The wicked John Goode

Introduction

Recalling my early reading of iEsop's Fables, I always enjoyed the Moral at the end of each story; for then I felt quite sure I had understood; and I liked to be quite certain of that.

In that most delightful of nursery classics, "Alice in Wonderland," one of the characters gravely remarks: "Everything's got a moral if only you can find it." I confess to an increasing desire, as the years advance, to find the moral of things.

In the story of John Goode one can find several good morals, but the one that appeals most to me might be worded thus : Take care of the boy and the man will take care of himself.

Do what we will, there will always be vi INTRODUCTION

need of correctional institutions to care for those who, for some reason or other, cannot or will not play the game of life according to the rules laid down by the community — "Society Misfits." Whether it is their fault, or the fault of their ancestors, or of the environment, matters little to the public which suffers from their destructive activity. When the law lays its hands upon these mischief-makers it sends them to some institution; and when they make trouble there we call them "incorrigibles," thus assuming that it must be the fault of the inmates rather than of the institution.

• ••••••

John Goode, at the age of ten, was an "incorrigible"; so he tells us. But was he? Suppose he had found, in one of the institutions to which he was sent, an intelligent system which would have stimulated his sense of honour and his capacity

INTRODUCTION vii

to bear responsibility, as well as a superintendent who was a sympathetic teacher; can one doubt that the inherent strength and goodness of the man, which at last has seized upon him and now dominates him, would have emerged then? Are we to suppose that the sacred fire cannot be kindled in these men until the soul has been smirched? Perhaps if I had not seen young boys as incorrigible as John Goode ever was at the age of ten, turned by humane and sensible treatment into good and useful citizens, I should think otherwise ; but having beheld with my own eyes the gradual but complete reformation of many such youthful delinquents, long before I saw the same thing among the adult prisoners of Auburn and Sing Sing, I know that there was no reason for John Goode's early failure to reform, except the stupid maladministration of the institutions which received him bad and made viiS INTRODUCTION

him worse. It is only another case where "Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn."

In the course of time John Goode reformed. But the reform of an individual criminal here and there is no new thing. It may happen, and has happened, in any one of several ways — among them the way it happened to John Goode. But one of the important lessons to us is that it did not happen through the agency of any one of the institutions in which he was placed. Every one of them made a failure of him. As the event showed, he was good material all the while; yet so far as society's official agencies of reform were concerned he was the worst for all of them. And such conditions should be a matter of shame to us. Think of the many years of life wasted and worse than wasted, in which the man's strength might

INTRODUCTION ix

have been used for the benefit of society, instead of towards its destruction! Also think of the thousands whom the light never strikes as it struck John Goode.

The chief moral, therefore, which I find in this story deals with the obligation that is upon us to reform the reformatory institutions to which our little John Goodes are sent and which are now little else than feeders to our state prisons. Every state has juvenile refuges and children's protectories and industrial schools and reformatories. I have heard of very few which allow the children enough initiative to enable them to prepare themselves thoroughly and efficiently for life. We swing from brutality to benevolent paternalism ; and while the latter is pleasanter, it is almost as harmful.

In the meantime, let us be grateful that we have occasional John Goodes, strong x INTRODUCTION

enough to seek and find God in spite of the barriers we ignorantly and stupidly place in their way.

THOMAS MOTT OSBORNE.

Contents

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Introduction by Thomas Mott Osborne v

CHAPTEB

Chapter I

It was cold and sharp with wind and the snow crunched crisply underfoot as host and guest entered the grounds of a modest and comfortable country home. The log fire in the cozy living room burned cheerfully and cast a soft, mellow light halfway into the room as the two men dropped into huge leather chairs invitingly placed before it. They awaited the call to dinner. Weary and footsore they were after a five mile jaunt from the club where they had spent the morning.

With keen appetites the two men partook of a roast and its fixings in silence.

Each seemed absorbed with his own reflections. Reaction after the walk perhaps, or was it the season? It was the last day of the year. Was it the year they were about to leave behind, the years they had left behind, or the year they were about to enter of which these two men were thinking? At any rate, their silence remained unbroken. They seemed to understand — these two men — the silence seemed as satisfying as the meal.

Coffee and cheese were served at a small table in front of the fireplace amid the still unbroken silence. And as if to hold unbroken their reverie they settled deep down in their chairs.

The guest was massive — a giant of New England origin developed into rugged manhood by a strenuous early life in the far and middle West. Close cropped hair — grey — and deep facial lines indicated his age as sixty-five, but the huge unbent frame and the steel like muscles of the big limbs seemed not more than forty. The high and heavy forehead and the overhanging brow bespoke intellect. The keen, steel blue eyes spelled determination. Yet those eyes had a soft, kindly look, one that invited confidence. It was a look not at all like what one would associate with the rest of the portrait. A square protruding chin completed the picture of a man who could and would indulge and who had indulged his every desire.

The guest drew from his pocket a package of papers and extracted a typewritten letter which he read and re-read many times.

"That's an invitation to speak at a Men's Club," he said quietly as though continuing aloud a mental conversation.

"I've done a pile of thinking ever since it came. Last night Dr. Hallimond asked me to be sure and accept it. Of course I'll do anything he asks.

"As I look back sometimes — like to-day, for instance — it seems as though I must be dreaming or as though Aladdin had crossed my path. Just think of all the friends I've got. Just think what you've all meant to me and who you all are — business men, doctors, lawyers, ministers, editors, scores of you, and look at me!

"I'm a porter, ten hours a day, eleven dollars a week, 52 years old and — and — " The sentence remained unfinished.

I hesitated about replying, for I knew well the man and his manners. If I spoke the wrong reply I would divert the trend of his thoughts. So I kept silent, knowing instinctively I was to hear again as remarkable a story as was ever told — a story of absolute truth and one that would do both teller and hearer much good.

And then John Goode began and told me for the second time this tale.

"I was two years old when my parents took me from Massachusetts to a silver camp, the town of Caribou in the northern part of the state of Colorado. She — my mother — was a good woman. My father was a fighting, whiskey-drinking Irishman, as irritable when sober as he was cruel and vicious when drunk. I very rarely saw him when he was sober. He was a bad acter and had left Canada some years earlier just in time to escape the noose in a good stout rope. The town was sixty miles from the nearest railroad and the only Bible it contained was my mother's. My mother also had the distinction of being the only woman in that camp in the early days.

"Before long other children were born to my parents and as my mother's duties were many besides caring for her children I need not tell you that my early training was a totally minus quantity. My parents kept a boarding house for miners and you can easily imagine the environment I found myself in and how much attention my mother could give to us. There simply was no discipline. I grew up — that's all.

"In those days a mining camp was no fit place for children. All that these camps knew was rough work, rough people, rough times. Everything was hard.

"I'll never forget how in two winters two of my younger brothers and one sister died. The men, my father and a friend, built tiny coffins out of pine soap boxes which I fetched from the store. In these crude, rough, unlined affairs they placed the little bodies and then nailed on the lids. In each instance the death occurred in winter and the frost was deep in the ground. Before the graves could be opened huge fires were built on the selected spots. We waited, my mother, father and me with a few friends till the ground thawed out. No stone or wood marked these graves. No enclosure protected the little bodies. Soon even the little mounds had disappeared, and not long after that the incidents themselves were forgotten, for it was work, work, work of the hardest sort, with no time or place for sentiment or sorrow.

"Nor was there time or place for discipline. When we were well we kept out of the way. When we were sick we were a trouble, but in the crude manner of the day and place we were cared for and restored to health or we died.

"Had there been time for discipline it would have had no effect on me. My father blocked all efforts at anything but work. The only times he noticed me was when I crossed him in some childish way and then he beat me unmercifully. I soon learned that it was safest to keep out of his way, and thus it was that I also learned to know what "father" meant. My hatred of him grew apace while my love for my mother — if I knew then what love meant — deepened. I remember her as a meek, quiet, sorrowful woman — a woman of few words. She always shielded me as best she could, from my father and covered up my misdeeds. The beatings he gave me hurt her as much as they hurt me. I can vividly remember her pleading with him to be merciful as he brought a stick down on my bare back, blow after blow. Sometimes after she had lied to save me, a neighbor would tell him, and then I would pay dearly for my wrong and for my mother's intended kindness. "By the time I was seven I had learned well the need of keeping out of my father's sight and I had learned still better how to take care of myself. I had done my first stealing before I was five years old. I had helped myself to money from the cash drawer of the only store in camp. Why shouldn't I? I didn't know it was wrong! All I knew was that I couldn't get candy at home. There most of the money went for whiskey. No one saw me steal the first time or the second time, so no one scolded me. No one beat me for stealing, so it couldn't be wrong, my child mind reasoned.

"At ten I was incorrigible! I had felt my own power. I had experienced every sensation, good and bad, the town was able to supply. Caribou had become too small and my father too cruel. I had never been to school, for there was no school to go to! And so I reached the age of eleven — a liar and a thief!

"With that year came the most brutal beating a boy ever received. It developed into a fight — father and son. I was well put up and well versed with my hands and he was beastly drunk and mad. With that beating came an instant determination to run away. Never for an instant would I regret leaving home — my brothers and sisters — my father and mother. What were they to me? Had I not shifted for myself all my life? I could continue to do so.

"I walked the sixty miles to the railroad, to the then little wooden city of saloons, gambling houses, and dens of ill repute called Denver. It was fed then by but one railroad — the old Kansas Pacific, now the Union Pacific.

"I remember the thrills as they chased themselves up and down my spine when from a mountain top, afar off, I caught my first glimpse of the city.

"It was a walk I'll never forget. Bears and Indians and wolves were plentiful, and it was a trip that would test the nerves of the bravest boy. The long, long daylight hours and the dreadful, fearful thought of those surely coming nights with inky, inky blackness. . . . But little did I realise that the blackness of those black nights on that runaway journey were as broad daylight compared to the blackness of the life I was slowly but surely walking into.

"I was on the road four days and three nights. I slept on the ground two nights and in a deserted mining shack the other. I can distinctly remember the howling of the wolves and how lonely and frightened I was. But not once was I tempted to return to my father. He had taught me too well his lessons. All during the trip I had been fearful lest he should seek me, knowing, of course, that Denver was the only place to which I could head.

"I wonder if he made any effort to find me? I wonder what my mother thought and how she felt? Never once since I passed through the camp on my way to the railroad have I seen my father nor even heard of him. He must have long since passed over the Great Divide, for his manner of living fifty years ago could only have meant an early end. I have seen my mother only twice since and she too, no doubt, has passed to her reward. All that I ever knew of her life was hard, cruelly hard. No woman could stand it long.

Chapter II An Eleven-year-old Runaway!

"On leaving the mountains and dropping onto the plain in which is Denver I proceeded slowly, walking twice around it before entering or speaking to any one. After I had sized up the place, I singled out what looked to be a boarding house and applied for a job. My surmise proved to be correct and I was set to work at once washing dishes. I didn't like the place nor the work, which was the first I'd ever done, and so after three days I beat it. As nothing had been said about wages, none were due me.

"I went to the railroad yard and picked up an acquaintance with an engineer who took my cock and bull story in whole. He was a good man and readily consented to my riding in the caboose of his freight leaving that day for Kansas City. My reception on the train of fifty odd freight cars and one caboose was cordial. My age of course was responsible for that.

" * Where yer going, son?'

" '.Where yer been?'

" 'Yer hungry?'

"The ice was broken. They took me in and shared their grub and bunks with me. Here I again experienced what I now know to be kindness. It made me feel queer. Here were all these rough looking, dirty men — and no one hit me — no one was drunk. They told me stories of railroading as it was done in those days, of holdups, of wrecks, and my blood fairly raced through my system, propelled by the beats of a little eleven year old runaway heart.

A RUNAWAY! 29

"I'm not telling you this for sympathy, God knows I'm not ! I'm telling it to you so that the next time you are told of a man who is a criminal and who will never be anything else, remember my story and of the inherent good there was in me and is in every other human being, of how that little bit of goodness was kindled into flame — of how that little flame was nursed until it could keep aglow alone. Remember my start in life, perhaps the other fellow's start was like mine. I was as yellow a cur as ever lived — a man couldn't be more yellow — and yet I had what every mortal has — an inherent grain of goodness that's God-given and which no man has the right to deny.

"In four days the train pulled onto a siding in the freight yards at Kansas City. It had reached the end of its journey.

"Where was I going?

"I did not know.

"I had heard my mother say she had a sister in Massachusetts. I made up my mind then that I would go to her. At that time I had no idea I was different from any normal boy. There had been no means of my knowing that the life I was leading would take me to state's prison or the gallows, unless it was checked. I didn't know there was such a thing as a prison and gallows. But I learned about them soon enough. Then, however, I was just a healthy boy running away to escape a father's uncontrollable temper and desire for whiskey. I was on a train of freight cars and the men knew why I was there. They treated me kindly. But three days of kind treatment on a freight train won't alter a boy's character. Perhaps if I had met men on leaving that freight gang, who treated me as they did, this sort of a story would never have been told. But I didn't meet the same sort of men.

A RUNAWAY! 31

"I met men and boys who like myself couldn't or wouldn't or didn't recognise the difference between right and wrong. I met men whose business it was to teach young boys to steal and pick pockets just as carefully as your boy is being taught how to become a manly man and, just like your boy, I learned my lessons well. I met other men who took these boys, when they had become expert, onto the road to steal and plunder and for other unspeakable purposes.

"As I say I learned my lessons well. I was an apt pupil — had begun early. My age was with me, for who would suspect an eleven year old boy of being a thief?

"I didn't stay long in Kansas City. I don't know why, except that way back somewhere in my head was that wish to go to my mother's sister. I beat my way to St. Louis on the Missouri Pacific. Sometimes I rode in coaches, more often underneath. Sometimes I begged my food, sometimes I stole to procure it, but the point is I always got it. Back door and front door alike yielded all the food I asked. Always my age and story brought the lady of the house across. And each time I told the story I added more sob stuff. Open windows and cellar doors got me all else I needed.

"And then the inevitable happened. Why it hadn't happened sooner I can't understand.

Chapter III My First Arrest — Age Eleven

"I made St. Louis late at night and forced a window in a stable. Crawling into a warm corner of the hay I was soon fast asleep. Towards morning the owner of the building and a cop appeared. I was picked up for entry and further accused of threatening to set fire to the premises !

"The Judge before whom I was arraigned tried as well as he knew how, to show me the folly of my ways. I wonder if he had boys of his own. I hope not. I wonder how many other boys had previously been brought before him. I wonder how many followed me into his kindly considerate hands. What a story the history of all those lives would probably make could they now be written.

"He listened carefully to the charges they preferred against me — that one paid officer of the law and that big man, the owner of the stable — the charges they preferred against me, an unknown child.

"Instantly he made up his mind — he knew at once just the best way to handle my case — how best to put me in the frame of mind not to go into another man's stable to sleep. Why shouldn't this man — this judge — know what to do with me? Hadn't he been practising on other boys for years?

"And so this judge — this man who had taken an oath to administer justice impartially to all who came before him, told me in open court before many people that I was a worthless, vicious boy — that there wasn't room for me in his city, and he wound up his tirade by giving me the privilege of leaving the city for good within twenty-four hours or of being sent away for a year. I chose the former.

"Picture that crime against me !

"Imagine such a man as that holding down such a job!

"He practically said to me that morning in court 'You're helpless and worthless. You'll never be any good. You belong in prison, but get out of here. We don't want to clog our jails with the likes of you. Get out of St. Louis. Go somewhere else and break the law there — not here.'

"I crossed the river to East St. Louis on a boat. I don't think the bridge had been built then. A freight on the Ohio and Mississippi, now the B. & O., was pulling out and I made it.

"I got as far as Sandoval, 111., before the crew found me and put me off. Night was falling and the men working about the fires let me lie down in the warm sand, where I was soon fast asleep. They evidently suspected I was a waif, for they saved scraps of bread and meat from their dinner pails, which I ate with great relish in the morning. Between the time the night shift quit and the day gang went on I was on my way afoot down the railroad tracks. At Odin, about five miles distant, a man stopped me on the main street and asked me who I was and where I was going. He was Levi Meredith, the county surveyor. My size or, rather, lack of it and my dilapidated appearance interested him. I assumed the name of Harry Robinson, and told him my parents were dead. He questioned me at some length and finally offered me a home, which offer I accepted. In a week I was sick and for almost a week out of my head. To my knowledge it was the first time Vd ever had a doctor. I was living in their stable, and it was then I got sick and recovered. I lived there five weeks before the wanderlust overtook me. Mr. and Mrs. Meredith were away the day I left, and before going I emptied the pantry of a batch of gooseberry pies — there were seven large ones, freshly baked.

"I caught a freight and made Vincennes, Ind., the end of the division I was riding. It was early in the day, and on the outskirts of the quaint French town I saw a substantial brick house, where I applied for food. The lady of the place made me go to the stable, where she filled a half barrel with warm water and I took a bath — the freight of the night previous had been none too clean. After breakfast, and a good one, too, I went to sleep in the barn. About one o'clock a coloured girl from the house awakened me and, giving me a tin pail, informed me that I was to go to the raspberry patch and pick berries. The pail I threw away, by way of thanks, and struck out along the tracks of the Terre Haute and Vincennes R. R. It was very hot, and before I had gone far I fell in a faint on the tracks.

"Just ahead of me was a work train of twelve or fifteen flat cars heavily loaded with sand and railroad ties. In order to side-track for an express the engineer backed his train on top of me. The pain and shock as I was dragged along in the sand and cinders brought me back to consciousness and I screamed as men never heard mortal scream before. The brakebeam of the last car, which came on me first, caught my arm and clothing, and instead of being cut in two I was pushed and dragged along. My screams of agony were heard above the noise of the moving train and it was brought to a stop. Men hurried to the spot and lifted me out, torn and bleeding. They put me on a sand car and backed into Vincennes, where I was removed to a hotel and laid out on a card table, where a doctor went over my hurts. Miraculous as it may seem, I was not seriously injured, although the flesh was badly torn from my right arm, both above and below the elbow. A carriage took me four miles outside the city to the poor farm, where I was admitted under the name of Harry Robinson. I am sure if any of the papers of that date remain on file, an account of the accident will be found. The story spread rapidly, and a score or more of people drove out the next week to see the boy who had been run over by a train and had lived to tell of it. In ten days I was able to be about again and ran away to the railroad, where I went blind baggage, and at Tunnelton, Ohio, the crew found me all but blinded by the smoke and cinders. I was in mighty bad shape. They took me off and left me with some railroad men, who, taking pity on me because of my age, fixed me up and fed me up. In a short time I was able to travel. The men then gave me a pass on a passenger train to Cincinnati.

"I was sick again before I left the train, and, after two or three days of aimless roving about Cincinnati, I was desperately ill with malarial fever. Being a Catholic by birth I experienced no difficulty in securing admittance to a Sisters' Hospital. I've forgotten the name of the Institution, but for two months I lay there seriously ill. Finally when I became convalescent they transferred me to a Catholic Protectory two or three miles outside the city. There a young student for the priesthood became interested in me and I spent a good deal of time in his company. Two or three times he took me to a show in the city. On one of these trips, in the meantime having become restless, I ran away from him and the institution. I remember how he begged me not to leave him as an escape would count against him. His appeal was useless! He was a kind fellow, for he might have spoken to the policeman who stood near us, and who would have arrested me at once.

"You mustn't forget that all this time I was stealing everything I wanted from any one I wanted to. I had become very expert with my hands. I could pick a door lock, open a locked window, extract a pocket-book or open a cash drawer with great skill and dexterity. Nothing frightened me, nothing stopped me, and yet I hadn't reached the age of twelve.

"Not liking Cincinnati, now that I had run away from the Protectory, I jumped a freight on the Panhandle and made Pittsburg. On leaving the railroad yards I braced the first man I met and told him a hard luck story — a bunch of lies, of course. He proved easy, and took me to his house near an iron foundry, of which he was assistant superintendent. Frederick Jones was his name. I wonder if he is still alive? He did all for me that a father could have done. He clothed and fed me and insisted that I stay with him till I fully recovered from the effects of the fever. When I was again able to travel he took up a collection for me from among his friends, and with the money we bought a ticket to New York. That was the first time I'd ever paid for a fare on a railroad, and yet I'd ridden hundreds and hundreds of miles.