Part 5

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.

Having thus judicially finished Pat Doniver, with a sigh of relief, the judge dismissed the case, and went to dinner.

* * * * *

In the prison, as elsewhere, good-natured Pat won general favour, and, in the second year of his incarceration, Warden Flint gave him the easy and comparatively agreeable position of runner.

Hitherto, the sluggish current of Mr. Doniver's prison life had pursued the dull, even tenor of its way. Now, Destiny had graciously widened the sphere of his activities. Without an atom of downright viciousness in his composition, Pat was an inborn rogue, and it was his prime delight to outwit the sharp-eyed officers of the prison; to plan and execute under their very noses an endless variety of harmless mischief. Often, in the kindness of his warm Irish heart, he did mischief "that good might come;" oftener, he wrought it for its own relishing sake.

One of the duties consequent upon Pat's vocation was the conveyance of meals to certain unruly prison spirits, who,--choosing, like Milton's Devil, rather to "reign in darkness than serve in light,"--consume in penal solitude their scanty dole of bread and water; many a sly bit of relishing pork, saved from his own meagre portion, and snugly sandwiched between coarse slices of bread, solaced these hungry wretches. Often did a certain water-proof tin box,--conveyed for this sinful purpose to our tricksy purveyor, by that underground express whose mysteries only the initiated may penetrate,--often did this box, neatly ensconced in the innocent depths of a water-bucket, empty its savoury contents into the hollow maws of refractory sinners! Pat's position in the prison also afforded him countless opportunities for that surreptitious intercourse, which, at this time, constituted the whole social interchange of the place; and, in the capacity of newsmonger and go-between, he had come to be a very popular and highly important personage in this restricted community. Who but he could adroitly snatch that propitious moment to whisper at the grating of some eager magpie of the big cage that racy bit of outside gossip, deftly gleaned from the thoughtless chat of loquacious officers?

When the "nate young gintlemun" in No. --, whose deceased great grandsire had unluckily bequeathed him certain erratic views respecting the ancient pronouns, "_Meum et tuum_," which, never quite developing in _bona-fide_ crime, had in no wise proved disastrous to the aforesaid progenitor, whose bones crumbled in the family vault as reputably as might those of that elusive "honest man," for whom the Grecian cynic, lantern in hand, is known to have vainly scoured this naughty world;--when the "nate young gintlemun,"--with the ugly heirloom which Nature, amplifying by the way, had carried disastrously on to the third generation,--sat moping and repenting alone in his prison cell, who but Pat Doniver, dropping for a bit of rest on that pine stool "forninst" the grating, would empty, _sotto voce_, in the prisoner's ear, such a budget of fun, news, and anecdote (the latter a trifle stale, but still racy) as would send this dejected young forger to his dreary cot with a cheered and comforted heart?

Is the prison runner giving a coffee-party to-night, or, like his fine old countrywoman, inaugurating "a saries of tays?" One, two, three, four tin cups! they were all handed empty through the grating; and, by some deft legerdemain of Pat, they all go back full! But whist! there comes the turnkey! Pat and his stool become instantly motionless, and, in the twinkling of an eye, he is sound asleep. The officer--not without many vigorous shakes--awakens him, and he is sent yawning and stumbling to his cell. There, administering to himself a slight dose of his mysterious beverage, he pulls a face of extreme disgust, and thereafter, tightly holding his sides, rolls for a time on the floor of his dormitory, convulsed with suppressed laughter.

And now, in explanation of the evening's occurrence, one must bring upon the scene no less a personage than Jehaziel Green, Esq., sometime postmaster of Pinkertown, deacon of the First Church, proprietor of Pinkertown corner grocery, and overseer of its poor.

Mr. Green has, of late, fallen upon evil times. In consequence of sundry openings of plethoric letters on their passage through Pinkertown post-office, he has become a regular resident of the ---- State Prison.

As, according to the physiologists, man is atomically changed but once in seven years, Jehaziel Green--having existed but one year and three months behind the bars--is still, to all intents and purposes, chemically the same Jehaziel Green; and no whit more or less mean, selfish and unscrupulous than when he dealt out to Pinkertown sanded sugar, watered molasses and washy milk; when he snubbed and starved the parish poor, relieved the over-weighted contribution box in the church vestry, and pried open the fat letters in the post-office.

In outward appearance he is, indeed, somewhat altered, since, at Pinkertown, his every-day suit was of fine Scotch tweed, and his Sunday attire of black broadcloth; while here, his secular and Sabbatical array is not only one and the same, but (queer freak of fancy!) it is parti-colored, red, yellow, and blue! Outside a prison a man's clothes _do_, more or less, affect his claim to favourable consideration. Behind the bars a less superficial standard holds. The elegant art of dress has been reduced to democratic simplicity.

For what saith "the Board?" "The convict's clothes are to be so calculated as to _keep him warm_."

They are not, let it be observed, to minister to his freakish taste, or to pamper his personal pride. Their sole purpose is "to keep him warm." Having thus defined the prison toilet, the worthy commissioners add--as an ethical afterthought--"they ought to be so arranged as to be considered a means of punishment." This seemingly original conception of the penal uses of clothes is not, however, peculiarly "the Board's," since, outside of prison circles, men's clothes are often "so arranged" by fashion as "to be considered a means of punishment." Be that as it may, Jehaziel Green, still true to himself, is no less Jehaziel, in red, yellow, and blue, than in gray or black.

In the prison, money is necessarily scarce; yet--under the rose--there is always a deal of swapping. Mr. Green hiding his accomplishments in the prison cabinet-making department, relieves the dull routine of existence by lively attention to that especial mode of traffic.

Purloining bits of plush, of damask, rosewood, and black walnut, and pilfering varnish and glue, he swaps these commodities,--much desired for inlaid boxes, picture frames, etc., by ingenious fellow convicts,--for fruit, tobacco, and other coveted luxuries. In process of time, the unique conception of establishing a "liquor concern" behind the bars dawns upon the alert mind of the ex-postmaster. For the furtherance of this bold scheme he subtracts, from time to time, small quantities of the alcohol, used in his shop for cabinet purposes, until, by unwearied effort, he has pilfered of this fiery liquid a sufficiency to set him up in trade. Under the circumstances, Mr. Green is compelled to transact by proxy; and Patrick Doniver, having been appointed his sole agent, is, to-night, "travelling for the Firm."

Let it not be supposed that our unmercenary runner is a salaried agent of the House of Green. Far from it! This risky service is not undertaken for filthy lucre; it is but a gratuitous kind office on the part of Mr. Doniver, mischievous enough to be undertaken for its own satisfying self--and its relish vastly enhanced by the good-natured reflection that "a bit of the crathur'll put a warrum linin' in 'em--poor sowls!" And a terrible warm lining, say we, would such a hot "crathur" impart! But Pat has anticipated us; for well aware that he is not catering for Salamanders, he does not once dream of subjecting Mr. Green's customers to "an ordeal by fire." Carefully diluting his alcohol with innocent water, he flavors it well with essence of peppermint,--saved up from a medicinal allotment for a bygone stomach-ache,--sweetens with molasses, and, adding a sup of vinegar from his private bottle, he produces a mixture which, if not delicious, is, undoubtedly, unique.

Having already disposed of several quarts of this mildly intoxicating beverage, Pat, recovered from his late apoplectic symptoms, prudently administers to himself, as a sedative, the balance of this rare "tap," and having, with many wry faces, drained his tin cup to the bitter dregs, composes himself to rest. On the ensuing morning several fresh patients are allowed to report themselves at hospital; and it is feared that an unfamiliar epidemic may prevail in the prison. Some half dozen convicts have been unaccountably attacked with severe vomiting, followed by extreme lassitude, and intense loathing of food. Pat Doniver is of the number, and is said to be very ill. These perplexing cases are vigorously treated by the mystified doctor, and, speedily yielding to his hit-or-miss prescriptions, the patients convalesce, and the alarm subsides. So also does the prison liquor business.

The residue of that fiery consignment,--harboured with great fear and trembling, in the innermost recesses of Mr. Doniver's straw mattress,--is, at the earliest opportunity, handed over to "the Firm;" Pat--transposing for the occasion a wise old saw--judiciously observes to his employer, that "it's a poor _broth_ indade, that its own _cook_ cannot drink!"

Jehaziel Green--impervious to the "sweet uses of adversity"--pilfered and swapped to the end of his prison chapter. Then, migrating to the far West, he became a prosperous wholesale grocer, and is _said_ to have run for Congress. ("Why," queried the rural observer, "do the _little_ rogues go to prison, and the _big_ ones to Congress?")

After serving out his five years, Pat Doniver had the luck to be "taken on" again as hack man; and, as the outcome of his wild sleigh-ride, he lived, ever after, a wiser and a soberer man.

TUCKERED OUT.

Hiram Fisher was "in for life," and had already served out twenty years of this hopeless term, when I made his acquaintance. From his forebears--a long line of Cape Cod fishermen--Hiram has inherited an inexhaustible stock of good nature, a well-knit frame, the muscle of an ox, and such an embarrassment of vitality, that even twenty years of bad air, meagre diet, and tiresome monotony, had not perceptibly loosened his grip on existence. For the last ten years of his term, he had been a "runner" in the prison, the right-hand man of the warden, the well approved of inferior officials, the universal favourite of convicts, and head singer in the chapel choir; and in all that time had never once broken a rule of the prison! A convict _could_ no more; an angel _might_ have accomplished less!

By what occult process a murderer had been evolved from material so seemingly impracticable--from a man of whom it might reasonably be predicated that he would not, of malice prepense, destroy a fly--let the sages tell us; the riddle is far beyond my poor reading. All the same, it was for murder, and in the first degree, that Hiram Fisher had been sentenced. The particulars of his crime were to be had for the asking, of any garrulous prison official, yet I was too incurious of detail to ask for them.

If "accidents"--as the proverb goes--"happen in the _best_ of families," the worst may not hope to escape; and, one day, by some luckless misstep on the iron stairway of the prison, Hiram got a fall which, had Destiny consented, might have broken his neck. As it was, he was picked up in the corridor, unconscious and much bruised in body, and taken for repair to the prison hospital; and it was there that we became fast friends. It was to relieve the tedium of a long bout of reclining, with one leg inflexibly incased in plaster, that I undertook, for Hiram's sole benefit, the reading of a Dickens's Christmas Carol, which had found great favour with the convalescents gathered about the stove for the weekly hospital reading.

Before I had gone through the first half dozen pages, it became evident that Hiram, though, like most New Englanders of his class, tolerably conversant with the three Rs, had no possible use for literature of any sort. I went on half-heartedly to the bitter end, and closing the book, to his apparent relief, resolved, in my after intercourse with the patient, to confine myself strictly to conversation. After this we changed places. Hiram held forth, and I became the much entertained listener. With that easy yarn-spinning felicity, inherent in the born sailor, the patient reeled off for me so interminable a string of incident, anecdote, and heart-moving outside adventure, with such rare and racy sketches of prison life, that my Mondays (Monday was hospital day with me) became, throughout his entire convalescence, like an unbroken series of "Arabian Nights."

Notable among Hiram's hospital recitals was the little sketch which follows, and which I have attempted to reproduce (as nearly as is possible from memory) in his own quaint and homely dialect.

THE TUCKERED-OUT MAN.

"Well, arter I'd been in the 'palace'[1] somewhere 'bout ten year, I got a leetle peaked-like, an' the doctor he overhauled me, an' sent me up t' the hospital for a spell. I wa'n't sick enough to be in bed, so, daytimes, I sot in the big room, 'round the stove, along with half a dozen mates who was 'bout in the same condition.

[1] Convicts' term for prison.

"It was winter weather, an' pesky cold, too, I _tell_ you! We wa'n't none on us gin leave to talk, which, to be sure, was all right enough, though I must say it dooz come pleggy hard to set long side o' folks all day long 'thout openin' your head. But, anyhows, we wa'n't blindfolded, and didn't have our ears plugged neither.

"So while I sot there days, dull as a hoe, an' fur all the world like the man in the Scriptur', that had a dumb devil, I used naterally to twig what was goin' on in most parts o' the buildin'. Well, long 'bout that time we had a new chaplain t' the 'palace,' an' a middlin' good Christian he was, too, I should say; an' bein' a bran-new broom, he naterally swep' cleaner than the old one. Now the _old_ chaplain, he was a master hand at prayin', an' sich like.

"Why, to hear him pray fur that instertooshing would melt a heart o' stun! and his sermons, I will say, was spun out be-eutiful! Arter that, he 'peared 'bout blowed out, an', week-days, we mostly had to look arter our own souls. Well, the new chaplain, you see, _he_ was different. He b'leeved in keeping up steam right straight along, so he used ter visit the men in their cells, an' kinder try to keep 'em on a slant towards the kingdom, all the week round.

"He was mighty good to the sick, too, an' there wa'n't a man in that hospital so bad 'at he wouldn't do him a good turn; an' besides writin' letters fur the men (which is no more'n 's expected on him), he used to do little arrants fur 'em outside, sich as lookin' arter their children, or huntin' up their relations, when they happened to lose the run on 'em. I heerd the warden, one day, a sayin' to one o' the inspectors, 'Our chaplain's too kind-hearted, he'll wear hisself out.' Thinks I ter myself, 'No, he won't, you _bet_! fur, arter a spell, he'll git callous like all the rest on yer.' A prison, ye see, 's a master place fur makin' folks callous. But I'm gittin' ahead o' my story.

"Well, one day I sot there by the stove, squintin' round, an' with both ears open, an' I see the new chaplain come in. He shook hands with us fellers in the big room, an' then he went round to all the cells an' talked with the patients. I see him look into No. --; the bed was made up spic an' span, an' no signs o' anybody inside, so he come away, an' sot down t'other side o' the room, a talkin' to the hospital super.

"I kinder kep' my eye on that cell, fur I knowed there'd been a feller brought up that mornin', an' ef I wa'n't very much mistaken he'd been put in No. --. Well, by'm by, I seed suthin' away over in the furder corner of No .--, an' pooty soon it riz up.

"Lord sakes! how I should a hollered, ef I'd 'a' dared, when that creetur stood on its two feet, an' tiptoed forrard into the light, the very spawn o' one o' them little bogles my granny used to tell about! I should say he wa'n't more'n four feet six, in his shoes, an' bein' a good deal bent up, he didn't look nigh so tall as he was; an' sich eyes I never _did_ see in a man's head! Black as coals, an' bright as beads; an' sich a hankerin' look, a way down in 'em, as ef he'd been a s'archin' fur somethin' he wanted ever sence the flood, an' hadn't found it yit, an' didn't 'spect to find it in this world nor t'other!

"Well, he looked round a spell, kinder skeert, an' then he skulked out inter the passage an' come down-stairs, an' arter he'd twigged a minnit he comes straight up to the chaplain, an' teches him on the shoulder. The chaplain he turned round an' kinder gin a start, an' then sez he to the super, 'What's the matter with this poor feller?' sez he. Afore he could answer, the little bogle he steps forrard, an' sez he, 'Doctor, don't give _me_ any o' your physic, keep it for _t' others_. Doctor-stuff won't do _me_ no good. _I'm tuckered out!_'