Within Prison Walls: being a narrative during a week of voluntary confinement in the state prison at Auburn, New YorkOsborne, Thomas Mott
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Within Prison Walls: being a narrative during a week of voluntary confinement in the state prison at Auburn, New York
Osborne, Thomas Mott
Auburn Prison; Prisoners -- New York (State); Prisons -- New York (State)
Of course all this would not have been possible had not the attitude of
both officers and inmates been just what it was. As I look back, it seems
to me that all hands played their parts to perfection. The strict orders
of the Warden that I was to receive no favors whatever and must be treated
exactly like any ordinary inmate, were literally carried out--except in
the two or three unimportant instances noted in my journal. But far more
remarkable was the attitude of the prisoners. An outsider would never have
detected a look or an action to indicate that there was any difference
between "Tom Brown" and any other inmate of the institution. Of course it
could not be absolutely the same; it was not possible for me to escape
being an object of interest; and I often felt around me a sort of
suppressed excitement; although, as I glanced again at the stolid gray
automatons, among whom I marched or sat at mess, I would think it must be
only my imagination--a reflex of my own excitement. Still I would catch an
occasional smile, a wink, a lifting of an eyebrow, the ghost of a nod--to
show that those silent figures were not really indifferent to my presence
among them. And as I went to my cell for the night, there might be a
momentary pause by a gray-clothed figure at the door, and a low whisper,
"How does it go, Tom?" All such things, however, might well have been in
the case of any new convict who had figured in the public prints and had
thus become an object of common interest.
After all possible deductions have been made, the fact remains that my
experiment met conditions at the prison which, thanks to officers and
inmates, led to a large measure of gratifying success. It is hard to see
how, from any point of view, the experience could have been improved upon;
it is hard to see how I could possibly have learned more in a week than I
did. If it were to be done over again, there is nothing whatever that I
would change. It has been not only a novel and most interesting
experience, it has been a wonderful revelation. I have come out of prison
with a new conception of the inherent nobility of human nature, a new
belief in the power of men to respond to the right conditions and the
right appeal. I have come out with a new sense of human brotherhood, a new
faith in God.
CHAPTER II
SUNDAY'S JOURNAL
September 28, 1913. 9.30 P. M.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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