Criminals -- Fiction; Social problems -- Fiction; United States -- Social conditions -- 1865-1918 -- Fiction
Each evening Archie and the other convicts marched again to the
dining-room, and ate bread and molasses; then they sat in their cells
for an hour while the cell-house echoed with the twanging of guitars and
banjos, mouth-organs, jews’-harps, accordeons, and the raucous voices of
the peddlers--a hideous bedlam. Those who had hall-permits talked with
one another, or with friendly guards. Sometimes, if the guard were
"right," he gave Archie a candle and permitted him to read after the
lights were out.
All week-days were alike. On Sunday they went to chapel and listened to
the chaplain talk about Christ, who, it was said, came to preach
deliverance to the captives. The chaplain told the convicts they could
save their souls in the world to which they would go when they died, if
they believed on Christ. Archie did not understand what it was that he
was expected to believe, any more than he had when the sky-pilot at the
works had said very much the same thing. It could not be that they
expected him to believe that Christ came to preach deliverance to
captives such as he. So he paid no attention to the sky-pilot. He
found it more interesting to watch the death-squad, who, as likely to go
to that world before any of the others, were given seats in the front
pews. Near the death-squad were several convicts in chains. They were
considered to be extremely bad and greatly in need of religion. The
authorities, it seemed, were determined to give them this religion, even
if they had to hold them in chains while they did so. In the corners of
the chapel, behind protecting iron bars, were guards armed with rifles,
who vigilantly watched the convicts while the chaplain preached to them
the religion of the gentle Nazarene. The chaplain said it was the
religion of the gentle Nazarene, but in reality it was the religion of
Moses, or sometimes that of Paul, and even of later men that he preached
to the convicts rather than the religion of Jesus. The convicts did not
know this, however. Neither did the chaplain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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