[Illustration: Scene in the Tombs Police Court]
I replied that I had. 'Then what do you advise?' I asked if it was known in the house that the lad was a defaulter. 'To none but my partner' he replied. Then, said I, the best advice I am capable of giving is, _forgive him, ask the court to discharge him, and take him back again into your office_. I am happy to say that my advice was adopted. The youth was discharged, forgiven, and taken back again into the house, and is now performing his duties with alacrity, very grateful to the Association, and more especially to the firm for their noble conduct in this matter. That young man has no doubt been saved from a career of crime.
The prisoners confined in the Tombs are provided with the means of hearing divine service every Sunday. The Roman Catholic clergy have the exclusive privilege of ministering to the spiritual wants of the women and children, and for this purpose have quite a nice little chapel fitted up in the female department of the prison. The Sisters of Charity preside over this part of the prison at all times, and no one is permitted to interfere with them.
The Protestant clergy are permitted to preach to the male prisoners in the main corridor of the prison. The preacher stands on the platform at the upper end of the passage, and the prisoners in their cells can hear him without seeing him. They pay little or no attention to him, but receive their friends in their cells, or employ themselves according to their own fancies during the preaching. The bummers are grouped in the corridor just below the preacher, and are called out from time to time by the keepers, as they are wanted in the court room. The minister is frequently annoyed and embarrassed by the shouts; jeers, and imitations of the prisoners in their cells.
The principal reformatory establishments of New York city are the Penitentiary, on Blackwell's Island, and the House of Refuge, devoted to juvenile criminals, on Randall's Island.
The large pile of buildings which forms such a prominent object on Blackwell's Island, known as the Penitentiary, is familiar to most of the residents of New York City, though the every day life of its inmates is practically known only to that class to which they immediately belong.