As a little child I spent many a happy season in the home of my dear aunt Miss Charlesworth, the authoress of "Ministering Children." The pretty tree-shaded garden of Nutfield Cottage was bordered on one side by the quiet village churchyard and a little private gate opened on the path that led through it to the garden of Nutfield Court, where our special playmates lived. By daylight one could run blithely enough between the old quaint head-stones, many of them moss-covered, while other mounds were bright with masses of blossom, when the breeze was playing in the trees, the lark was sending forth its carol of praise from the blue sky above or the quaint old ivy-covered tower of the church might send forth its glad peal of chimes. There was so much of life and beauty that children could run back and forth over the grassy path with no thought of the death that lay still and solemn beneath the smiling flowers and whispering grasses. But it was a different thing entirely, if one walked back after nightfall, with senses alert for every sound and heart beating fast with unknown terrors. The rustle of a bird in the ivy; the creaking of a dead branch; the flitting of a bat's dark wing or the play of moonbeam and shadow were things that made the churchyard a place to be avoided for now the memory was vivid that this was the village of the dead. In those childish days death held for me a great horror. The thought connected with it, that which made me feel most desolate, was the fact that when one was dead, laid away deep in the earth and left alone in some dark place beneath the tree shadows; to be covered in by the snow, or swept over by howling winds or dismal rains, the world would still go on the same as ever. For others, bright home lights would gleam, laughter and fun, companionship and love, life with all it means would still exist, while the dead would lie forgotten and alone.

I have thought of these things and seen once more the vivid picture and felt the thrill of those childish fears as I have entered into sympathy with "the boys" in prison. Prison to many is a living death. They feel that they have dropped out of life. The rendering of the judge's sentence was the "dust to dust" of their burial service; the rhythm of the wheels that bore them away to prison sang the requiem of their despair and desolation, and when the heavy iron door clanged to behind them, it was like the falling of the sod upon their grave. Henceforth they were not of the world. In it they were dead and forgotten and this bitterness was harder to bear when they remembered that outside amid the old scenes, the busy, happy rush of life would go on just as blithely despite their sorrow. For others the home light still gleamed; the sunshine, the joy, the love of life which was still dear to them was continuing in all its fullness but beyond their reach. Forgotten! There is more bitterness and tragedy in that one word than volumes could describe. It holds a record of broken hearts and embittered souls that blots the star of hope out of many a sky. "What a man sows he must reap. They deserved it for they have sinned, they have broken the law and it is only maudlin sentiment to pity and sympathize with them," is a sentiment I have often heard expressed. From the purely worldly point of view this may be so, among those who feel in no sense their brother's keeper, and believe that the one who has fallen has put himself forever without the pale of human sympathy. The whole question can be solved by merely quoting the old saying, "They have made their own bed, they must lie upon it." To Christians, however, this is impossible. No, I will say more. To any who have an interest in their fellow-men and a loyal love for their country, the grave responsibility towards this vast prison population must loom up as a potential fact. Yet it has been a very much forgotten subject.

"Remember me!" From the long ago past this cry rings out to-day. How vividly we can call up the scene before us, when lips white and parched with death and anguish first spoke them in the labored breath that was hurrying a guilt-laden soul into the dark unknown hereafter. We hear also the answer spoken in like mortal agony by the martyred One at his side. With what light it must have come into his darkness as peace in the storm and very life to that dying one, "This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." The Christ was perfectly aware of the past. There is no intimation in the story that the man was suffering wrongfully but the answer was not, "You've no one to blame but yourself;" "once a thief always a thief." The deed that had brought him to death, the sin that had ruined his life was forgiven, the soul that cried for help, that believed in the power of the dying Christ beside him was recognized by the world's Saviour. He was called and welcomed to go into the mystery of eternal life side by side with his Lord. That same cry goes up to-day from every cell in our dear Christian land, from those who represent to-day that outcast of Calvary, "Remember me!" To whom should it appeal more strongly than to the followers and representatives of that same Christ, who would have His glad message of hope sent clearly and convincingly, echoing and re-echoing into every dark and lonely cell where it is so sorely needed. Has this been done? Do the Christian people and philanthropists of our land feel their responsibility to these men? Compare this corner of God's vineyard with many others and let us ask ourselves whether it has had its share of prominence in pulpit and press as a plea to efforts of Christian charity. I fear not, and yet in the scene of the last judgment as well as the one already quoted, we are reminded that this is one of the Christ's requirements of those, who would follow in His footsteps.

In response to those words, "Go ye into all the world," this country has spent its millions on foreign missions and sent forth thousands of consecrated men and women in willing exile. The Christ gathered little children into His arms and blessed them, and the Church following the divine example can show to-day its splendid Sunday-school work, children's hospitals, orphanages, nurseries, kindergartens and many other loving, saving missions to the little ones. He healed the sick, and His followers have poured out their wealth in these days to give hospitals to the poor, but He is also "in prison" and have we in like manner visited Him there? I write thus and I ask these questions because I have seen the great need so vividly that I have been impelled to come back from the prison world to testify that the criminal problem is what it is to-day because it has been neglected. If the responsibility for those in prison was realized by the Christian world as clearly as it has realized the need of the heathen, the whole situation would in ten or twenty years be revolutionized. It has been an overlooked and in a great measure an untilled field. Repeatedly was I told when I contemplated making it my life mission, that my efforts would be useless, nothing lasting could be accomplished, and that these men were beyond hope, but it has always seemed to me that such an argument merely furnished a greater reason for determined effort. I would not have any misconstrue my statement and report me as saying that this work was wholly neglected until our work began. I speak in the wide sense and am comparing this field with other fields of Christian activity and in what I say, I believe all who have worked in prisons will agree with me. There have been of course some workers, loving, loyal souls who have toiled away unknown and unrecognized so far as the world is concerned, but they are the few whose devotion only emphasizes the fact that this field has been abandoned by the forces that should long since have conquered it. England in years gone by had her Elizabeth Fry and John Howard. They did a lasting work, but should not their example have been followed by tens of thousands in that land? Her jails are still full of prisoners and one of her oldest wardens has declared with emphasis, after an experience of thirty-five years, that he has known only two cases of reformation in all that period. In this country I could name other devoted workers. I would not slight the consecrated toil of Chaplain Barnes who for twenty-eight years has striven with the devotion of a saint for the welfare of "the boys" in Massachusetts, or of Mrs. Courtland De Peyster Field who has for twenty years led a Bible class in Sing Sing. There have been earnest workers of the Society of Friends who have done valuable service in Pennsylvania, and in Iowa there are Sunday-school teachers who have had a record of over twenty years of teaching in the prison. But the call has been unheeded by the many who are equally responsible with the few who have heard and responded. From every pulpit, in every Sunday-school, through the pages of the religious press, the need of the heathen is constantly kept before the people and so impressed that the youngest child knows all about it. What do the children in our Sunday-schools or the congregations gathered in our churches know of the need behind prison walls? Where has any large offering ever been taken for this cause? Who has ever thought of leaving a generous legacy for the redemption of these men? I do not for a moment grudge what has been given to missions. I merely want to bring to remembrance these others who have been overlooked, this occasion for help at our very door, a need which may be unlovely and have nothing about it of the glamour of romance which distance lends to a cause, but which all the same concerns human souls divinely loved and groping in great darkness.

Those who have entered it can report that here is a glorious opportunity. This field is indeed white to the harvest and there is no reason why mighty results should not be gathered where people have been inclined to look only for disappointment and failure.

In seeking for the cause of all this general indifference, I can only conclude that the fact that these men have been wrong-doers and are suffering in consequence, has robbed them of sympathy. If I were pleading for the abolition of prisons, the lightening of punishment or were making sentimental excuses for transgressors, I could understand that the appeal might awaken no interest, for it would appear to be a contradiction to justice. What we do advocate is the saving of these derelicts, that while in prison and on their discharge, help be given them in a practical way so as to prevent their relapse into crime. From the purely worldly standpoint he who has sinned is unworthy of help and therefore is not an object of pity or sympathy. From the Christian side of the question he is more to be pitied and the more earnestly to be sought after. Did not the Good Shepherd say He would leave the ninety and nine to seek for the one straying sheep? Surely his need of mercy is far greater with the guilt of sin on his conscience, its haunting memory robbing him of confidence in himself or faith in efforts at reformation.

How much the attitude of the world towards the prisoner and its prevalent opinion have effected the men can hardly be imagined by an outsider. Hope, encouragement and confidence mean everything to any man in life's struggle. Take only as an illustration, the attitude of the doctor at the sick bed. He knows that his cheering words to the patient mean almost as much as his remedies, and were he to be forever reminding the sufferer of each unfavorable symptom and shaking his head disconsolately over the prognosis with an admission that it was little or no use to try and save him, the result would be a depression on the part of the patient which might even in many cases prove fatal. In just this way have the morally weak and sick been too often robbed of the hope and courage that might have meant ambition and effort in the right and saving direction.

A learned writer some years since published in one of our scientific papers a treatise concerning criminals, in which he proved from his own mental conclusions that they could not be reformed. I did not read the paper but I saw it mentioned in reviews and deplored the fact that science should be prostituted to so demoralizing a use. On the following Christmas day I planned to spend my time visiting the cells in Sing Sing and talking individually to as many of the men as possible, for that is a day full of home memories and the realization of loneliness is even more keen and bitter than usual. To my surprise I was met at cell after cell with the question, "Have you read, Little Mother, what Professor ---- said about us?" and in some instances by educated and skeptical men, it was used as an argument against the duty of trying to do better. If those who toll the bell of doom for these poor souls in bondage, fully realized how the damning tones echo and reecho in disheartening vibration from prison to prison, from cell to cell, they might understand that it is almost criminal to break the bruised reed and quench the smoking flax. What should we think of the physician who should calmly and cold-bloodedly put out the spark of life in a patient where though his theories contradicted the likelihood of recovery, some other doctor might save life in the eleventh hour?

That there is a terrible influence in heredity, no one can deny. The drunkard or impure liver leaves the taint of evil appetite to be struggled against by the children to whom he gave life, but to use this as an argument against the possibility of reforming certain men is a contradiction of the teachings of Christ. His message of hope is to every man; His offer of strength and power to the most needy and unfortunate as well as to those in whom one would naturally look for godly aspirations. We have seen enough in our work to understand that many of those who have had the worst environment to contend with, and have been handicapped by miserable parentage have yet been able to accept and respond to the highest teaching, and have made a thorough success of earnest Christian living. I was visiting Sing Sing on one occasion when I had planned for a long list of interviews. As was my custom I presented the list to the Warden, who was deeply in sympathy with our work, and we went over it together that he might give me information that would prove useful in meeting the wants of different men. Coming to one name upon the list, he paused and asked me if I knew the man. I told him that I knew him merely as one who had written me a few lines requesting an interview. "Well," he said, "I will tell you his reputation. We look upon him as the worst and most treacherous man in this prison. He is an habitual criminal, has probably been a criminal all his life, has had several terms in prison and has been constantly punished for insubordination. Three times he has stabbed officers and fellow-prisoners, he has been in plots to escape and twice attempted to burn down the prisons he was in. He has been a morphine or opium fiend, and now he is being kept in 'solitary' because he cannot be trusted with the other men." I shall never forget my interview with this man. It was towards evening of a very busy day for I had between sixty and seventy private interviews between the opening and closing of the prison day. I was sitting in the chapel close to one of the barred windows that looked over the Hudson. The sun was setting and the river gleamed like burnished gold while great shafts of glory were flung upwards from the hills tinting the clouds with crimson and amber. Looking back from the brilliant scene without I glanced down upon my papers scattered upon the little table at which I was seated. There I saw also the streaks of yellow light but between each sunbeam lay the heavy shadow of a bar. I sat there thinking how like the lives of our "boys" was that contrast. In every life there was that heavy shadow blotting, discouraging, darkening the whole present and future, and then turning from the sad side, I thanked God that there was a sunlight that could force its way even into the darkest gloom of prison life, the sunshine of God's own love and mercy, His pardon and His presence. I suppose I had allowed myself to dream a little for I was startled when I heard a shuffling footstep near me. I had not noticed that the officer who stood outside the door had ushered in my next visitor. Looking up I saw a man who might have been taken as a very type of the hopeless habitual criminal. His walk, his attitude, the furtive, distrustful look in his eyes, the nervous twitching of hand and lip and muscles told of one who had been hunted and caged. As he stood there with his dark eyes fixed searchingly on my face I saw how completely he had become a nervous wreck and how he had lost his faith not only in himself but in mankind. I rose to say a few words of welcome, drew up his chair near the table and yet he said never a word. I noticed how the hand that he had laid on the table to steady it shook and how the poor face so white with prison pallor quivered with nervousness. I told him again how glad I was to see him and that he had done quite right in sending for me but it was not until some moments later that he broke the silence and then with the abrupt question, "Do you know who I am?" I was going to give him his name as I knew it, but before I could speak he leaned forward and in the bitterest accents said, "I will tell you. I am the worst and most treacherous man in this prison." Then followed in short, concise words, the story of the efforts to escape, the insubordination, the attempts at incendiary outrage. Pointing to the chains that hung upon the pillar in the chapel, he said, "I have been chained up there. I have been put in the dark cells. I have been punished over and over again but it has not any of it done me any good. Would you like to know what the magistrate who last sentenced me said about me? He said after passing sentence, 'Take him away and lock him up like a brute beast for that is all he is.'" Then with indescribable pathos he turned and said, "Do you think there is any hope for me?" I was at once upon ground where I could speak without hesitation, and I told him simply that if he was through with an evil life, if he was tired of wrong-doing and was thoroughly determined to do right there was a love that could forgive him and a power that could help and keep him in the future. When at last we knelt together, there in the glory of the setting sun, I prayed that the dear Lord, who could bring light into our darkness, might dispel the thick clouds that had shut in this soul from hope, and bring to him the revelation that would change his life. There were tears in the dark eyes as we parted, and taking my hand in his he said, "I will try, Little Mother." He did try, and more than that he triumphed. At first it was a stern battle of an awakened will and conscience fighting against desperate odds. The feeling that a friend was watching and waiting anxiously for good reports proved undoubtedly an incentive. Just about this time I was taken dangerously ill and had to go to the hospital. The news was received with the deepest concern within the prison walls and many men who had never prayed in their lives were found on their knees night after night asking God to spare my life. A letter from this "boy" reached my secretary in which he said, "I am trying very hard to be good these days because it says that the prayers of the righteous avail much and I do want my prayers to help in making the Little Mother well." It was not the highest motive for being good but it was the best that had thus far ever inspired this life and it proved the stepping-stone to better things. It was not long before he sought and found Christ as his Saviour and became an earnest Christian. When he left the prison I do not believe there was an officer who thought it would be possible for him ever to make an honest living. That was over five years ago. He is to-day a prosperous and happy man. He has become by hard work and faithfulness assistant-superintendent in a large industry in which he is employed. He has a comfortably furnished and happy home, and is so changed in face and personal appearance that I do not believe any of his old companions could recognize him. Some three years ago a detective, who had several times arrested him, talked with him sometime without for a moment suspecting it was the same man. So truly when the heart is transformed do the face and manner reflect the change. I quote from his last letter to me written after our seventh anniversary gathering:

"My dear Little Mother: I write to let you know I enjoyed the seventh anniversary celebration very much. How soon a man forgets the years of misery in the days of happiness. My wife was quite disappointed when I told her of the mistake I had made in leaving her in New York. How pleased she would have been to have met you on such a great occasion. The 'boys' and their families all seemed so happy and indeed it was a sight worth seeing. I have a deep feeling in my heart for Hope Hall 'boys' and have often taken one into my home for a few days while he was out of work. Some day I am going to own my own home and realize what has been my day-dream. Do you remember that it was your confidence in telling the public that you would give them 'flesh and blood facts' that made me resolve to be one of the 'facts.' Well, I have fought the fight and I have had a hard, even cruelly bitter struggle for the first two years. How much sweeter is the victory! I would not have it different. God has been very good to us and we can see His hand in the working of our prosperity. When I think of those two years, the struggles and trials, the hungry days and sleepless nights, it only gives me and mine more zest in the enjoyment of the God-given prosperity we have now. 'All things work together for good.' You know I had to learn a trade since I left prison and that it was B—— G—— (one of our 'boys' who had been a notorious burglar but has made a success of an honest life) who taught me the fundamental principles of this trade, at which I am now earning a living that only good mechanics can enjoy. Indeed no man can prosper unless he hustles and pushes himself ahead, for business people these days are carrying no dead wood on their pay rolls. Thank you for the very happy day, etc."

In this case there was certainly nothing in the past to bring in a hopeful aspect. His environment had been of the worst, so had been his parentage and rearing. From childhood his feet had been trained to tread in the wrong path and, as he once said to my dear co-worker, Mrs. E. A. McAlpin, he did not believe in heaven or hell, God or the devil.

Those who have been looked upon by all as the most hopeless are the old timers in State Prison. Speaking one day in a court-room in New York on behalf of a man to whom I wanted the Judge to give a chance and the benefit of doubt in his case, I was told most definitely by that gentleman that there was absolutely no hope for a man who had been more than once in State Prison. He said, "Mrs. Booth, you may have some success with the first offenders, but you can do nothing whatever with those who have been in prison again and again. They are criminals born and there is nothing to do for them but to rearrest them and put them out of harm's way." This discouraging verdict I have heard from the lips of many prison officers, police officers and authorities on criminal questions and so has it been impressed upon the men that they have repeatedly assured me that I was wasting my time upon them. Can anything be imagined more utterly contradictory to the teaching concerning the Almighty power of divine grace? Above all should these be remembered and the greatest hope and most earnest effort be put forth by those who would take hope to the prisoner.