But one reflects that, whatever humane or lovable traits prisoners may
exhibit, they are after all criminals! The existence in a lost soul of
good qualities or impulses side by side with evil ones has long been
recognized. Victor Hugo illustrated the discovery in his Jean Valjean,
it was a staple with Dickens, Bret Harte's heroes are all of that type,
it was the inspiration of much of Charles Reade's eloquence, Kipling has
more than a touch of it, our contemporary fiction-mongers sentimentalize
over it, and the train-robber in the movies usually has a full line of
sterling virtues up his sleeve. The lost soul, in short, brims over,
upon occasion, with the wine of regeneration. Therefore (so runs the
moral) let us of the elect furbish up our charity, and be as tolerant
toward this non-human class of people as may be consistent with our own
safety and respectability. Scraps of our own lustrous impeccability have
somehow found their way into them, and we cannot afford wholly to
disavow them, in spite of their wretched lodgings.
This phariseeism is so inveterate with us, that I may fairly say that
one has to be sentenced to jail as a criminal in order to correct it.
From that vantage ground or Mount of Vision it presently dawns upon us
that these men are no more lost souls than we are--are, in fact, woven
out of the same yarn and cut from the same cloth.
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