The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, April 24, 1898, Page 22

THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, APRIL 24, 1898. 21 from the Ingleside car in the dust of a genuine country road, . our way slowly| throug turnstiles and along | footpaths to a broad and shaded ave- | nue, which would be beautiful were it not at « it is glacial | preci o 1shed wall—a bar- | rier t by society | tween adjudged | offenders against its laws and those who have been fortunate enough not| to offend or to have escaped convic- tion | To meet us c« loping a tall young fellow, re of an athlete, and a fr tured face. out hes us ing Mr. Tubbs s hands and aching arms of their load. And then, as he s on before us, I notice, with a queer little shock at my heart, that one f his dusty overalls is bright blue and other a yellow brown. I came out here to City Prison No. 2 for th s purpose of seeing a por s \cisco’s prisoners, and I know, that his garb, that fran seem st live 2 hon ach the office the ou ie wc it wear these and dicularly, t a universal charact rs against society of abnormally long and a ge 1y, give impr tic of the is the pc d sl al Brownie-like how unhan minutes, that the me lower my ne in the hc )] erably with a lar > final syllable, ar lected from the better class of offenders and have rar anything worse | than get est with alcoholic quors, in whic e badly riped fts in through i r doesn't get ver real we pri: on portion fter w and barber ime” is nearly at —is placed on the. impromptu | which is tenderly supported at | by a trusty’s hand, and a| brief service begins Opposite and are rows of lat- of t n ing figu king out at us t, some 1 quiet scorn younger ones who assume the attitud of cynics and scoffers, and it is also | Preacdent Pation of Princeton Discusses the Present Gra .« Jts JSe 29 RINCETON, April 22, the beginning of tion, I quoted to Dr. Franci Patton, L. d recently—that he re- gretted w dead languag 1 perfecti s when he himself in German that he could appre that the s not alone study valu tin w knowledg is not alone " he said. ning of a complicated his highest intellectual powers. When- | s ver he racks his brain to find the nt for a Greek word ke re- and freshens his English vocab- J believe that Latin and Gresk are not always taught in the most at- trac e way. I am not surprised that 4 boy who studies Greek or Latin with ATy, a dictionary in his hands finds it dry | and uninteresting. If he were per- mitted to go ahead and read the classic wi which he is studying his knowl- edg grammar would be acquired gradualiy. “It can be said in favor of the study of Greek, too, that if one is seeking a knowledge of grammar the Greek for you, battered hat and instantly reliev- I have noticed e of them, but t eyes in such a I discover ing bees diversi- matter the up- they noticeable that at the sound of the missionary’s deep bass voice singing “Leving Kindn a respectful silence settles down upon all within hearing and continues, with few and quickly frowned {interruptions, until the in- formal *“talk,” which constitutes the rest of the service, and contains much friendly advice and warning, and is on the whole helpful and hopeful, is over. Then comes the distribution of the papers, and I learn as we make the rounds of the cells what, in the esti- mation of the inmates of City Prison No. 2, are, outside of mental pabulum, the two greatest needs of imprisoned humanity. They are stamped envel- opes and spectacles. From nearly every cell comes a plea for the first, and dozens of men beg for those aids to vision with which, in a cheap but apparently highly tisfacto: form, I find that the experienced missionary's pockets fairly bristle. “I want to write to my mother’—| gallows, ma’an choly fact that they are our spiritual poor relations and thus have a genuine claim ujpon our good offices. Someway 1 rink from that line of waving, claw-like digits, and retreating proceed, after the manner of my kind, t questions of a deferential trusty concerning matters which are really none of my affairs. He tells me briefly —perhaps truly—of himself, then biazes into a sudden and fierce indignation when I well-meaningly suggest that he be circumspect in future and after the that he behave so uprightly as never | again to tenant a prison cell. | the effort to impress on us the melan- | holes” through which the guards, un- seen themselves, can at any time com- mand a full view of the interior of each cell, and I am told that this despicable arrangement is necessary to good pris- | Perhaps it is, T am only | on discipline. an outsider and cannot be expected to understand such matters, therefore I do not argue the question; but I know | in my heart that it would not make me | better either in act or disposition to look at or be looked at by my fellow creatures in this way. Later I see the prisoners form in line | law’s present grasp on him is released | and march down in Indian file to their dinners and the sight reminds me of the dreadful procession of Lourdes, only “What chance has a man got?” he | these are all men or youths and their demands. their eyes on him and if he don’t get “He gets run in here and | then when he gets out the police have | mind and not of the body. Each car- | ries a tin cup and spoon, and finds work right away he gets run in again | deformities and diseases are of the awaliting him on the desk-like tables as a ‘vag,’ or else gets something worse | which make the long dining hall look blamed on to him. The police drive us to the jumping ¢ | grotesquely like a school-room an ob- ff place and that's the | long tin pan of stew, three or four potatoes as yet unjacketed and a small and insuf- | st of top | : black and , which, running | per- ve not been a guest or the place fore 1 con- out- | turb the peace in | ig clean and grated win- cast a gloom over | I don't ev are for the - festal board ideally o be- The flowers were grown th sunshine that any 1p his job because go out into the ro- of the have the temporary ugh keep out a trusties. arly res with with ag- | expressions of | and a few with | 1898.—In our conversa- president of Princeton University, what a noted French ting so much time on the might have ure of those languages. e it gave us of a but for the mental train- remember of our studies what has been of use t2 “The study of Greek and s the facuities and trains ry time a boy Erasps |, pu¢ by in my memory the lines Latin | (ot - he has Lrought into accivity | | of what it studied or a number of them—expecting us seated on three or four benches, in one of the large cell-bordered rooms, before a stand and two chairs deferentially awaiting our arrival. They are mostly middle aged and old women who have elected to praise God in our company this afternoon, at least they look so, though there be not a few who have neither gray hair nor many wrinkles. There is one small person in a red wrapper,. and a cream-complexioned little body weighted down with an ag- gressive black eye in the greenery- yallery stage, who might pass for young in other surroundings, but here they look almost as old as sin itself, poor things! Queer, isn’t it? but nearly every in- dividual one of these daughters of Eve, secluded though they are from the admiring gaze of man, are either in the bud or the full’ bloom of frizzes, and one of them has her locks twisted in that abomination of abéminations, a “tea-pot handle,” on the very top of stowal of the offering. I am as noth- ing in comparison with Brother Tubb, and not the smallest blossom falls to my share, but there is one tenderly sympathetic heart beating behind the regulation blue and white calico, and it is owned by a pleasant-faced woman whom I have observed, out of the cor- ner ¢f my eye, surreptitiously eating peppermint lozenges behind her hymn- book at intervals during the service. To me she comes as soon as she can decorously leave her seat and presses two of those aromatic confections into my grateful hand. “You are more than welcome,” she says, beamingly, as I strive to express my thanks. Soon Kate Gallagher—"Kate, the Window Smasher,” Kate, whom long- suffering policemen freely call “Kate the Cursed’’—separates herself from the eager group who are besieging their generous visitor for the much-desired gifts of paper, stamps and ‘glasses,” and adds herself to the two or three I I THE PRISONERS APPEARED AT THE WICKETS TO THE CELLS AND THE MISSIONARY BEGAN HIS SERMON TO THE STRANGE CONGREGATION. v all up and down the ‘She doesn’t know that I am in e and she’ll worry about me.” One, of mcre original turn of mind than his companions in detention, de- clares that it is his grandmother whom he desires to apprise of his whereabouts, but not a prisoner states th he hes to communicate with his father or any male relative, or a wife. I notice, however, that while printed matter is distributed with im- partial genercsity, stamps and specta- cles are bestowed with nice discrimi tion. “A stamp will buy a cigarette,” ex- plains the missionary, “‘and spectacles are sound currency also. I have to be careful.” But knowing his work and his men, I doubt if he leaves unsup- plied a single prisoner who really needs either. The “hypo ward” is nearly full and | the row of wretched, tremulous, chalk- It is noticeable that it is mainly the | faced cr stretch out eager, in- sistent hands to us as we pass, and ad- | dress us as “brother” and * he will ind. As to the man who said that he has found his Latin and Greek of le: value that the modern lan- guages, I am sure {f he were seeking the Romance languages— French, Spanish and Italian—he would find his Latin of great bene- fit, because these languages are de- rived from the Latin directly. But any of the modern 1 up in a compa with the expenditurs he chose. “The question of substituting the the modern for the dead lan- till in controversy, but I be- lieve that the movement is losing in- stead of gaining strength Speaking of the amount of matter studied which the mind stored up, Dr. Patton said that man’s mind was like- ly to retain what was interesting to it ead. “In reading Tennyson,” nguages he could pick 7 short time, and of little effort, if he said, *T that I think are worth remembering. The others I am willing to forget as n as I have read them.” “Speaking of Tennyson,” I sald, “is it not remarkable that this generation has not oné great poet?” “It is a fact,” said Dr. Patton. “We are left to choose between William Watson, who poetizes on poetry, and Rudyard Kipling. Not that T would be- little Mr. Kipling, for I think that if he ever becomes serious, he may still do something worthy. In fact, he has done something recently which seems to bear the mark of inspiration. - His recessional was the literary feature of the Queen's Jubilee. Thousands were striving for something worthy of the occasion, and Mr. Kipling seemed to do without effort what all the others had failed to accomplish. I am glad that Brother Tubb beckons | loaf of bread. me to rejoin him at this moment. Some | way, in the subdued light that filters | in through the barred windows the | man’s face looked to me like that of a | hunted, wounded, helples rocious animal, and such an animal, however much one may pity it, neither pleasing nor desirable company. I trot along obediently after my clergy man thenceforth—I must needs trot in order to make even a pretense of keep- ing up with his energetic footsteps— and 1 see many thing I am shown the regulation of interest” exhibited to all v suppose, but nothing of it all has in it anything of brightness or beauty or up- liftingnes I see unbidden—the sturdy friendliness of the man who comes each week to cheer a these grateful “points of the law and the deed are received. I traverse the dark central corridors sister” in | and behold on either hand the “peep- FHREXEEIF XL F A AR AR XL XXX XXX XA XD R AR XXX R X R AXE R XA X R XX XX XXX RFFFFXR that we lack a great poet. This is an age of second-class men. When Bis- marck and Gladstone have passed away, what really great man will be left? The periods of greatness in lit- erature or statesmanship are recurrent. The Elizabethan age was a marked pe- riod; the early Victorian era gave us many men great in statecraft and lit- erature. We have fallen on a barren time now. Augustine Birrell phrased it very well when he said that the only men who had anything to say were sci- entists, and they did not know how to say it; and the only men who knew how to say anything were the literary men, and they had nothing to say.” I asked Dr. Patton if he believed there was a decadence in literary taste caused by the enormous output of trashy, commonplace books. “There is no doubt of it,” he said, “though the taste for more sericus reading has been fostered in a great many ways, notably through the uni- | versity extension movement. That the ratio of readers of good literature has changed for the worse I am not pre- pared to admit. Of course the char- acter of serious literature has changed. ‘We have a more instructive literature covering the range of philosophy, of political economy, of the sciences. The serious literature of to-day is much more serious than that of the last gen- eration.” S “Is it possible to lay out a course of reading for any class of men, or for men in general?” “No. Every man must choose his own mental diet. The library of a man is the outward expression of himself. 1 can imagine nothing more trying than to set before a man even the most per- is | itors, T | | city d help, as far as in him lies, | pirit in which, with few ex- | ceptions, his good offices of speech and | “We can have more if we wish,” I|Indeed, “art for art’s sake” flourishes am told confidently, and since seems to be considered a cause for con- gratulation I openly and decidedly ap- , but still fe- | prove. Upstairs, as we go out, we meet a rather handsome young man with a slight limp, who flushes at sight of me and flushes more deeply still at the missionary’s rough but kindly meant words. “All of the prisoners here,” he says, sententiously, “are not criminals; some | | of them are only fools. This is one of the fools.” I make inquiries of the fool concern- | | ing the particular piece of folly which save and except that which | made him an unwilling boarder at the expense, and shamed him with the fashion of his lower garments, and I learn that he is one of the ‘“exam- ples” which gallant Judge Campbell made for the benefit of men addicted to the reprehensible practice of *‘sass- ing” feminine bicycle riders. It is but a step across to the female | prison, and we find the females—quite | undertaking to read as a duty the full | list of ‘the best 100 books' prepared by | any one.” Recently Chauncey M. Depew said in | an interview which I had with him | that he believed the college-trained man had an advantage in business over the man who was “The self-educated business man who has been successful, money-maker, but as a leader of men,” he said, “is a man gifted with an ab- normally large brain. It is not always | the good fortune of the sons of rich | men to inherit that advantage of their | it is the exception. | fathers—in fact Therefore the ass imption of some suc. cessful men that their sons will be as well prepared for business life without a college training is based on wrong premises. There is no doubt that col- lege training prepares a man for the big things of life better than any home training or plain business experience, all other things being equal. him a broader view and enables him to see the inter-relation of things—to un- | derstand that nothing stands by itself. | “I can see only one drawback—I can fancy the university man may object to doing the ordinary duties which be- life. of the ladder. One of the humorous papers expressed the idea better by a cartoon than I can give it in words perhaps. It pictured two old gentlemen in conversation, one saying to the other that he had just taken his grandson into the business; and in reply to a query as to how the arrangement worked, he said: ‘I seem to please him. $rammar is as perfect an examnla asl _“RBut it is not altogether surprisingl fect anthology ever compiled. Think ofl I asked Dr. Patton if a universit this | self-educated. I| asked Dr. Patton what his personal observation on this subject taught him. | not alcne as a| It gives | long to the apprenticeghip of buslness! auySy I can imagine him being a little | ‘cocky’ about beginning at the bottom | here, or is it only an outward and visi- ble sign of woman's inborn desire to outshine her sisters, that makes them worry their locks giving them the rejuvenating which our Judges have decreed shall themselves expérience? rest they There are twenty-five out of the sixty | inmates who have chosen the better part to-day, and they listen with real interest to the Bible reading and the short discourse, and assist with more or less tuneful voices in the singing of | | the hymns. perhaps, a little above their heads, but | it is plain that they like him heartily | and that his words and his manner give | elf-respect, | Brother Tubb may talk, back to them a little of the the loss of which brought them here. Just before the close of the meeting a woman brin in an enormous bou- quet and lays it with a courtesy on the table before the missionary, and the en- tire congregation ghtens up in its seats as one woman and smilingly unites with its repre: en they might be | EEREERERE S 2 8 | her imprisoned but still haughty head. | who have gathered about my chair. “Look at them be ing her still hand head loftily high prehensive w. she disapproves. “I'd rather steal than beg, and I'd rather go without tt do either.” Two minutes later she corners the good brother herself and makes a re- quisition for a dress waist, declaring that because of certain acts of the ju- diciary she has been unjustly deprived of two of th necessary adjuncts to the feminine costume. “I had two fine ones at the laundry when 1 left town,” she states, ‘“but they are lost to me, and the one I brought with me is gone to nothing. When I leave off this thing,” plucking at the blue and white wrapper scorn- fully, “I have nothing but my skirt to go back in, and I'll go back in it, too, this threateningly, “unless somethir done to make up my loss to me.” I express a wish that some of garment it a com- she give: ve toward those of whom my would fit her, and she folds entative in the be- | her arms majestically across her deep more quickly than he possibly could | the ability to grasp the affairs of life while he remained under the restric- | tions of home life. “Undoubtedly,” he answered. “We can observe that in the contrast be- tween the home students—those who live in Princeton and come here to school—and the boys who come a thou- sand miles to live here during the term.” I asked Dr. Patton what degree of liberty should be allowed to a student at college. “The investment of the student with the franchise of his manhood is a slow process,” he said. “Here at Princeton we stand toward the student in thz po- sition of the parents or guardians. at least we feel that to be our duty. Therefore we keep careful watch and ward over the young men who come to us, and if we find them becoming ad- dicted to any vice we at oace nctify W those who have sent them here. want to know where the student sp~ his time and how he spends it. And it is in the possession of this knowledge that we find ourselves able to main- tain the morale of the eollege itseif. “In his home the boy is surrounded by walls of paternalism. When he reaches college he finds he is compar- independent. The freshman finds in his new independence an op- portunity sometimes to take a big Joaf, and often he finds too late that he has lost his year. Perhaps this teaches him a lesson and in the end is a benefit, but we constantly strive against this in the first year, because that is in a measure the crucial period, the one in which the undergraduate gains unhampered his first lesson in the life of the world. “T think it is not the province of the college to do aught which would not | largely because of the atmosphere of | in a large way, to consider the world on a basis of wide scope. I think the modern tendency is in the direction of promoting all these things, and it seems to me there is no agent so pow- erful in this regard as the training which one receives in college. It is folly to say that college life is not ben- eficial to any one. This must be borne in mind: It is not so much what we learn in college as the training of the mind that is received, the ability to concentrate thought that is imparted. | It seems to me that nothing is more imp ible than that the mind of a man who has picked up his knowledge in a desultory way shall be as valuable, as rescurceful, the mind of the man who has received the benefit of college training. “This is the liberalism of student life. In this way college equips a man for whatever his life may be when he goes into the world. Too many people fail to distinguish between liberality and uprightness and narrow-minded- ness. Broad-minded liberality is evidence of enlightened progress. believe that in Priuceton. We try impress it upon the minds of the un- dergraduates.” “Is the religious spirit among students strong?”’ . “Despite the assertions that some times made, my observation im- presses me with the fact that the un- dergraduate is no less religious than he was. On the contrary I am inclined to’ believe that the thoughts inspired by a religious feeling and a tendency toward the things that are of religion and exist in every day life are more pronounced. I should say that this is the are | of ;nd‘- Class HWen training helped a boy to “find himself” | encourage the broadening of the mind, | undergraduate at | college life when | of bosom and looks at me from head to foot as if I had just occurred to her. “You're far too little,” she sa suc- at length. has a fine figure of her own, it is a trifle too 1erous about planned stice, but on large s to do her j she wins a vague “I'll see what I can do” from her captive, and then re- leases him to accompany me on my tour of sight-seeing throush the bufld- ng. I see it all from the “dark cells,” which are not dark, in which actory prisoners occasion- ally spend a few meditative hours. “There a , very hard cases here,” kitchen to the says the matron, ust drunks and small offenders, and they behave pretty well generally, but they will quarrel among themselves, and then we have to separate them, of course, and punish the one who is to blame.” Some way the place, with this excep- tion, looks very little like a prison. Blue and white wrappers have a cozily domestic appearance, and are often worn in the most respectable of fami- ly circles, therefore they have not the same depressing effect on my spirits as the striped trousers have, and, be- sides, women adapt themselves to cir- cumstances better than their brothers. “Some of them come back over and over,” says the matron, a trifle wear- fedly. They seem to look upon it as a home rather than a place of punish- ment, and the regular hours, the plain but sufficient food, and the enforced abstinence from liquor of all kinds are really beneficial. It seems more llke a sanitarium to them than a discipli- nary establishment.” And really, why, since modern thought recognizes that drunkenness and crime are diseases, should it not be so? # e el et et g S e e It is dark in the Broadway Jail, even though the hand of the house painter has tinted the walls of the courts of a light and heavenly blue. The bars are heavy, the cell doors are of solid black iron and the faces which peer at us through the small oblong holes therein are nearly all of them shadowed by an- xiety or foreboding. This is a place of uncertainty, for here persons accused of the graver crimes await their trials, or being adjudged guilty take their de- partures for the grimr prisons, where sentences are m by terms life-time the missionary’s arm welcome, ft, outside of pectacles, but e men are young their eyes are arly in the coming mee but here the cc reading matter, not candle: Most of the God pity them! good, but it grows dark box-like cells. “And when one cannot sleep well,” s one mournful-eyed man, not so long since successful eted lawyer and politician, no wccused of embezzlement and nsformed inta a human football to be ffeted about fr court very long.” It reminds me of weird materializing 1lid hands—all em to be pallid in tho dark apertures ands and faces may not, in the nature thinzs, appear at th ne time. When the hands are hdrawn and the faces take their place the effect i 11 more unearthly, to court, “the nights are for the human face, the ey and nose and mouth, entirely separate and dis- tinet from hair an rs and nec! sents a rather gha a background of Four little boys are corridor, one of them a low with the merri wee little fel- st of blue eyes and a jolly dimpled smile. Ferocious burg- lars these, I am told, and I'try to shrink from them on principie, for heretofore at burglars in almost the as deliberate murderers, since it generally requires orly a trifle interference with them when en- gaged in their professional capacity to change them into the latte: I can’t summon up a shiver at the sight of these small chaps, though, and soon they gather about me and tell me, in loud and interruptive boy fashion, their several stories. Naughty boys they are by their own confessions, but ah, the pity of it, that children such.as these should be locked into the com- panionship of men accused, and many of them guilty, of shameful crimes, learning to make of them their heroes, their confidants and friend: The missionary holds no service, save one of good will, emphasized by an oc- casional hand; ke, he to-day, so our visit is brief. Devine, the burge lar, calls to us, however, as we are go- ing out. “Won’t you say good-t asks. “T've got ten years, and am going up right away.” He laughs as he speaks, but it is a laugh not pleasant to hear. I have looke same light to me?” he “I was luck he declares, with a swagger which ected straight at me, ‘‘ten y so long—I shall be agai out “The says lightl . and then his face clouds. “What else is there for a man like me? A man who has done time once must do time till he dies!” CE MATHESON. * % % % The environment of the Princeton is natur- Religious duties the college. ally of that nature. are not forced upon them and nothing is done to make the truths-of that na- students The ture disagreeable. all gather in one chapel they form a very appres gation. They are ligence and they gi think I have never se the f <o high a standard mc -ally as at present.” s the physical development inter- fering with mental’ able congre- en of intel- e of jt. T e time in “It should be borne in nd at all times that the physical should develop at an equal pace with the mental. Therefore, I say I see noth- ing harmful college athleti As a matter of fact, I believe athletics to be aterial benefit *to the college as well as the student. In a way they bring the institution more closely to the attention of the rising generation of boys ung men of from 18 to 22 are really boys, after all. “What I mean to say is that the boy of 12, 13 and 14, interested as all boys are in football, basebail, rowing ete., takes a deep interest in the college sport, and as he grows older a desire to be a participant in those sports strengthens within him. The result of this is that, in addition to the desire to secure the mental ad ges result- ing from collegiate .training, the boy gets a further bent in the direction of college, through his interest in ath- letics. In consequence the number of students is materially increased, and I attribute a very large increase in men- tal development to a primal interest in college sports, GEORGE GRANTHAM BAINM.