Never shall I forget his face as he said a few farewell words to his
comrades the night before his graduation from the Home. He was still
the angular, awkward fellow; there were still the stern jaw and the
disfiguring scar, but despite them, the face was wonderfully changed
and as he spoke with the deepest feeling of the new life that had
come to him, his countenance was so lit up with joy and peace that it
appeared transfigured. It was hard work he undertook, but he was a
proud man each morning, as he arose at four o'clock and started out
to gain an honest living with the certainty in his heart that he was
making a success of it. When the first pay day came, he called at my
office, coming in straight from work in toil-stained clothing, and
with his hands bearing the marks of toil which mean so much to us. I
was occupied at the time and my secretary demurred at disturbing me,
but he insisted he wanted only a moment. As I rose to greet him, he
clasped my fingers in his two strong hands and with tears filling his
eyes he said, "Little Mother, I just came to thank you. I can't tell
you what the Home has meant to me but I want my comrades to know I am
really grateful." And then he drew from his pocket a little roll of
bills and pressing it into my hand he said, "That is the first honest
money I ever earned. I want you to use it for the 'boys' who are now
where I was once." As I smoothed out the fifteen crumpled dollar bills,
their value to me was far beyond that inscribed upon them, for they
would have refuted the prognostications of those who told me of the
ingratitude which I should meet and the worthlessness of the treasure
for which I was seeking in the dark mines of state prison.
Within our prison walls there are naturally many men of foreign birth,
some of them very ignorant of our language, coming from the illiterate
classes even in their own land. In some cases they have drifted into
trouble, some from ignorance more than intentional criminality, while
many are of the helpless, shiftless classes who do well enough when
sternly governed but are very poor masters of their own life and
destiny. Herded together in the great slum sections of our large
cities, their surroundings on the outside prove a very hotbed of evil.
Friendless and unable to make themselves understood, many of them have
a very poor showing in the court-room and after their term expires,
go out into an unwelcoming world with no chance of escaping recurring
troubles in the future.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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