The force of his appeal was not to be resisted, and I agreed to follow his lead in an effort to save his fellow prisoner from destruction. As I stood there in the twilight beside this man reaching out from the wreck and ruin of his own life to lend a hand in the rescue of this boy, if only the "good people" would do their part, I hoped that Saint Peter and the Recording Angel were looking down. And as I said good night--with a hand-clasp--I felt that I had touched a human soul.
The man kept his word, the boy gave up swearing and braced up generally, and I kept my part of the agreement; but I do not know if our combined efforts had a lasting effect on the young culprit.
As time passed many of these men were sent from the jail to the State penitentiary, and often a wife or family was left in destitution; and the destitution of a prisoner's wife means not only poverty but heart-break, disgrace, and despair. Never shall I forget the first time I saw the parting of a wife from her husband the morning he was taken to prison. A sensitive, high-strung, fragile creature she was; and going out in the bitter cold of December, carrying a heavy boy of eighteen months and followed by an older girl, she seemed the very embodiment of desolation. I have been told by those who do not know the poor that they do not feel as we do, that their sensibilities are blunted, their imagination torpid. Could we but know! Could we but know, we should not be so insensate to their sufferings. It is we who are dull. To that prisoner's wife that morning life was one quivering torture, with absolutely no escape from agonizing thoughts. Her "home" to which I went that afternoon was a cabin in which there was one fire, but scant food, and no stock of clothing; the woman was ignorant of charitable societies and shrinking from the shame of exposing her needs as a convict's wife.
It is not difficult to make things happen in small towns when people know each other and live within easy distances. In less time, really less actual time than it would have taken to write a paper for the Woman's Club on "The Problems of Poverty," this prisoner's wife was relieved from immediate want. To tell her story to half a dozen acquaintances who had children and superfluous clothing, to secure a certain monthly help from the city, was a simple matter; and in a few months the woman was taking in sewing--and doing good work--for a reliable class of patrons.