Surely it is needless to picture more causes for the step that we felt
led to take as the second phase of our work. The "boys" needed a home
and the need called for speedy action. The home was planned and opened
six months after the work in prison had started, and hundreds to-day
look back to it as a blessed haven of rest; a bright spot which has
been to many the first and only one in life. When we first started, the
plans were all talked over in prison. I took the men, not the public,
into my confidence. The idea was warmly welcomed and every item of news
about the project looked for with keenest interest. Our idea was to
have a place that would be a real home and not an institution. We did
not want a mission in the city with sleeping rooms attached; certainly
not a place placarded "Prisoners' Home," "Shelter for Ex-convicts,"
etc. Our friends were no longer prisoners, our guests were never to be
called ex-convicts. It was to be a home hidden away from the public,
and as much as possible patterned after that to which the mother would
welcome her boy were she living and able to do so. In Sing Sing Prison
we named our Home, and the name chosen was "Hope Hall." We felt that
that name would have no brand in it and we earnestly prayed that it
might prove the threshold of hope to those who passed through its doors
to the new life of the future. In the matter of furnishing, the same
idea of homelikeness and comfort without extravagance was carried out.
Pretty coloring and light cheeriness have always been aimed at as
affording the best contrast to the gloom and dreariness of the narrow
prison cell.
The house we first opened was a large frame building on Washington
Heights, that had once been a Club. After two years we moved into the
country on Long Island, that we might have a home of our own and more
ground to cultivate. We purchased a ten acre farm and by degrees have
enlarged and improved the house, reclaimed and cultivated the ground
and made a home which proves a veritable surprise to the many who have
looked forward to it for years, and yet even in their dreams have
not painted it as brightly as it deserved. If you give, give freely,
that the receiver may feel that you have done your best and then you
will appeal to his true heart gratitude. If your giving is with many
limitations the receiver will say, "Oh, I see they think anything is
good enough for me," and your intended blessing may lose all its value.
We have realized this fact and borne it in mind in all our work. As
our superintendent showed a newcomer around the Home on one occasion,
the man turned to him and with eyes filled with tears exclaimed, "Oh!
I ought to be good after this." The same thought has been seen in many
lives and we have wanted our Home to so truly fulfill its purpose that
it might form a veritable barrier between the men and their past.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account