Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/285

 *oners should be made to appear as hideous as possible; I am pretty sure that reformer disapproved who one Sunday afternoon went down there and asked the superintendent if he would permit him to preach to the inmates and was told by Stevens that he would like to accommodate him, but that he could not just then break up the pedro game. There were those who said that he was making it too easy for the prisoners, and yet every now and then some of them would escape, and when they were brought back, as they usually were, they were met only with reproaches and asked why they could not leave their addresses when they went away so that their mail could be forwarded. There were, however, two escaping prisoners who never were returned. They got away just in time to make a sensation for the noon editions of the newspapers, and as I was on my way to luncheon I met Stevens, standing on the street corner, very calmly, while the newsboys were crying in our ears the awful calamity that had befallen society. When I asked what he was doing, he said that he was hunting the escaped prisoners. "I've been to the Secor and the Boody House," he said, naming two leading hotels, "and they're not there. I'm going over to the Toledo Club now, and if they're not there, I don't know where to look for them."

It may be that in these little incidents I give the impression that he was a trifler, but that is not the case. He knew, of course, that so far as doing any good whatever in the world is concerned, our whole penal system is a farce at which one might laugh