The Man Behind the Bars. Winifred Louise Taylor
upon the loneliness and desolation of his life I offered to send him magazines and to answer any letters he might write me. Doubtless he suspected some ulterior motive on my part, for in the few letters that we exchanged I made little headway in acquaintance nor was a second interview more satisfactory. Bryan was courteous—my prisoners were always courteous to me—but it was evident that I stood for nothing in his world. One day he wrote me that he did not care to continue our correspondence, and did not desire another interview. Regretting only that I had failed to touch a responsive chord in his nature I did not pursue the acquaintance further.
Some time afterward, when in the prison hospital, I noticed the name "John Bryan" over the door of one of the cells. Before I had time to think John Bryan stood in the door with outstretched hand and a smile of warmest welcome, saying:
"I am so glad to see you. Do come in and have a visit with me."
"But I thought you wanted never to see me again," I answered.
"It wasn't you I wanted to shut out. It was the thought of the whole dreadful outside world that lets us suffer so in here, and you were a part of that world."
In a flash I understood the world of meaning in his words and during the next hour, in this our last meeting, the seed of our friendship grew and blossomed like the plants of the Orient under the hand of the magician. It evidently had not dawned on him before that I, too, knew his world, that I could understand his feeling about it.
For two years he had been an invalid and his world had now narrowed to the "idle room," the hospital yard, and the hospital; his associates incapacitated, sick or dying convicts; his only occupation waiting for death. But he was given ample opportunity to study the character and the fate of these sick and dying comrades. He made no allusion to his own fate but told me how day after day his heart had been wrung with pity, with "the agony of compassion" for these others.
He knew of instances where innocent men were imprisoned on outrageously severe and unjust sentences, of men whose health was ruined and whose lives were blighted at the hands of the State for some trifling violation of the law; of cases where the sin of the culprit was white in comparison with the sin of the State in evils inflicted in the name of justice. He counted it a lighter sin to rob a man of a watch than to rob a man of his manhood or his health. It was, indeed, in bitterness of spirit that he regarded the courts and the churches which stood for justice and religion, yet allowed these wrongs to multiply. His point of View of the prison problem was quite the opposite of theirs.
Now, as I could have matched his score with cases of injustice, as my heart, too, had been wrung with pity, when he realized that I believed him and felt with him the last barrier between us was melted.
There were at that time few persons in my world who felt as I did on the prison question, but in this heart suddenly opened to me I found many of my own thoughts and feelings reflected, and we stood as friends on the common ground of sympathy for suffering humanity.
Another surprise was awaiting me when I changed the subject by asking Bryan what he was reading. It seemed that his starving heart had been seeking sympathy and companionship in books. He had turned first to the Greek philosophers, and in their philosophy and stoicism he seemed to have found some strength for endurance; but it was in the great religious teachers, those lovers of the poor, those pitiers of the oppressed, Jesus Christ and Buddha, that he had found what he was really seeking. He had been reading Renan's "Jesus," also Farrar's "Life of Christ," as well as the New Testament.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.