Rev. Charles M. Sheldon

Author of "In His Steps," etc.

United Society of Christian Endeavor Boston and Chicago

Copyright, 1898 By United Society of Christian Endeavor

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[5]

INTRODUCTION

Th is little story was first read by me to my Young People's society of Christian Endeavor in the Central Church, Topeka, Kan., during the spring of 1898.

There is nothing impossible in the story, which is largely founded on actual facts known to very many besides myself. What seems to be miraculous or impossible in the redemption of humanity seems so because too often the Christian disciple does not give himself for the solution of the human problem.

This is the one great truth I have wished to impress by the telling of this history, which is partly true, and might easily be wholly so; the truth that it is God with us, Emmanuel, who is redeeming the world, and it must be ourselves, the Christ in us, with the unredeemed humanity near us, that must redeem it. The moment the churches, the Endeavor societies, the Christian disciples everywhere, put themselves into any unredeemed spot in any town or city or place, the miracle of redemption will begin.

It is with the prayer that all who read this little story will give something of this redeeming love to a needy world that the book is sent out. There is the secret of the atonement in the three short words, "Who gave Himself."

Charles M. Sheldon.

[7]

THE PROBLEM OF FREETOWN.

It was very still in the district courtroom. The jury had just brought in a verdict of guilty, and the judge was about to pronounce the sentence.

The room was filled with the usual crowd of spectators. The lawyers occupied the space railed off from the raised seats at the rear where the public was admitted. All whispers and noise on the part of witnesses, attorneys, and court officers had ceased, and every eye was on the man who had just been pronounced guilty.

"Prisoner at the bar," said Judge Vernon, leaning a little forward in his chair until his arm rested on the desk in front of him, "have you anything to say why sentence should not be pronounced upon you?"

The prisoner was a young negro not more than twenty years old. He had been standing when the verdict of the jury was given. His hand rested on the back of a chair, and he faced the judge with a look of stolid, sullen defiance.

"I've got only this to say, judge. The shooting was accidental. If I'd had a fair trial, I'd been let off. But everything's been against me here."

There was a pause while the man passed the back of his hand over his mouth and shifted his position nervously.

Judge Vernon waited a moment.

"Is that all you have to say?"

[8]

"That's all, unless—I think I ought to have another trial. I don't count this fair, judge."

"You have been fully and fairly tried," replied the judge firmly. Then, after a moment of silence, he continued: "Prisoner at the bar, I sentence you to the penitentiary for twenty years. Bailiff, remove the prisoner. Call the next case."

The prisoner made a movement as if he intended to utter a word, but his lawyer behind him pulled him down into a seat; the bailiff came to the little gate of the railing and beckoned to the prisoner, who was led out. The machinery of the court went on, the next case was called, and the usual stir of the courtroom rose again, in sharp contrast with the moment's intense stillness that had just preceded.

The evening of that same day, as Judge Vernon sat down to dinner in his residence up on the boulevard, his wife noticed an unusual seriousness in his face. She did not speak of it at once, however.

"Where is Claude?" the judge asked, as his wife and two girls took their places at the table. They all remained standing, for the judge held to the custom which his father before him had observed, of waiting until every member of his family was present before sitting down to the table.

"He was invited out to a card-party at the Carltons'," said Mrs. Vernon, slowly.

The judge frowned, but said nothing. They all sat down, and Mrs. Vernon looked carefully across the table at her husband. It was then that she spoke of his look of care, greater, it seemed to her, than usual.

"Have you had a trying day, John?" asked Mrs. Vernon, a little timidly. She did not often venture to question her husband about his duties as judge.

"Yes," Judge Vernon answered, almost curtly. Then he looked across at his wife, and went on in a different[9] tone. "The fact is, Eliza, the condition of affairs out at Freetown is getting desperate. To-day I sentenced one of the boys from that district to twenty years for a shooting affray. That makes over fifteen criminal cases from that neighborhood in two weeks. Crime and rowdyism of every description seem to be on the increase there."

"Why don't you double up the sentences, father?" asked one of the girls, a stylishly dressed young woman.

Judge Vernon looked at her, and smiled slightly.

"I'm afraid that doubling the sentences is not the cure for the crimes committed. In fact, Isabel, I am afraid that the heavier the sentence, the more the convicted criminals are regarded as heroes by their companions and so regard themselves."

"There ought to be some law to prevent the dreadful state of things in Freetown," said Winifred, the other girl, a little younger than her sister. "Claude was telling me the other day that the hardest, worst elements in the city are crowded into Freetown, and that it isn't safe to walk through it after midnight. Just think of it! Right near the best residence part of the city, too. I think there ought to be a law compelling those folks to sell out to the white people!" continued Winifred, whose ideas of law were somewhat vague and general.

"I'm afraid they are there to stay," said Judge Vernon, absently. He seemed to be brooding over something, and even the light-minded Isabel was afraid to interrupt her somewhat stern father when he looked that way. He did not speak for some time, and then, as the girls were talking over a theatre party to be formed for an evening of that week, Judge Vernon suddenly asked again about his son.

"Has Claude finished that writing I gave him to do?" he asked his wife.

Mrs. Vernon looked down at the table, as she answered in a low voice, "He has not touched it yet."

[10]

Judge Vernon looked angry. "Send him into the library when he comes in," he said. He rose abruptly, and went into a little room adjoining the library, used for a private reading-room by himself.

Isabel and Winifred looked at each other. The look said very plainly, "I'm glad I'm not in Claude's place."

After supper Isabel went to the piano, and Winifred took up a book. Mrs. Vernon sat down to some fancy-work. The evening passed on slowly. It was an unusual thing for the girls to be at home. They found it very stupid. At last they went up to their rooms, and Mrs. Vernon sat on by her beautiful lamp, apparently deeply interested in her work. But she was thinking of her son, and was not happy. Often she lifted her head to listen while the fingers ceased to be busy, and as often she dropped her head again and went on. The night was very still, and it seemed impossible that events were rapidly shaping which would before morning change the lives of more than one person in the city of Merton.

The prisoner had been taken at once from the courtroom to the county jail. He had been put in the cage where a dozen other criminals were confined. He had at once gone to a corner, and remained there in sullen silence, refusing to talk with any one. The day had drawn to its close. The lights in the corridors had been turned on, supper had been served, and most of the men who had been walking about in the cage had gone into their cells.

The jailer suddenly came down a short flight of stone steps that led from the detention-room, and, unlocking the cage door, called out, "Burke Williams!"

At first there was no answer. Then the figure of the negro rose and came towards the door.

"What do you want?" the prisoner asked in a surly voice.

"Come out here!" called the jailer, roughly. "And[11] keep a civil tongue. You're wanted up in the detention-room. Quick, now! Move along!"

The prisoner came out, and the jailer locked the door, and, taking out the keys, shoved the man along the short corridor towards the flight of steps. The negro purposely delayed his going as much as possible.

"Move along!" cried the jailer. The prisoner pretended to stumble, and the jailer roughly caught hold of his arm and pulled him forward. At the same instant, as quick as lightning the prisoner seized the jailer, and with the exercise of all his young strength threw him heavily upon the floor. The jailer's head struck on the corner of the stone step, and he lay there stunned.

With a rapidity that seemed impossible from his awkward movements before, the prisoner snatched the keys where the jailer had let them fall, and with one bound was up the stone steps and in the detention-room. This opened from the jailer's office, and that had a door opening directly on the street.

There was one man in the detention-office, and he had risen and was near the door leading to the guard-room. The prisoner saw in an instant that it was the attorney who had conducted his case. He had come to have an interview with reference to some part of the case relating to a motion for a new trial. In special cases prisoners were allowed to confer with visitors in the detention-room.

The negro dashed through the room before the astonished attorney could stop him. The jailer's door was locked, but from the bunch of keys the prisoner chanced to choose the right one first. He thrust it into the lock, turned the bolt just as the bewildered lawyer rushed upon him, opened the door, shut it, and, bracing his excited strength upon it, locked it again.

He was outdoors and for the moment free. He could hear the uproar from within the jail as the assistant [12] [13]jailer and a companion rushed into the office from the corridors where they had been busy clearing up the prisoners' supper things.

It was just at this moment that Judge Vernon sat down to dinner.

[14]

JUDGE VERNON'S TROUBLE.

The escaped prisoner looked up and down the street an instant, and then leaped across the short distance between the rock-pile yard and the alley. A man on the other side of the street, attracted by the unusual uproar in the jail, ran across just in time to see the figure of the negro escaping up the alley. He disappeared in the dusk before the man could determine which way he had turned when reaching the end of the block.

The city lay about him in the gathering night. He knew that it would be some time before the jail could be opened, as all the doors were now locked and heavy bars closed every window. But the alarm would soon be given to officers on the outside, and the pursuit would be swift and thorough.

In his sullen rage he determined to seek refuge in his old haunts in Freetown. The police would surely seek him there, but so they would everywhere. Skulking close to buildings, dodging up alleys, seeking every spot of darkest shadow, the man made his way rapidly toward the district which had grown notorious in the criminal history of the city. As he ran, his sinful heart beat alternately with anger at the justice that pursued him, and with coarse joy at his temporary escape from it.

A little after ten o'clock Judge Vernon came into the sitting-room where his wife still sat with her fancy-work.[15] He walked back and forth several times without saying a word. At last he stopped and sat down by the table.

"Eliza, what shall we do about Claude? He is simply making a wreck of his life the way he is living."

"I know it." The mother's fingers trembled as she rested them on the work in her lap.

"It was only yesterday that I learned of his drinking at these parties to which he goes so often. What are the fathers and mothers of Merton thinking of, that they allow their boys to learn these habits in the best society?" Judge Vernon spoke with a force that lost sight, for the time, of the fact that he himself was one of the very fathers that he so severely condemned.

"Do you think it is the best society, John?" asked Mrs. Vernon with a boldness that was not a part of her character.

"No! And yet we say we belong to it. And we let our girls and Claude frequent these entertainments night after night. Eliza, I cannot endure it any longer. The thought of Claude's growing into the wild, dissipated, society fast young man is a horror to me." Judge Vernon paused, and then went on with an unusual agitation in his voice and manner. "Eliza, I have not been able to shut out the picture, since I heard of Claude's drinking, of his appearance in court, in my court some day, charged with some crime. That picture has haunted me all day. While I was sentencing that colored man, I kept thinking, 'What is to prevent Claude, my own son, from standing here some day, here or in some court, charged with some crime while under the influence of drink, just as the negro committed his crime while under the influence of liquor?'"

"O John, don't talk so!" Mrs. Vernon let her work fall on the floor, and her face was pale and her lips quivered nervously. She had never known her husband[16] to break out so forcibly from his habitual stern repression of feeling, and it frightened her.

"It is simply what we must face sooner or later. Our girls—." The judge crowded down a rising passion, and for a moment there was perfect silence in the room. "Each of our girls one of these days will marry one of these society young men, such men as I am free to confess I never would choose for them."

Mrs. Vernon was silent. She was astonished at her husband's words.

"I see things in my court, Eliza, that convince me daily of the need of a great transformation in the city of Merton in its social life. I am simply appalled at the number of divorce cases. I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that the fast life lived by so many of the young people is utterly ruinous to soul and body. Hardly a case comes up that does not illustrate in some form the terrible influence of drink and gambling, much of it learned at the very parties where Claude is a frequent guest, at the very party, no doubt, where he is now."

He rose and walked up and down the room again. Mrs. Vernon sat silent and agitated.

"And I cannot help thinking of the people in Freetown. In the very heart of our Christian (as we call it) city there is a condition of lawlessness and impurity that very few realize. I see the results of it daily in my court, and my heart grows sick as I feel my powerlessness. Somehow—" Judge Vernon turned to his wife with a look and manner she had never known in him before. "Eliza, somehow I cannot help connecting the crime in Freetown, the dissipation and immorality in that district, with the same thing in what we call our best society. Somehow I am oppressed by the feeling that this city will suffer some great calamity even in its best homes because we have allowed such evils to grow up uncorrected in the right way. It seems to me sometimes[17] as I sit in my place on the bench, that a judgment is hanging over this city, so fair in its outward appearance, yet so wrong in much of its human life."

John Vernon, judge of the district court, had been a man who all his life gave the impression, even to the members of his own family, that he was a stern, self-controlled person, whose emotions were held in check with almost Puritan or Spartan coldness. His wife wondered in her heart at the unusual exhibition of his feeling this evening. Finally she asked, "The prisoner you sentenced to-day, John,—he is one of a large class, do you think?"

"More than half the crime that is committed in the city comes from that class of young men."

"And you sentenced him to twenty years' imprisonment?"

"Yes; it was a brutal shooting affair. The other negro was lamed for life. Will probably lose an arm and foot."

"It is horrible, as you say. I do not see what we are coming to. But I do not see what connection there can be between the condition of things among the negroes in Freetown and that of the white people in the society we know."

Judge Vernon did not answer at once. Then he said: "Crime and immorality never can be confined to one spot in a city. They spread like contagion. In fact, they spread worse than disease, for we can restrain and shut in disease, but vice, until it becomes crime, may go unchecked anywhere. There is a sure contamination from Freetown spreading through the entire city, and I cannot escape the feeling that the best families in the place are in danger. Our own, perhaps. And really, Eliza, when you consider the superior training and advantages of the white race, have we very much to boast of when our own young men and women grow[18] up to be drunkards and gamblers and unloving husbands and wives?"

He had risen again, and was nervously walking up and down. The clock struck the half-hour. The sound had only died away when the door-bell rung.

The judge walked into the hall and opened the outer door.

"It's you, Mr. Douglass? Come in."

"It is late to make a call, judge," said a deep, strong voice. "But I was just getting home from the meeting of the Christian Citizens' League; and, seeing a light, I thought I would just stop a moment. Have you heard the news from the jail?"

The Rev. Howard Douglass came into the hall, and Mrs. Vernon, who had risen and gone out there, greeted him.

"No; what news?"

"The negro, Burke Williams, has escaped, and is now at liberty. He assaulted the jailer, and succeeded in locking the door on the officers in the jail. The police are hunting for him now."

Judge Vernon listened in a greater degree of excitement than he had shown even during his conversation with his wife.

"Come in here, Mr. Douglass. If you can spare the time, I should like to talk over matters in Freetown. We are waiting for Claude to come home. This news of Williams adds to the thought I have been having lately about the people in Freetown."

Howard Douglass hesitated.

"It is rather late. But I am specially interested in the conditions over there. In fact, the matter of what to do with Freetown was the main subject of discussion at our League meeting to-night. Something ought to be done over there, or we shall have a heavy account to answer for at last, when the deeds of the body are summed up [19] [20]for judgment. The Christian people of Merton will be held largely responsible, I believe, for failure to help Christianize that spot."

"I begin to believe the same," replied Judge Vernon gravely.

He had paused thoughtfully with the evident purpose of going on to propose some plan, when they were startled by the sound of many heavy steps coming up the veranda walk.

Before the persons outside could ring the bell, Judge Vernon had flung the door open. Mrs. Vernon and Douglass stood close behind him. Looking out on the lighted veranda, they saw a group of men, among them two police officers, and carried on some rude couch, in the midst of the group, lay the form of a man covered with a blanket.

One of the officers addressed Judge Vernon.

"Judge, this is a hard piece of news to bring to you. In hunting for Burke Williams we found your son Claude lying near the end of Free Street, wounded and unconscious. That fiend Burke probably did it. He is robbed."

Mrs. Vernon pressed through between her husband and all the others.

"Claude, my son! Is he dead?"

"No, ma'am," replied the officer as he took off his hat. But he added in a lower tone as the terrified mother drew the blanket from the face of her boy, "No, not yet."

[21]

HOWARD DOUGLASS'S PLAN.

It was Sunday morning at Merton after an unusually exciting week. And, as the Rev. Howard Douglass went into his pulpit, and thoughtfully looked at the large congregation that crowded the church, his mind was filled with one idea, and that idea was the redemption of Freetown.