1905 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



825 



OUR 



HOMES, 



BY A.I. ROOT, 



OUT OF THE JAIL AND INTO THE PRAYER- 

 MEETING. 



O thou of little faith! wherefore didst thou doubt? 

 -Matt. 14 : 31. 



If I am correct, there is at present a re- 

 form going on in the matter of enforcing 

 law all over our land; and may God be 

 praised for this reform; for the disregard of 

 law has been getting to be one of our most 

 serious dangers. The crowds that engage 

 in lynching, and taking the law into their 

 own hands, plead as an excuse that our laws 

 are enforced with such half-heartedness. or 

 not enforced at all, that, if the criminal 

 is not punished by lynch law, he is not 

 punished at all. Another thing, our good 

 President has been trying hard to put 

 down this matter of thieving in public 

 places; and a string of great and good men 

 throughout our land have been bringing 

 about a great reform in the way of more 

 carefully investigating and enforcing a 

 strict observance of law. This wave of 

 righteous indignation against all kinds of 

 outlawry has been getting into even our small 

 towns. Here in Medina the editor of one of 

 our county papers came out recently with 

 such a protest against illicit liquor-seUing 

 and other irregularities that our officers 

 have been using the "drag-net," to use an 

 expression we frequently hear of in the 

 cities. As a consequence our county jail 

 has had a new accession of inmates. A few 

 weeks ago my sister said one Sunday after- 

 noon: 



"Amos, there are something like half a 

 dozen people, mostly young men, at present 

 in our jail. I know it has been some years 

 since you visited the prisoners when we had 

 any; but now as your health seems pretty 

 good, and there is an unusual number con- 

 fined there, don't you think it would be well 

 for you to call around and see them ? ' ' 



I do not remember what answer I made; 

 but I had had the matter in mind for some 

 time, and my conscience had been pricking 

 me. I could easily answer my sister, who 

 has been all her fife prominent in W. C. T. 

 U. work; but I felt at once that the answer 

 must be given to God. The beloved Savior, 

 years ago, bade me go out "into all the 

 world and preach the gospel." 



Perhaps I had better explain why I have 

 of late dropped jail work. Our older readers 

 will remember these Home papers once had 

 considerable to do with the prisoners in our 

 county jail. It is now nineteen years since 

 saloons were banished from our village of 

 Medina. After their banishment our jail 

 was empty the greater part of the time. 

 For a time I used to make inquiries every 

 Sunday afternoon; but my health failed. I 

 went to California, Florida, the Bermudas, 

 and other places, and I somehow got out of 



the habit of visiting the jail, even when I 

 knew there were prisoners there. But the 

 real and the greatest reason was that I had 

 lost faith. When I first began prison work 

 it was one of the happy surprises of my life 

 when a young man who had already been to 

 the penitentiary once, and was on the way 

 there the second time for the same offense, 

 was, through God's grace, brought out of 

 jail and taken to the prayer-meeting. In 

 my enthusiasm at the time I began to be- 

 heve that, if Christian people— that is, those 

 who had faith and tact for such work, would 

 go into our jails in the right spirit, the 

 prisoners and criminals of the whole wide 

 world might be emancipated out of jail and 

 taken to the prayer-meeting. 



For a time God seemed to give me great 

 victories; but when some of my converts 

 went back after a little time, I lost heart. 

 Another thing, when I found nothing but 

 tramps in the jail I lost faith and courage. 

 Satan apparently succeeded in convincing 

 me that it was not worth while to waste 

 time and breath on tramps. I do not know 

 but I had gotten too exalted an idea of the 

 value of that same "breath." I remember 

 one of my last experiences in jail work. A 

 tramp was kept there for some reason for 

 several weeks. I tried to stir up some 

 spark of manhood in him by way of remon- 

 strance. Said I in substance: 



"John, you admit you have been traveling 

 all over our land begging your way, although 

 you are big and stout, and able to work. 

 You have been going to the farmers' homes, 

 right in harvest time, and begging the kind 

 women for bread and butter, not to speak of 

 cake and pie This is true, is it, John?" 



He nodded his head, even if he did not say 

 yes, and I went on. 



"John, you have seen these poor hard- 

 working women stop their work, leaving, 

 perhaps, a crying or sick baby. You have 

 accepted from their hands something to eat 

 when you knew they were overworked, and, 

 perhaps (with a large family of children), 

 not having sufficient sleep. Some of these 

 same women are wives of men who have 

 mortgages on their farms, and they are 

 overworked too, and in debt; and yet you, a 

 big strong man, were willing to accept char- 

 ity of these people while you refused to go 

 to work and earn your living like other peo- 

 ple. Have you no scruples of conscience 

 and no manhood about you to make you feel 

 ashamed to live in this way ? You are big 

 and strong, and yet your only excuse is that 

 you do not like to work." 



In spite of every thing I could do or say 

 along this line. John said he did not care. 

 It did not trouble him any, and he v;as not 

 going to work hard* for anybody if he could 

 help it. I then told him if he preserved that 

 attitude of heart and mind he ought to 

 starve, and I got the sheriff to put him to 

 work, and he made him work until he ran 

 away to find some better place to ply his old 

 trade. 



Well, about that time I decided I was get- 

 ting to be too old for jail work, and that it 



