In dealing with delinquents, it is the personal touch that tells. Human nature craves for sympathy. Kingsley was once asked what the secret of his joyous, buoyant life was, and his ready reply was, “I had a friend.” Our Saviour was no exception to this rule, for as our Saviour approached Gethsemane, he yearned for a friend whom he could rely upon to wait and watch while he endured, and expressed it in that pathetic request to the drowsy Peter and his sleepy comrades. When we see a very simple duty staring us in the face in dealing with this class, we are too prone to say: “Lord, here am I. Send him.” It is an easy matter for a man of means to write his check, or give his cash, but it is an entirely different thing to carry that gift to some poor fellow who is down and out and sweeten it with the fragrance of personal kindness.
“Not what we give, but what we share; The gift without the giver is bare.”
We have church service at our place every Sunday afternoon and Wednesday afternoon. One day our preacher failed to materialize; the men were in the chapel and I did not wish to have them return to the cells without saying something to them; as I could not preach, I thought I would do the next best thing, and I would read another fellow’s sermon, only I gave the other fellow credit for it. I was reading a book just then that interested me very much, and I went down to the office and got it and I read the first chapter, and when I finished I asked if I should read more, and they said, “Yes, Warden.” I read a second and a third chapter; I read as long as my voice would hold out; and as I had finished a man down in the audience said, “Won’t you be kind enough to tell me the name of that book and the author?” I was very glad to have them ask the question; I told him. The next morning when I was going through the prison industries, the officers kept asking me what book I read the previous day. I said, “Why do you ask?” They said, “The men are all talking about it.” I sent down town and got fifteen copies and sent them around among the cells, with instructions that no one man could keep it for more than a week. When we collected the books at the end of the first week I found that a great many men had taken paper and copied out portions of it. This was practically a non-reading population. They had refused a lot of good books we had put in our library which I had thought were fine, much to my disappointment. Perhaps you would like to know the kind of book they so much enjoyed, and, with your permission, I will just read you the first page of the first chapter.