If the third degree is brutal, the fourth is hellish. Call the third illegal assault, and you must name the fourth murder illegally designed. By means of the fourth a gentleman can be hounded to death by his enemies. In the third degree a criminal has his ears boxed.
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_It’s Just Like Her (A Chronicle of the Tombs)_
The missionaries I have met! Mind, I am not speaking of the professional ones, those who are officially connected with the Tombs, or with Sing Sing prison; nor the chaplains. Years of experience have taught them their good work; they do it properly and without the aid of trumpets. Nor do I mean the ladies, who out of the goodness of their hearts, come and sing to us on Sundays. I am referring to those kind creatures who have made it their “life work” to come here _occasionally_ and bestow tracts and cheering words upon us; the kind that carry enormous Bibles, full of colored book marks, pressed against their flat chests, and who punctuate their sentences by rolling their eyes upward. These book marks, I am convinced, are what make them so round-shouldered. They do not come during all the year: with summer they receive calls, doubtless from a celestial source, to “green fields and pastures new”; while the real helpers stay and, with us, bear the heat and burden of the day.
How I have been comforted by the visitations (on _clear_ days during the winter, and _how_ I have prayed for stormy ones) of these devoted and self-appointed examiners of my beliefs, and by a perusal of the literature they thrust upon me, “The Drunkard’s Home” (this to me, who have never tasted liquor in my life); “The Path to Hell” (when I am there already); “A Life of Sin” (I have always lived at home with my parents). Still another piece of literature informs me that I may possibly be a Christian, but _not_ a _clean one_—if I smoke. Oh, the irony of life! with all this abundant and excellent supply, I am not allowed, while in the Tombs, to shave myself!
What a spiritual uplift I experienced by the sudden appearance of a female of uncertain age, who demanded: “Where are you going to spend eternity?” and before I could answer, “Not with _you_ if I can help it,” she put her second question. “Do you pray, brother? Do you get right down on your knees and lift yourself up?” (wouldn’t that be a stunt? it is also a mixed metaphor, but what do missionaries care for rhetoric?)