My Fire Opal, and Other Tales

An Englishman, born in a London slum, and growing up, as any ill weed must, at haphazard, he had, even in his first trousers, gravitated naturally to crime. A childhood of vagrancy and petty thieving ill-passed, in his early manhood he became a professional house-breaker. He had been made acquainted with many of the prisons of his native country, and had twice made his escape from "durance vile," when he was transported to Botany Bay, from whence he also escaped, along with another notorious burglar and robber, who had been his partner in the crime, for which they had both been expatriated.

On regaining their liberty, the pair had come to this country, and, in Boston, had together undertaken the robbery of a bank. For this crime, they were duly convicted, and sentenced to seven years in the State Prison. Before the removal from jail to prison, one of them managed to escape. The other, Neilson, had divided his booty with his accomplice. Neilson was the soul of honour, that very questionable honour, which, according to the adage, may exist among thieves, and, though he obligingly informed the officers of the "bank," where his share of the plunder was buried (which they recovered), and, in a subsequent interview with them in prison, slipped off his shoe, and took from his stocking, and further restored to them, a sum of about seven hundred dollars, which he had retained as pocket-money, and thus ingeniously smuggled into prison, neither entreaty nor bribe could induce him to reveal anything in regard to the plunder of his accomplice.

It was affirmed of Neilson that, in the bad days above referred to, he never countenanced violence, but carried on his profession, for the most part, without personal injury to his victims, accomplishing his ends rather by strategy, than by brutality. And yet, strange as it was, this very man, on one fatal morning, – and, oddly enough, it was that of the very day when his sentence for the bank robbery had expired, and within a few hours he would have been discharged from the prison, – as the convicts were marching in file from the prison to the workshop, made a brutal and fatal attack upon an unoffending fellow convict. Reaching over the shoulder of the man next him in the ranks, he stabbed the unfortunate prisoner in the neck, with a shoe-knife, severing the jugular vein, and causing immediate death. There was no quarrel between the two, and no cause could be assigned for the murder, for which Neilson was, in due time, tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged.

All the arrangements for carrying out the sentence had been made, the gallows erected, the rope in its place, and the chaplain rendering the last service of his office, when a reprieve for thirty days was received from the governor.

On consideration, it was believed that Neilson must have been labouring under temporary insanity, and, as he was known to be a man of pacific character, and could assign no cause for the attack, though he had never shown other symptoms of mental disturbance, he was given the benefit of a doubt, and his sentence commuted to solitary imprisonment for life. Thus he escaped the grave, only to be consigned to a living tomb. At the time of our first acquaintance, Neilson, all told, had been about twenty years in the – State Prison. For the first years of his sentence, he was not once permitted to leave his cell, and but for the praiseworthy humanity of the new warden, he would never again have seen the sun.

The cells of the "Upper Arch" are not, like those in general use, on exhibition; but, one day, in consideration of my having never abused the privileges granted me by the authorities of the – State Prison, I was kindly permitted to visit Neilson in his own apartment.

Following my guide, I passed through a damp, narrow corridor, gloomy to oppressiveness, and lined with grim iron doors, each stoutly secured with bar and padlock. Many of these cells are temporarily inhabited by refractory prisoners, and, as I went, a discordant chorus of groans, yells, and oaths, mingled with the dissonance of maniacal mirth from some ill-balanced wretch, gone mad in this horrible solitude, saluted my unwilling ear. On the extreme end of the doleful corridor, a narrow, cobwebbed window shed its feeble light. Pausing at the left-hand corner cell, my conductor fitted his key to the padlock, turned it, removed the heavy bar, and, throwing back the door, ushered me into Neilson's presence.

I found the cell somewhat larger than the ordinary private compartment of the prison, but indescribably damp, fetid, and dismal. A narrow loophole, glazed, grated and "hermetically sealed," admitted a dim glimmer of day. A small aperture, or wicket, near the bottom of its door, and evidently made for the double purpose of admitting air and food, was now tightly closed.

For furniture, the place contained a rude bed, with mattress of straw, grimy sheets, and a meagre allowance of coarse gray blankets, with a pillow of husks, or straw, a rough table of pine, a shelf for books, and a stool. On the table stood a rusty tin cup, a bottle of vinegar, a pepper-box, and a cup of dingy salt. It also held two iron spoons, a horn-handled knife and fork, and a Bible. The shelf was well filled with books, and among them stood a glass pickle jar, now sacred to Neilson's bouquets, and still holding a few withered flowers.

Neilson, himself, was half reclined upon his bed, and intent upon a book. As I entered, he arose in some confusion. A call, with Neilson, was scarce a possible occurrence. His composure, however, was soon regained, and, bowing ceremoniously, he bade me good-day, and, with cordial dignity, did the honours of his cell.

He exhibited, with pride, his small library, and called my especial attention to the excellence of the shelf, which he had made for his precious volumes, about fifteen or twenty in number. I had brought Neilson a modicum of that June, whose sunshine comes alike for God's good and evil children, in the shape of a great bunch of damask roses. Filling his jar from the rusty tin cup, he arranged them with tender care, and their grateful odour soon pervaded this dreary place. A box of ripe, red strawberries June had also, on this occasion, donated to her indifferent pensioner; and now, glad to leave behind me even this poor bit of summer, I took a last sad survey of the sorry place, and bade Neilson adieu. As I went gratefully back to God's daylight, musing upon the man and his dismal, lifelong abode, it seemed no wonder that, moping for fifteen years in this cheerless cell, his brain should, at times, have succumbed to the horrors of the situation, for the warden had told me that sometimes Neilson "went out of his head." It was then that, pursued by the avenging shade of "Morris," the man whom he had murdered, his shrieks aroused the night patrol, who must call the warden from his bed, to lay the poor phantom, as Neilson fancied that the warden – and only he– could.

For six kindly years, it was permitted me to make life a little less dreary for Neilson, and to exhort him to bear with becoming fortitude the long penance justly accorded him, and, in my blundering, imperfect way, to suggest to him divine compassion by my own.

Though undoubtedly of plebeian parentage, some tiny runlet of gentle blood must have found its indirect way to Neilson's cockney veins. Never once, in all our intercourse, did he shock me by a coarse expression, or an ill-bred action. In his choice of words he was even finical, and his taste in the arrangement of flowers could scarcely have been impeached by the most fastidious person. He had, invariably, the bearing and instincts of a gentleman. His dietetic predilections, I grieve to record, were sometimes inelegant. Though eminently reticent in regard to his wants, he had made bold to solicit a bit of cheese as an accompaniment to the mince pie which on each State holiday (the legal pie-time in the prison) I gladly provided for him, and I was instructed that the stronger the cheese was, the better. He also preferred raw onions to Bartlett pears, and many a little basket of that pungent vegetable have I conveyed to him, to the sore disquiet of my own vexed olfactories. Pepper-grass, artichokes, and raw turnips, he held in high esteem.

Ordinarily peaceful and placid, Neilson could, at times, be aroused to extreme anger; and I well remember his furious protest against the prison chaplain, when that worthy had confiscated a work of James Freeman Clarke's, which he found in the possession of a theologically-minded convict, on the ground that it was "an infidel book," and improper reading for the prison.

As the slow years went on with Neilson, he became, gradually, a broken-down man. The "Arch" had well done its destructive work, and, about five years after I made his acquaintance, he was forever removed from its deleterious atmosphere, and permanently quartered in the prison hospital, where, in common with his fellow patients, he enjoyed all the legal immunities accorded to the invalid prisoner.

He could now get space for his cramped limbs, had some fellowship, sub rosa, with his kind, and leave to sun himself in the yard ad libitum. Poor Neilson! this comparative freedom had come too late. He was now far gone in consumption, had Bright's disease, and the doctor had also discovered some serious disturbance with his heart. His brain, too, shared in this breaking up, and he had now abandoned reading, and employed his leisure, when free from pain, in dainty wood-carving or inlaying. His work, often fantastic in design, was always exquisite in finish, and sometimes absurdly elaborate where elaboration was quite unnecessary (for with Neilson, "the gods saw everywhere"). Hours of patient labour were devoted to the finish of the "unseen."

The unanimous good-will of instructors in the prison shops made the daintiest materials easily attainable to the poor fellow, and his ivory charms, his mother-of-pearl crosses, and inlaid satin-wood boxes, found, outside the prison, a ready market, and a price which enabled him, probably for the first time in his whole life, to become the possessor of money honestly earned. In the hospital it was that Neilson evolved, with fanciful ingenuity, for my poor self, the most remarkable of inkstands. The design embraced a camel standing on a platform wreathed with carven forget-me-nots, and inscribed with a Latin motto, having some enigmatical reference to the foresighted habit of the creature. Unfortunately, the platform, the camel, with his two humps, the motto, and the forget-me-nots, made so large a figure in Neilson's design, that its main feature, the inkstand, had, virtually, to be omitted; and could only be hinted at by a shallow vessel, holding about one good thimbleful, and perched perilously upon the camel's irregular back. From time to time I was permitted to watch the progress of this remarkable creation, and was called upon for a pictured camel and some real forget-me-nots, as models.

The somewhat crotchety custodian of the hospital, from day to day, contemptuously taking note of the advancement of my inkstand, on its final completion grimly assured me that, "If Neilson had been paid by the day for his labour on that thing, it would have cost about two hundred dollars!" Poor, patient fellow, it was almost his last work! He had now become too weak to crawl down the hospital stairs for his daily sun-bath. And by and by his seat in the saloon, where the men, who were able to be about, gathered on Mondays to listen to my reading, was empty. He lay now on his cot informally clad in a faded print shirt and patched trousers, both of which he wore with a dignity peculiarly his own. His head was adorned with a towering cotton nightcap. Whatever else he might lack, Neilson always stood out firmly for a nightcap. It was to him a sort of insignia of respectability. To his last hour he never for a moment lost that superiority of mien which distinguished him even amid the coarse and degrading surroundings of a prison. At the last he suffered great pain, but, as the end approached, his mind became wonderfully clear, and he listened intelligently to reading, and enjoyed conversation.

He gave little trouble to his attendants, detailed from among his fellow convicts to nurse him by day, or to watch with him at night, and, to the hour of his death, he was stoically patient.

It was to be feared that, in the bewilderment of his final moments, the shade of the murdered "Morris" might again torture him. On the day preceding his death, after reading from his prayer-book the services for the sick and dying, I sat painfully watching his laborious breathing, as he lay propped high with pillows, and with an expression of solemn expectancy on his awed face. From time to time a spasm of pain contracted his brow, already damp with the dew of death. I wiped tenderly his moist forehead, put a spoonful of water between his poor lips, and, still mindful of the avenger, "Morris," stooped to his ear, and whispered reassuringly, "You're not at all afraid, are you, Neilson." He opened wide his eyes, and, with a half-reproachful glance, replied, distinctly, "Afraid! afraid of God! Ah, madam, I wish I were with Him now!" That night Neilson's prayer was answered. With mighty throes (for he was originally a man of iron constitution, all his forebears, as he told me, having outlived their ninetieth year) his spirit was loosed from the body of its sin and suffering, to return to God who gave it.

Neilson's obsequies were attended with a ceremony unusual in the prison, where burials are, for the most part, but slight occasions, and, in certain exigencies, have taken place without even the grace of a prayer from the chaplain.

This funeral was honoured by the attendance of both warden and chaplain. Some thirty men from the shops had obtained permission to be present. One or two instructors and officers of "low degree" were also there, and I, too, had been invited. The chaplain gave a slight sketch of Neilson's prison life, winding up with some words of exhortation for the benefit of the convicts. The warden made a simple and kindly address. A prayer was offered, after which the men, with uncovered heads, filed reverently to the coffin's side for a last look at the tranquil white face of their comrade, and then, with sobered mien, and attended by their officers, left the hospital. While the warden and chaplain made some final arrangement with the hospital officer, I lingered by the coffin to place a bunch of fresh violets in Neilson's listless hand; then, bidding him a mute farewell, followed, with a slow step and a saddened heart, the warden and chaplain; and we passed together into the great guard-room.

As I stood, with tearful eyes, waiting for the turnkey to let me out of the prison, the warden came to my side. "Well, Neilson is gone," he said, gravely. "He was an old resident, and will be missed in the prison; and, by the by, let me tell you that you are an heiress! Neilson made his will, and committed it to my care. All his little savings, thirty dollars, he has bequeathed to you. Poor fellow," he continued, "no doubt in his day he's done his share of harm, but, whatever he was, Neilson knew his friends."

One's first legacy, be it ever so small, is an event and often a surprise. Never before had my humble name been recorded in a will. I was not long, however, in determining the disposal of Neilson's pathetic request. It should be devoted to the erection of a simple stone to mark his last resting-place.

In common with all the unclaimed dead of the prison, he was carried to Tewksbury for interment in the pauper burying-ground.

At my request, the warden kindly wrote to the authorities there, asking them to designate the burial spot of Neilson, that I might be enabled to carry out my resolution. No reply having been vouchsafed, in my discouragement, I betook myself to the "Board of State Charities" for information in regard to Neilson's missing remains. Some inquiries into the matter were, I believe, made by that institution, but so indifferently were they pursued that nothing came of it, and I was finally compelled to the sad supposition that Neilson had been denied that last cheap boon which even the poorest may claim of earth – a grave; and his legacy was, accordingly, consecrated to the procurement of fruit for the convict patients in hospital; and, perhaps, this disposition of his little savings would not have seemed unfitting to the poor fellow himself, had it been possible to consult him on this occasion.

All this happened twenty years ago; and no light having yet been thrown on the mysterious disappearance of Neilson's mortal part, it is reasonable to infer that it was long since dismembered in the interest of science; or, that, still partially intact, it now hangs fleshless and dishonored in some doctor's "skeleton closet."

From these gruesome conclusions one gladly takes refuge in the inspiriting hope that Neilson himself still lives; and that, in some phase of existence beyond the ken of our meagre psychology, his moral evolution now goes uninterruptedly on.

"For yet we trust that somehow goodWill be the final goal of ill,To pangs of nature, sins of will,Defects of doubt, and taints of blood."

A DISASTROUS SLEIGH-RIDE

IT is nightfall in the prison. In these sombre precincts where day is never fairly admitted, night falls grimly, as if the entire procedure were, at best, but a poor bit of irony. The convicts are safe in their unsavoury lodging-rooms. In the chilly corridors, light feebly struggles with the surrounding gloom; and the cells are half in shadow; yet, here and there, an unquiet figure may be discerned, pacing its irksome bounds with short, sharp turns, or standing moodily at its grated door; an unknown outcast; a unit in an aggregate of sin-wrecked humanity; yet (as God knows) endowed with a heart akin to our own, – a heart that can ache, repent, endure, and break!

In the deserted guard-room silence reigns. The night turnkey is seated in his place. His bowed head gradually inclines toward his ample chest, and presently, losing its poise, is righted with an abrupt jerk. Rubbing his eyes, he makes a drowsy attempt at official scrutiny, and sinks supinely into untroubled slumber. Meantime, yonder, in the "North Wing," a sly whispering goes undisturbedly on.

Pat Doniver, the prison runner, whose hour of dismissal has not yet come, is, informally, interviewing his fellow-convicts. To all intents and purposes Pat is innocently resting upon a pine stool, subject to official order, and upon the very brink of falling asleep. Truth, however, compels the severe statement that, between Mr. Doniver's doing and his seeming, there is often a lamentable discrepancy; but, to get at the "true inwardness" of Pat, one must hear the story of that magnificent sleigh-ride, which, quite contrary to his intention, ultimately landed him in the State Prison.

Pat Doniver is an Irishman, although – as he will tell you – "not born in his own native counthry; but narrowly escapin' that same," having been prematurely hustled upon the stage of life in the crowded steerage of an Atlantic steamer bound for Boston, and not yet fairly out of sight of Albion's chalky cliffs.

In form, Pat is lithe and trim; in face, a very Hibernian Apollo – if one may conceive an Apollo with a nose decidedly tip-tilted. All the same, Pat's facial development is good. His mouth is finely cut, with odd little smiles forever dimpling its handsome corners. His eyes are coal black, his hair ditto; and such curls! They are Pat's special weakness – the darlings of his heart! And it is known among the prison officers that Pat, having been bidden to submit these cherished raven wings to the initiatory prison shearing, had stoutly refused compliance to the "Powers that be;" and had actually endured the horrors of a three days' "Solitary" in defence of the inalienable right of an Irish-American citizen to the peaceful possession of his own hair!

In repose, Pat's visage has that air of demure mischief which lurks in the visage of a frolicsome kitten, dozing, with one eye open, in the sunshine. This is Pat's story; and looking into prison life, you will find it no uncommon one.

City-born, his juvenile days seem to have alternated unequally between chores and school, and to have exhibited long and frequent intervals of utter vagrancy. At twelve, he lost his mother (his father is a being entirely outside his knowledge), and, scrambling up to early manhood, as best he could, he finally rose to the dignity of a hack driver. Subsequently, Pat became an expert tippler. The two pursuits (as one must often have observed) do not in the least antagonize. Thus it eventually came to pass that, with Pat, to be tipsy was the general rule; to be sober, the rare exception. It was after the great snow-fall of 18 – , that our hero resolved to "trate himself" to a sleigh-ride. Sleigh-rides, in his line, were, to be sure, every-day occurrences, but this, as he explained, in his own rich brogue, was to be "a good social time, all aloon be meself."

To this end (temporarily entrusting his hack to a friendly fellow Jehu) Mr. Doniver hired a fine horse and cutter, and, with the same, "to kape himself warrum," a big buffalo robe. Thus amply equipped, and having his pockets well lined with small coin, Pat set merrily forth. The day was bitterly cold, the drinks delightfully warm, and, somehow, he took by the way more refreshment than he had, at the outset, counted on. Indeed, if truth must be told, at an early period in this jolly excursion Pat had reached that complex mental condition in which to count at all is a most difficult matter, and, as the day wore on, – save a confused consciousness of more drinks in sundry bars than cash in a certain pocket, – Pat altogether lost his reckoning. In this awkward dilemma, it naturally occurred to our thirsty excursionist to dispose of certain marketable personal effects immediately at hand. Having at various halting-places drunk out his big silver watch, a huge pencil of the same salable metal, his new red silk bandanna, his pocketbook and pocket-comb, a smart new necktie, bought expressly for this superb occasion, and, last of all, his drab, many-caped overcoat, it now became obvious to his mind that, in the increasing warmth of temperature, – consequent upon infinite potations, – a buffalo robe was but the merest of superfluities. Having arrived at this stoical conclusion, Pat, thereafter, retains but a confused recollection of this disastrous excursion. "An obleegin' gintlemun," as he remembers, had the goodness to exchange whiskey for wild buffaloes, which he, Pat, proposed to hunt and drive hither in countless herds. Pat awoke the next morning, to find himself in the lock-up, charged with drunkenness and the theft of a buffalo robe.

The smart cutter, with its unconscious occupant, had been obligingly delivered by the fagged but sagacious steed to its proprietor, who, minus his buffalo robe, had, in turn, delivered Pat to the police.

On this count, deposited in jail, Patrick passed the sorry interval between commitment and trial in fighting the blue devils, whose onsets, at this advanced stage of alcoholic excess, were not, as one may imagine, few or far between.

Pat had, however, a genuine Irish constitution, and no lack of Irish combativeness. And, unaided and alone, he grappled vigourously with the fierce devils of delirium tremens, and, had he not worsted them, unaided and alone, he would probably have perished. Destiny, however, having better (and also worse) things in store for Mr. Doniver, he did, at last, worst them, and, when the day for his trial came, he was – for once in his adult existence – austerely sober.

And now it would not have gone hard with the fellow, since this petty larceny might have been expiated by a short term in the House of Correction, had not one of those mischievous birds who carry tales whispered in court that Pat Doniver was a notorious drunkard.

"Inebriation," severely remarked the judge to the counsel on his left, whose breath exhaled an unmistakable odour of brandy, "inebriation, sir, is becoming rampant in our community, and I shall find it my duty to make of the case before me an impressive example;" and thereupon, the jury having already returned a verdict of guilty, the judge, fidgeting in his seat (his dinner hour being long since passed, and his temper somewhat choleric), looked straight at Pat, thought of the alarming increase of drunkenness in our midst, and gave him five years in the State Prison.