Evening Star Newspaper, September 23, 1928, Page 87

" “Qld Calamity” Is One Hope in Eternal W BY JOSEPH FU Former Federal Inspector of Prisons and Penologist. VO Trusties Killed in Attempted Escape” was a headline in a recent morning paper, ‘opping the story of a desperate conflict in the Norfolk tween guards and convi 33 And a few hours later the afternoon papers came out with “Fourteen Break Louisiana Jail; Six Killed, Ten Wounded,” followed by the story of another murderous battle in that war without truce which goes on eternally in prisons everywhere. | A handful of prison officials cannot always control the hundreds of desperate men under their supervision. Courage they must have— there is no such thing as a cowardly prison guard—but courage alone would avail little in holding in criminality, viciousness, cunning poi)ulation of a prison. There m a little more sophisticated, a sha underworld than those who have less happy hunting grounds pract; for the public. in America. First-class deputy wardens are like the plague—they only come once in ars. Deputy wardens are born They never have been and never will be made. And the good ones are not even born_wit. sufficient frequency to meet the demand. For the successful “Dep”— or “Old Calamity.” as he is known in prisons the country over—must have such a superabundance of rare and often contradictory qualities that it seems to take some upheaval of nature to produce one. Old Calamity is the heart and lungs of the prison system. Around him re- volves the entire institution. Upon him, and often upon him alone, depends the success or failure of the warden's ad- ministration. HERE‘S what the deputy warden of an_institution of, say 00 prison- ers and about 250 guards and employes, coes to keep from being bored. He must interview every new arrival. In a big prison as many convicts will arrive in a heterogeneous collection from social stratum and of every concei anti-social background. Each of them has been “mugged” and finger-printed and has given as much of his history as he’s willing to give, which is just about as much as he thinks the officials al- ready know anyhow. With these data and a dozen or so quick questions, the deputy must decide how the man i to be “celled,” who will be his cell partner and in what shop he will work. | One man asks that he be celled with prisoner Hendrickson. “Cousin o' | ours?” the deputy inquires casually. | he prisoner nods. Somehow or other, | they're always cousins. “Well, we'll see what Hendrickson has | a3 OLD CALAMITY. to say about it,” says Old Calamity, and he indicates that the new arrival is to be placed in a different cell house from Hendrickson and assigned to a different shop. A few minutes later the inquiry which the deputy has set in motion proves what he suspected all along. Hendrickson had “stooled” on the new arrival, who was itching to “get even.” The deputy’s quick and apparently casual decision had prevented a serious fight and possibly a murder. Another prisoner is a banker who speculated with the bank’s money. Noting the mental and emotional strug- gle the man is undergoing, the deputy cells him with one of his own kind, rather than with some illiterate rough- neck whose very presence would “rub in” his degradation. Another’s papers show he has broken Jail twice. He is assigned to the end cell, nearest the guard’s desk, where the guard can keep a constant eye on him. Still another receives a nod from the deputy. “Back again, Hargrave?” Har- grave nods amiably. “Yes, sir, like to get in B cell house if sir.” Old Calamity smiles grimly. use,” he replies, just as amiably, “Ost- richer's gone.” Ostricher is the guard who was caught smuggling in narcotics just after Hargrave completed his last term. IN half an hour all the prisoners are “celled.” Each must then be assigned to work. Half of them know exactly what they want to do. During the long days awaiting trial they have made careful inquiries concerning which jobs are easiest. The tailor shop has the call. So the first man promptly replies “tailor” when the deputy asks him what he did on the outside. “Ever do any busheling?” the deputy inquires casually. The prisoner looks blank. “Put him in the stone shed,” directs Old Calamity. Old Calamity must make his de- cisions with lightning-like rapidity. But he must be as careful as he is quick, as a slight mistake can very easily be followed by serious consequences. More than one prison murder has been due to a deputy’s mistake in assigning a convict to a shop where he worked with something which could be used as a weapon. Even an assignment to a clerk’s job in one of the offices may have serious result: I have known eral instances where such prisoners changed the commit- ments of their fellows and “doctored” the other records to conform, so that some of the convicts were released a year or two before their time expired. It is Old Calami business to see to it that those placed in such p tions are men who can be trusted; otherwise almost anything can hap- pen. A warden of Sing Sing a few years ago was forced to make good a loss of $8000 caused by a prisoner forging his name to a check. At an- other institution several prisoners were released, following a fake telegram taken over the telephone by one of the prisoner-clerks in the office. ‘With 30 or 40 prisoners celled and assigned to work, Old Calamity has the balance of the day to devote to making two or three rounds of the in- stitution, listening to the complaints of various prisoners who have asked for an audience, acting on their re. quests for privileges, hearing the storie: of prisoners charged with infraction: * ok % | their feet, JLLING FISHMAN. County Jail at Dedham, Mass., be- cts determined to make a getaway. check the concentrated mass of and deceit which constitutes tho | ust be a directing head who is just de better versed in the lore of the | ~made it their habitat and more or ically since birth. There is—luckily He is the deputy warden, as uble and efficient a piece | of human mechanism as can be produced by Big Business anywhere T search for a prisoner who escaped the day before, and generally being in three or four places and carrying on five or six conversations at once. During his leisure time between these and his 80. or 90 other duties, Old Calamity makes a contact with his stool pigeons (every deputy has them, no matter what he may say about it publicly) so that he can keep his finger on the pulse of the institution and thwart the dozens of plots, counterplots, | intrigues and “framings” constantly | being hatched in every penal insti- tution By the time Old Calamity has at-| | tended to these few duties, he must take charge of the mess hall for lunch, sitting at a little raised desk in the THE SUNDAY STAR. WASHINGTON, D. €., SEPTEMBER 23, 1928—PART 7. »Out Among front of the room. There are about 2,000 prisoners in the room, a large | percentage of them “spoiling” for some | kind of trouble. One prisoner curses ! a waiter who put a piece of bone on | his plate instead of meat. There is| a slight ripple, a craning of necks, a | flash of the deputy and two or three | “screws” hurrying to the scene—and | | the disturbance dies a-borning. But| not always. Sometimes the oaths are followed with a blow, and in an in- | stant a fight, the most welcome di- | | version in the monotony of prison life, {is in full swing. No two gladiators | ever received a more enthusiastic re- | ception. Two thousand men are on | screaming, cursing, looking | uncertainly about for some leader who | will show ‘them how they can use the | situation to their own advantage. To know the caliber of man it takes to be a deputy warden one must wit- ness an occurrence like this. | * K % % | ONCE saw such a scene at the Fed- eral Prison at Leavenworth. Plates were being thrown by the prisoners to show their appreciation of the fight, and the situation was beginning to look decidedly serious. And then, just as suddenly as it began, it stopped. Old Calamity was standing by the pugilists, calmly interrogating them. _“‘Come on out,” he said softly, lead- ing one of the prisoners out of the room and turning him over to a guard at the threshold. The prisonars looked at one another in bewilderment. What had promised to be a thrilling diversion had abruptly come to an end. With a sigh of disappointment they resumed their meal. It’s all done so calmly, so casually, that one would think the deputy didn’t realize his danger. But don't make that mistake. There isn’'t a day in the year when he isn't in similar danger and he knows it. But a deputy warden is as nearly fearless as it's possible for a human to be. It takes more than mere fearlessness to make a deputy warden, but no deputy warden ever re- mained one for long who didn’t possess that quality in superabundant meas- ure. At the most unexpected times, emer- gencies arise which can be met only by the most unflinching courage. Every deputy warden handles such emergen- cies as a matter of course many times during the course of a year. I remem- ber upon one occasion in the yard of the Federal Prison at Atlanta a prisoner in the lines marching into lunch sud- denly attacked the deputy, yelling at the same time. “Come on, boys; we’ll take the place!” But Old Calamity shook him off, struck him with his cane, and then, walking calmly up and down in front of the line of several hundred men, three-quarters of whom could have “licked” him in a fight, in- quired if there were any more who wished to attack him, and threatening to “spatter them against the wall.” I have known this same deputy, on several occasions, to go unarmed into the barricaded cell of a prisoner who, table leg in hand and half-crazed with rage, threatened to kill the first person who approached. Every deputy warden is occasionally called upon to do this, as it is a common practice for di gruntled prisoners to barricade them- selves in their cells and refuse to come out. AT times, in order to support his au- thority and his reputation for fear- lessness, it is even necessary for Old Calamity to grandstand a little, even * K Kk EMERGENCIES CAN Bl Deputy Warden Is Always in Front Line of Law’s Forces When Trouble Breaks Prisoners—Job Calls for Unlimited Courage, Quick Wit and Steacly Nerve. MET ONLY BY THE MOST UNFLINCHING COURAC though he is in reality the most modest of men. I was once present in an in- stitution when a deputy warden gave such a theatrical display. He told me that he had heard through his stool pigeons that one of the prisoners had boasted he intended to kill him if the warden ever laid hands on him. “Want to see something yellow?” he inquired. “Come down to the mess hall at noon and I'll show you something.” So I went down. After the men had all been seated, and before he gave the signal to begin eating, Old Calamity arose, and, amid intense silence, walked slowly down the ai He stopped about half way. “Marchant,” he said, ad- dressing a tough-looking pri understand you said you’ ner, “I ’d kill me if I! ever took hold of you. Come here!” And, his manner suddenly changing, he grabbed the prisoner by the coat collar. Stupefied and silly looking, the prisoner arose, and, in a silence which could be cut with a knife, allowed the deputy to lead him out of the room. Sometimes Old Calamity will use grandstand methods that smack strong- ly of comic opera to break the power of a leader among the prisoners, par- ticularly when that leadership has be- come a menace to the safety of the institution. One such prisoner, who had a large following among the most disorderly clement, boasted openly that some day he would kill the deputy warden. Old Calamity, learning that this man had been a barber, sent for him and .. 3 Var Menacing Prisons said: nerve you have. to kill me. Al “I'm going to see just how much You say you're going right, I'm going to give you the chance. Come over to the barber shop with me.” When they arrived Old Calamity climbed into one of the chairs and, without even look- ing around, said curtly, “Shave me.” | The prisoner hesitated, while the | deputy settled back comfortably in his | chair and the other prisoner-barbers | wet their suddenly dry lips and looked at each other in nervous alarm. But Old Calamity got his shave without mishap, while his barber, suddenly made ridiculous and craven, lost his leadership among the prisoners. For there is nothing, outside of a stool pigeon, that the average convict hates more than a “four-flusher.” After lunch comes “court call,” when the prisoners who have been “shot” (re- ported) are brought before the deputy. One willibe charged with talking while |at work, another with insolence to an officer, a third with striking a guard, another with malingering in order to avoid work, still another with willfully destroying property, four or five with | wasting food, six or eight with fighting and any number with lagging behind |in line. Every one of these prisoners is inno- cent, to hear him tell it. Each one accused of fighting was attending in- dustriously to his wcrk when, without the slightest warning, the other man suddenly attacked kim. Those accused of cursing an officer explain that it was all a mistake, that the cursing was done by a man back of them, whose name they do not know. The man who threw the trick was merely testing his strength when- the brick suddenly slipped out of his hand and nearly struck the officer. Faced with this contradictory evi- dence, Old Calamity dispenses his frontier justice. One mén gets five days in the “cooler” (the solitary cell), another has his tobacco privilege taken away, ete. l:‘( addition to meting out justice to the prisoners, on which his repu- tation as a “square shooter” largely depends, Old Calamity must give the suards the impression that he is back- ing them up, whether he is or not. For that reason he will often give a reprimand to the prisoner in_ front of | the guard, when he knows well enough that the fault lies with the guard, and not the convict. The next time he sees he prisoner while making his rounds he will stop and chat with him and, without directly saying so, give him to | understand that he knows the rebuge | he gave him wag undeserved. Any one who thinks this is unnecesarv does not know prison guards. They are as_temperamental as opera singers. Upon one occasion, while I was in- spector of prisons for the Federal Gov- ernment, I found a guard who had nov made a report against a prisoner for more than two years. When I ques- tioned him he virtuously declared that when he made his last report the deputy warden, instead of putting the man in the “cooler,” as he should have done, had let him off with a reprimand. Then and there the guard made up his mind | never to report another prisoner. He |left the institution that afternoon. With this kind of temperament to | contend with, Old Calamity’s difficulties | in assigning the guards to work-in order |to keep them all satisfied can be easily |imagined. In most institutions the guards “rotate” at regular intervals both on shifts and on jobs. To shift 200 men of all degrees of in- | dividuality and temperament and, keep | them all feeling that they are getting |a square deal, is a job which would tax the patience of a Job and the wisdom of a Solomon. But the deputy warden whp isn’t able to do_it doesn’t remain a uty very long. I have seen dozens of them come and go, watched the prison slowly become disorganized, the prisoners bitter and disgruntled, the | guards angry and discontented—every- | thing working slowly and surely toward | the inevitable “bust up” of a bloody |riot which one reads about at almost regular intervals. | Pl F by any chance Old Calamity should | run out of work durins the day he | can begin an investigation of the mat- | ters reported to him in 15 or 20 anony- ! mous notes during the week: | Depty—One of the men in C dorm- | tory has got a gun. Deputy—Watch McCreery on farm. | He is getting ready for 2 break. | Depity—They is six deks of junk mn taler shop. | Deputy—Guard Morrison is stealing | steaks and cooking them for his dinner | every night. | There are many others of similar tenor. Many come from practical jokers among the priosners who want to give the deputy “a run around the block.” | 0ld Calamity cannot afford to disregard any of them. The one about the gun in C dormitory may be a practical joke. Or it may be that one of the prisoners | there has a gun and is awaiting a favor- | able opportunity to make a break for freedom. Or it may even be that the prisoner who wrote the note has the gun and wants to frame an enemy by “planting” it in the other's mattress, the note being written merely to insure a quick “frisk” of the dormitory. AR i { | BY C. PATRICK THOMPSON. “ I OOK!" suddenly cried _the he is. That'’s Kipling.” The spare, brown, small ing meditatively along the Summer lane. Now he stopped as if the man from many ditch explorations, also stopped. They seemed frozen, less by Then the spare, brown, small man, uttering some hard words in an audible nose, turned aside and clambered a hedged fence. The terrier found a hole land, heading for the shadowy, silent downs, whence towny men in touring Kipling. The date is only a few weeks back. I was taking a favorite canter a hill. I don’t recollect having seen a car in that grassy little lane near Kip- True, he was composing his juvenilia at the age of 13 (the present price of vres of that boyish phase, would be worth knowing), at 26 he was acclaimed | and now he is 62 and has been reso- | lutely avoiding interviewers, celebrity a half. But all the same he cannot be en- fighting for possession of his early works, judging their value on the basis Still less does he like being elevated in his lifetime to the status of a sort minster Abbey or Shakespeare's birth- | place. he meetings of certain humanitarian societies. Arnold Bennett goes about as of the rules and meting out punish- ment to them, taking charge of the mess hall at meal times, directing the Bernard Shaw is one of London's fa-' of the seas. towny man in the big green touring car. “Look! There man in the very old tweed suit and di- lapidated shooting hat had been walk- in the car had hit him with something. His old, rough Scotch terrier, grubby astonishment than by an enormous indignation. voice to no one in particular, set glasses more firmly on his combative between roots and followed. And off they both went over plowed cars could not pursue. That was my last sight of Rudyard over the Sussex downs and came upon this scene by chance over the brow of ling’s Burwash house before. Poor Kip- ling! They won't leave him alone. “Job’s Wife” and “Thoughts of a Felon Awaiting Execution,” the chefs d'oeu- a genins by the public and the best stllger of them all by the publishers; | | hunters, fashionable hostesses and pub- lic occasions for the last decade and chanted to see his first editions reach} old master” prices and the collectors of their rarity and caring nothing about | their relative literary merit. of monument to himself, a national relic, something to be “done,” like West- | Galsworthy is frequently seen in the heater, at literary gatherings and at much as a fashionable portrait painter. |H. G. Wells is positively gregarious Kipling Shuns is | old-fashioned place in a quiet back- miliar sights and is always ready to jump into the papers or onto the plat- form in any controversy. Even J. M. Barrie is sometimes accessible and has a London home. But though every Englishman knows Kipling's name, few can tell you where he lives, and few still have ever set eyes on him. Occasionally he comes to London from the depths of Sussex for a season func- tion—a royal garden party, the annual cricket match between Eton and Har- row, the two great public schools; & polo match at Hurlingham, a small dinner given by his cousin, Premier Baldwin. In town he shuns the fashionable hotel restaurant and stays at a small, water off Piccadilly. Occasionally one finds him in one of his two clubs, the learned Athenaeum or the Tory Carlton. Winters now (since he nearly died of pneumonia) he seeks the sun in some spot favored by the English public school educated upper-middle class, to which he belongs and which he reveres. He is, of course, a die-hard Tory, & stanch imperialist who has no patience with radicals. His pungent politics were too much for the Asquithian Lib- erals, always in office from 1904 on to the World War, and although the great singer of British imperialism was awarded the Nobel prize in 1906, an opportunity to make him poet laureate was passed over by the government of the day in favor of the entirely harm- less academic Dr. Bridges. Kipling expressed his opinion of the Liberal policies by making a new garden in his grounds and paving its paths | with stones taken from mills which had | fallen into disuse with the decay of | British agriculture. | ‘When the New World rolled smoking | from the oven of Armageddon the crit-| ics thought for a while that Rudyard | Kipling might make the crossing. But | now even those who fervently acknowl- edge the old enchantment have given up hope of finding the tough, small man, his pale blue eyes glinting behind strong glasses, ‘his thick mustache and | heavy eyebrows bristling, on the strange new shore. In 1928 he seems to belong definitely to England’s past, to that England that passed away forever in the maelstrom of the World War. Old landmarks have yanished. Great new landmarks have come. Domestic politics have changed profoundly. Rel: tions between nations have been dras- tically modified. India has a constitu- tion and is being tested for eventual dominion status. The American Navy shares with the British Navy mastery These things strike no spark from the elder Kipling. In 1900 his scale of human values was ahead of his time. He anticipated., He no longer antici- pates. Reading him, one looks back. He shows no signs of perceiving the rising of the tide of world change around the ‘castle in which his genius has entrenched itself. His tales are of an Old World still. This largelv explains why he is the most eagerly collected of all cotempor- ary authors. A pirated edition of one of his early books, published in San- tiago, did not sell, and the publisher ultimately sold the remainder at 5 cents a kilo to get rid of them. The other day a copy of that book sold at Sother- by’s in London for $900. He scribbled “A Ballad of the Ski” for a fellow guest in a Swiss Alpine hotel 18 years ago—eight lines on the title page of a Tauchnitz edition of his “Seven Seas” of 1897. It came into the auction room in 1926 and fetched a fat m. Every scrap of the Kipling writing is money today. His typewritten manu- serips with marginal corrections are highly prized by collectors. The very chits he signed for drinks on board RUDYARD KIPLING, FROM AN ETCHING BY €. MOOREPARK. Courtesy of the Schwartz Galleries. | | ship have been put on the market and sold. There is even a Kipling Society 18 months old, with a regular journal, a membership of 5,000 or so, and Stalky, otherwise Maj. Gen. L. C. Dunsterville, as its president. But when the society sent him greetings Kipling failed to an- swer them. When, prosperous and famous, he re- tired to Rottingdean, that picturesque little village at the foot of his beloved Sussex downs, he thought he was safe. The railway stopped 7 miles away. No movie theater in Rottingdean then. Few visitors at the one inn. But some fashionable folk discovered this quiet backwater. It became a fa- vorite week end jaunt for smart Bo- hemia staying at nearby Brighton, Eng- land’s Atlantic City. It got a lot of publicity. Still, protected by high, ivy- covered walls around his domain, Kip- ling stood it for some time. But then motor coaches took the roads, bringing a new class of tripper who thought nothing of stopping the monster outside Kipling’s house and leaning over the ivy-clad wall, talking loudly and eating things, and sometimes dropping paper inside. And, possibly quoting himself: “I hear the old gods say Here come Very Many People. ‘We must go away . . ."” Kipling fled to the remoter village of Burwash, where the motor coaches don't go—yet. ! But even here he has not found the utter peace he longs for. People from the cities who have fallen under the Kipling spell—not a few Americans among them—will come in by car tol jook at Kipling's retreat, and then they hang about the lanes for a sight of him and buy drinks in the local inn and ask questions about the poet. ‘The unfortunate author even discov- ered not long ago that his tradesmen thought his small checks in discharge of his account were worth more framed and traded to autograph hunters than put through the bank. He pays in cash now. Kipling never was celebrated for a mild and amiable temperament. He never suffered fools gladly, and now he takes them hard. An American lady is d once to have looked long at him, “a small man dressed to match his pipe,” and then said disappointedly: “You know, Mr. Kipling, I thought you would be dif- ferent. “Oh, T am,” replied Kipling, “but this | is my day off.” He inherited his hatred for the froth and folly of much of post-war life and the cheapness and sensationalism and ostentation he sees all about him. Both his grandfathers were Methodist preachers. The cult of endeavor, cour- age, sound work and bit-on-it grit, plus a tough and tenacious character, were in the very marrow and fiber of the tiny white-faced English boy who passed his early years in crowded, chattering La- hore, a great British military and ad- ministrative center, capital of the Pun- jab, a focus point for the infinitely varied life of India, where his father, John Lockwood Kipling, was art director and curator of the museum. On the way home to put young Rud- yard to school in England, the elder Kipling succumbed to the weather and went below. There he was disturbed by an alarmed ship's officer, who banged on his door and shouted: “Mr. Kipling, your boy has climbed out on the yard arm. If he lets go, he's done.” “Yes, but he won't let go,” sighed Kipling senior, and stayed where he was. It was at school that young Kipling learned the art of story telling. He read everything, including the head- master’s and chaplain’s libraries. In the dormitory at night he was called upon to tell yarns. When his memory— which for the written word was prodi- glous—gave out, he had to invent. He revived the school magazine and | wrote four-fifths of the contents, verse and prose. “War is no theme at all,” he declared in those days, and com- posed an essay on the abolition of war. The first of those verses and storics which were to make him rich and fa- mous were written when he was a cub reporter on the Civil and Military Ga- zette at Lahore and a sub-editor on its rival, the Pioneer, at Allahabad. He wrote so fast and so absorbedly that he used to splash himself with ink, to the anger of his editor, who liked to see his editorial staff spotless in their tropical whites. He celebrated his majority by per- suading a Bombay firm to publish his “Departmental Ditties.” They paid him 500 rupees, which he spent on a shoot- ing trip. ‘That book has since brought author and publisher around $100,000 in royalties. It still figures in the list of Kipling books which sell an aggregate of 200,000 copies year in and year out. After his “Plain Tales from the Hills" and “Soldiers Three” he came on a world tour. His short stories presently won_ him as much fame in America as in England. He married an American girl, Miss Balestier, and one of the most bewitching of all his tales is of an American couple who came to live in an English countryside which still re. tained the flavor of its feudal past. ‘He went out to the South African war 9 Acclaim, Ignores Changes in World | after his return from the States, gath- ered much material for tales and arti- cles, traveled down to Cape Town on a hospital train and in three days wrote 600 letters home for the wounded Tom- mies. . It was a period of intensive produc- tion. His bocks came out at the rate of one and two a year. Each was a liter- ary event and sold enormously. A pre- war world, hungry for the Kipling glamour and color and magic, could nct get enough of those books. The machine was slowing down by 1910. Now the output is small. Also, we have the measure of the Kipling genius. His sense of character, his feeling for atmosphere, his appreciation of the per- manent values of life—all remain un- vitiated. But the old breathlessness and the old surprise have gone. The poet’s mental curiosity about the world seems to be satisfied. He will not again dazzle us with novelties of technique, give us glimpses of new and marvelous worlds, | set the English world singing with his jingle of songs. He is still, however, the consummate craftsman, with no use for theory and contemptuous of “art.” There are, he | says, fifty ultimate comedies and trage- dies to which the gods mercifully limit human action and suffering. “Fiction began when some man want- ed a story about another man. It de- veloped when another man told stories about a woman.” The conservatism of this unchanging Englishman, who is still inclined to look upon America as old England's cousin and to be resentful of her new power and her resolute independence, is worth noting by Americans who have tasted the Kipling magic and yet have been puzzied by a new note of irrita- | bility in a great writer who, in former | works, showed much understanding of and appreciation for the American character—who wrote in frank admira- tion of the young American pioneers and the bigness of their challenge and their achievement. If they understand the limitations of the elder Kipling, essentially a nation=| alist, they may understand what is moving in him whey they read a poem like “The Vineyard,” which appeared in 1926 in the stories and verse collected under the title of “Land and Sea Tales™: “At the eleventh hour he came, But.his wages were the same As ours, who all day long had trod The winepress of the wrath of God.” ‘There are even Englishmen wno rec- | ognize that with Britain smashing the IOerman Navy, sharing in reparations and seizing large and rich German colonies, and with England menaced . . | | Similar reasons may exist for all the others. Each is thoroughly investigated and ehough of them prove true to make Old Calamity exceedingly grateful to his invisible friends who take this means of showing their appreciation of his squarce treatment. This atmosphere of anything being likely to happen at any moment which surrounds Old Calamity day and night year in and year out, would make a nervous wreck out of almost any one except a born deputy warden. Add to it the innumerable things which do hap- pen and you get some slight idea of ti kind of stamina it takes to hold a po- sition of this kind. During the yea: there may be two or three fires in t various shops, almost invariably startec by prisoners. ‘There wiil be several occasions wh the lights will be suddenly short cir- cuited by some prisoner sticking a pic of metal in a socket. These are us ally designed to cover an attempted cape. No one knows where the biow going to strike, and there are a fe moments of feverish activity until the “break downh"” electric service gets to work and the officers can check up to see if any one is missing. There will be a dozen or more sudden knife fight between prisoners, and there will be th anxious times, possibly a half dozen during the course of a year, when th “count” is short. * ok k% NE must see Old Calamity at such a time to get a lesson in what smooth, noiseless efficiency really is. Let's assume that the evening count shows three prisoners missing. Three things may have happened. There may have been a mistake in “taking the count,” the count may be correct and the three prisoners “hiding out” in some part of the institution awaiting an opportunity to escape or they may actually have escaped already. Old Calamity takes no chances. Im- mediately the report reaches him he telephones the boiler room. In a few seconds the escape siren is being sound- ed, warning the country folk for four or five miles around and causing many a farmer to take his old rifle from the wall and go out for the reward. A few moments later the prison printing shop is running off thousands of wanted cir- culars, giving the names of the prison- ers, their aliases, descriptions, peculiar markings and fingerprint classifica- tions. As fast as they come off the press they are sent to chiefs of police over the country. ‘While this is being done Old Calamity has sent for the correspondenc- record of the three yvisoners giving the names of the peoply with whom they have ex- changed letters. Wires and long-dis- tance calls notify the police in the towns where these correspondents live to watch their homes to see if the es- caped men come there for shelter or MARCHANT. hiding. While these wires and calls are being put through, Old Calamity is in- terviewing the cellmates of the missing prisoners, interrupting himself every few moments to listen to reports from the various squads of guards sent out in automobiles after the getaways and to_tell them where, to go next. Not a half hour has elapsed. Old Calamity has not left his desk nor raised his voice nor betrayed the slight- est sign that he was in the least bit worried or rattled. It is simply a part of his day's work. The chances are that in an hour or two a guard will come in with three sheepish-looking prisoners and inform the deput; that he found them “hiding out” in the car- penter shop. Old Calamity takes all their time away, locks them up in the “cooler” and then, the incident for- gotten, again turns to his thousand or so other duties. Not one prison guard in 500 is capable of being-a deputy warden, and not 1 deputy warden out of 100, no matter how capable he is, ever becomes arden. He's usually lacking in edu- mmmt nm{’ fifluence, All he has is an extraor ry ability in guiding, b the sheer force of his own g:rsonglxty}t the lives of 3,000 men of every degree of criminality and viciousness and of every shade of abnormality and sub- normality so that they can dwell to- gether under the most unnatural con- ditions with an absolute minimum of friction and chafing. For this, if he's an exceptionally good deputy warden, he may receive as much as $3,000 a year. originally to a far greater extent than was America, that verse betrays a dis- tinctly unjudicial prejudice. But these things, these bad-tempered gusts at the breakfast table of the world’s life, really do not matter. The surging onward current of the y sweeps them away. They pass and arc forgotten as if they had never been ‘The real things remain—the imperish- able magic of “The Brushwood Boy. the “Puck of Pook’s Hill” tales ca i dreams over the sun-soaked, windy downs, the creed of “If.” the so! 5 sweep of the “Recessional,” the charn and wonder of those “Jungle Books that Kipling wrote for his son John. John Kipling is dead. On the village green of Burwash a monument com- memorates him along with the other men of the old hamlet who went out to the war and never came back. Kip- ling's son was 18 when the war blas: caught him and obliterated him. He had been on'y a year a subaltern in th- Irish Guarcs, whose history Kipling subsequently wrote. That was the final drop in Kipling = cup of sorrow. His little daughter died while he was on his American tour. H> himself lay ill in the next room at th: time. He hus been three times so close to the next world that he might have heard the murmur of Death’s wings. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why, his tide of productivity at low ebb, he retains unimpaired the second sight of the poet and sees further into things than most men. And now he thinks less of new works than of the fate of the tales he has hammered in bronze on the literary history of the English race. Aware that “quite a dozen writers” have achieved immortality in the last 2,500 years, he wonders dryly it he will make a thirteenth. It seems worth while to him, andr he said as much 0 the Royal Society of Literature at its centenary banquet on a hot Summer's night two years back. He had written his speech. phrases slipped out in n 1