-A new philosophy,
full OF humanity and understanding, has
been born in Julian Hawthorne, son of the
great novelist, since he became ''register
4435, an inmate of the federal penitentiary
at Atlanta Ga.
The deepest human element appears in
everything he has written for Good Words,
the prison paper, and is creating for that
journal unique literary interest. The son
of Nathaniel Hawthorne has turned ''min-
lister to the heart and conscience of his
fellow prisoners.
More than in anything else is this new
found sentiment set forth in his prison
poem, "Fool False written to the men
who night after night tramp ceaselessly
back and forth in their eight foot cells
He has come to understand the power that
drives them.
Brother, l know is the refrain of the
poem.
| A recent issue of the paper contains the
beginning of new department of which he
will be conductor. He writes of books,
prescribing a model course of reading
made up of the choicest literature of all
countries and of all time. Reverence for his
father is implied in his selection of two
books of Nathaniel Hawthorne "The
Scarlet letter and ''Our Old Home.'
But along with his essay on literature he
wrote of another subject which has become
more interesting to him, he says, since he
became an inmate of the prison.
"There is another and greater library,
he said in his column. cit is distributed
among the ranks in pairs, with shelf to
each volumn. Their binding is homogene-
ous-stout, blue cloth on ordinary occa-
sions, which on Sundays and holidays
changes to wooden fabric of darker hue.
They bear titles on the front and back.
"There is a sprinkling of the poetical ell
ement and good deal of fiction, but each
historical and biographical index often
illegibe-stories of crime mingled with
tragedies, or you find farce or comedy.
Moreover, these volumns grow, decay
and die; chapters are added from time to
time, but the tale seldom ends happily.
These are the books that God made-not
always much to look at, but containing
great deal of human interest if you can get
beneath the covers
Hawthorne has shaken hands with
''Dutchman, Dago, Yankee, Creek, to
use the words of his great prison poem, and
he calls them brothers in everything he
writes. With his fellow prisoners Haw-
thorne is all affability, but when visitors
come he is ill and sees no one. His re-
quest made to Warden Moyer was that he
be not known as Julian Hawthorne, the
son of the great novelist and himself
prominent literary man, but merely as
"register ABS
A reporter, presenting in writing re-
quest for an interview, received from Haw-
thorne the following answer 81 must ask
you to excuse me. Here / am, as you
know, not a name, but number. If any
thing | have written for Good Words has
done good or has caused interest | am
glad, but have nothing to say about it.
i The new Hawthorne who Knows the
minister to the conscience, is revealed in
one paragraph which he wrote for Good
Words.
r 'Instead of feeding upon angry and re-
yengeful thoughts, he said, (which cor
rode the heart that generates them, use the
. occasion to extirpate sinister tendencies and
, to invite impulses of generosity and good
will Look upon your prison term as an
opportunity to repent of the evil In you
that men know not of.