Year: 1870

What Young Woman Is Doing.


The Springfield Massachusetts, Re
publican contains the following account
of Miss Linda Gilbert, with whose in
defatigable labor to secure certain meas
ures of prison reform, some Of our read
ers are acquainted: .-.


Miss Gilbert, when little girl, in the
city of Chicago, used to pass the Jail on
her way to school, and would sometimes
stop and talk to the prisoners through
the iron bars that guarded the windows.
She used to take papers and magazines
from her home and pass them through
the window for the prisoners to read:


On one occasion her attention was at
tracted to prisoner who appeared to
her. in heryouthful innocence and purity,
to be a noble-looking man. He possessed
a fine, intelligent countenance, and his
hair and beard were tinged with gray.
He asked her to let him look at her
school books, and after complimenting
herupon her brightness and intelligence,
asked her to bring him something to
read, which she did, and stopped fire.
quently to talk to him. He had been a
man of the highest respeotability and
character, but in an evil hour, under the
pressure of pecuniary embarrassment,
he had been tempted to commit forge
ry. In short time this prisoner became
sick and finally died, but before his
death he sent for the little girl who had
brought him books and papers, to read a
certain chapter in the Psalms, and told
her how much good she had done in fur
nishing reading matter for prisoners,
and drew from her promise that she
would continue to visit the prisoners
and bring them something good to read.
When this man died, this little girl,
who had deem ministering angel to
him when sick and in prison. was pres
ent, and closed his eyes in death. True
of her generous heart, she continued to
visit, and talk with, and read to the
prisoners, and take them delicacies
when sick; and the more she saw the
misery consequent upon a system that
almost totally ignored the laws of health,
both of body and mind, the more did
she become strengthened in a resolution
to make it labor of love to denote her.
selfto the work of bringing about a re-
form in the treatment of the inmates of
jails and prisons. -..


Miss Gilbert has visited many of the
eastern prisons to learn from compari-
son of the different systems Of practice
in different States, what experience has
demonstrated, that would be valuable to
her in her great and philanthropic
work. She found that in many States,
and especially in Michigan-where that
noble apostle of prison reform, Mr..
Brockway, has accomplished Il great
work-they were far in advance of us in
theory and practice upon This subject.
In Chicago Miss Gilbert has obtained
hundreds of volumes for the use of pris-
oners there, by soliciting voluntary con-
tributions of money and books. In the
course of her work she has had many
times to endure the gibes, and sneers,
and arrows which patient merit of the
unworthy" gets when its energies
ara directed against evils which the
world has either sanctioned or acquiesced
in, until it is almost regarded as breach
of the peace of society to speak against
them. But every opposition has served
but to strengthen her in the determine
tion to press on in the work which in
her heart she feels God has marked out
for her.