We have church service at our place every Sunday afternoon and
Wednesday afternoon; one day our preacher failed to materialize. The
men were in the chapel; and I did not wish to have them return to the
cells without saying something to them; as I could not preach I thought
I would do the next best thing, and I would read another fellow’s
sermon; only, I gave the other fellow credit for it. I was reading a
book just then that interested me very much; and I went down to the
office and got it, and I read the first chapter; and when I finished,
I asked if I should read more, and they said, “Yes, Warden.” I read
a second and a third chapter; I read as long as my voice would hold
out; and as I had finished, a man down in the audience said, “Won’t
you be kind enough to tell me the name of that book, and the author?”
I was very glad to have them ask the question; I told him. The next
morning when I was going through the prison industries, the officers
kept asking me what book I read, the previous day. I said, “Why do
you ask?” They said, “The men are all talking about it.” I sent down
town and got fifteen copies and sent it around among the cells, with
instructions that no one man could keep it for more than a week. When
we collected the books at the end of the first week, I found that a
great many men had taken paper and copied out portions of it. This was
practically a non-reading population. They had refused a lot of good
books we had put in our library which I had thought were fine, much to
my disappointment. Perhaps you would like to know the kind of book they
so much enjoyed; and, with your permission, I will just read you the
first page of the first chapter.
“Man has two Creators: his God, and himself. The first creator
furnishes him the raw material of his life and the laws of conformity
with which he can make that life what he will. His second creator,
himself, has marvelous powers he rarely realizes. It is what a man
makes of himself that counts. If a man fails in life he usually says,
I am as God made me. When he succeeds in life, he proudly proclaims
himself a self-made man. Man is placed into this world not as a
finality, but as a possibility. Man’s greatest enemy is himself. Man in
his weakness is the creature of circumstances; man in his strength is
the creator of circumstances. Whether he be victim or victor depends
largely on himself. Man is never truly great, merely for what he is,
but ever for what he may become.”
Now, that is pretty good meat. And that afternoon I was the one who
learned the great lesson; for I learned that if we approach this
subject in the right way we can waken, even in dormant minds, a
desire for good literature. And my little experience of the afternoon
revolutionized my method of dealing with the boys in this respect.
My time is up.
(A Voice: “Go on!”)
A MEMBER: Who is the author of that book?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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