Criminals -- Fiction; Social problems -- Fiction; United States -- Social conditions -- 1865-1918 -- Fiction
Elizabeth was right; it was Harry Graves. Four weeks before he had been
released from the penitentiary. On the day that he was permitted to go
forth into the world again as a free man, the warden gave him a railroad
ticket back to the city, a suit of prison-made clothes, a pair of
prison-made brogans, and a shirt. These clothes were a disappointment
and a chagrin to Graves. When he went into the prison, the fall before,
he had an excellent suit of clothes and a new overcoat, and during the
whole year he had looked forward to the pleasure he would experience in
donning these again. He had felt a security in returning to the world
well-habited and presentable. But one of the guards had noticed
Graves’s clothes when he entered the penitentiary and had stolen them,
so that when he was released, Graves was forced to go back wearing a
suit of the shoddy clothes one of the contractors manufactured in the
prison, and sold to the state at a profit sufficient to repay him and to
provide certain officials of the penitentiary with a good income as
well. These clothes were of dull black. A detective could recognize
them anywhere. Before Graves had reached the city, the collar had
rubbed black against his neck.
Things, of course, had changed while he was in prison. His mother had
died and he had no home to go to. Besides this, he had contracted
tuberculosis in the penitentiary, as did many of the convicts unless
they were men of exceptionally strong constitutions. Nevertheless Graves
was glad to be free on any terms, and glad to be back in the city in
which he had been born and reared. And yet, no sooner was he back than
the fear of the city lay on him. He dreaded to meet men; he felt their
eyes following him curiously. He knew that he presented an uncouth
figure in those miserable clothes and the clumsy prison brogans.
Besides, he had so long walked in the lock-step that his gait was now
constrained, awkward and unnatural; having been forbidden to speak for
more than a year, and having spoken at all but surreptitiously, he found
it impossible to approach men with his old frankness; having been
compelled to keep his gaze on the ground, he could not look men in the
eyes, and so he seemed to be a surly, taciturn creature with a hang-dog
air.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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