My Monks of Vagabondia

COMPOUNDING A FELONY

“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

– Bible.

Compounding a Felony

There was a knock at the door, but no one thought of answering it until it was repeated – more faintly, a second time – then one of the young men opened it, saying to the newcomer, “It is never locked, my boy.”

In stepped a lad some seventeen years of age, and inquired in a voice hardly audible if he could stay all night.

The young men sent the new arrival to me for an answer to his request. It was readily to be seen that the boy was in a state of great excitement. He acted so strangely that, contrary to custom, I asked him why he had come.

“The police are after me,” he stammered, as he turned and looked nervously at the door.

“What have you done?” I questioned the boy.

"I stole a bicycle and the owner just saw me walking along the street and started to chase me, calling after me, ‘Stop, thief!’ A crowd began to gather and I had all I could do to get away. I ran around a building and joined the crowd in the search; then, after a little, I dropped out of sight again and decided that I would go out to you for advice."

"Where is the bicycle now?" I questioned.

“I sold it,” he said.

“Where is the money you got for it?”

“I spent it.” He began to cry.

“And now your conscience starts to trouble you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“My lad,” I told him, “this is no hiding place for boys who steal, and for whom the police are searching.”

The boy did not reply; he turned aside and brushed away the tears with his cap. Then he started slowly towards the door.

“So I can’t stay?” he said finally.

“I am afraid not,” I replied.

He went to the window and peered out into the night.

“They’ll get me,” he said, hopelessly, “and when they do it means a long term in prison for me.”

“Wait a moment,” I said. “Have you been arrested before.”

“Yes, another boy and myself took some fancy postal cards from a stationery stand. They were funny pictures that we wanted for our collection. We were sent to Jamesburg that time. Then since I came from that institution I was arrested again for something else I did and I am now out on probation. Next time the judge said he would give me a long sentence in the Rahway Reformatory.”

“You should have thought of all this sooner,” I said, with a sternness that I did not feel, for I knew how easily one can drift from an evil thought into an evil act.

“I heard you helped boys when they needed it,” ventured the young rascal. “I surely need it now.”

“I may help them when I can,” I replied, “but I never intentionally make myself a partner in their wrong doing.”

“The judge ought not to give me more than three years,” said the boy thoughtfully, "even that is a long time… The bicycle wasn’t worth more than five dollars any way. The owner said he would sell it to me for that amount."

At that moment there was a noise in the next room.

“What was that?” asked the lad, trembling with fear.

“Your conscience is quite wakeful, my boy. That was one of the men closing the windows for the night.”

The boy came over close to me so he could look into my face, and there was a depth of seriousness in his voice when he said, “So you think I ought to give myself up and take the consequences?”

“Three years in prison?” I asked, looking straight at the boy. “Three years in prison!”

The words of Jacob Riis flashed through my mind – “When a boy goes to prison, a citizen dies.”

“If you were in my place you would give yourself up?” he asked me pointedly.

I passed my hand across my eyes. Unlike the boy I had no cap with which to brush away the tears.

“My boy,” I said, “I will be honest with you – I would not give myself up.”

“What would you do?”

“First, I would make up my mind not to steal any more, then I would earn money and pay the man for the bicycle.”

A new light came into the boy’s eyes.

“I did not used to be a thief,” he said, “but they made me mad. Ever since I came from Jamesburg every one watches me. My old boy friends, my father and mother, the police; someone’s eye is always on me. Their suspicions madden me. Sometimes it seems to me as if they dared me to take another risk. One day on the ferryboat from New York I met a detective who had once arrested me. Wherever I went he followed me. I was afraid, so I left the other boys who were with me and went to the stern of the boat. I didn’t tell anyone, but when I was all alone I put my hands down into my own pockets so he would know that I didn’t have them in anyone else’s… I’m not very old, but I know that that isn’t the way to make a bad boy into a good one.”

After a moment I said to him: “if I can arrange with the owner of the bicycle so that you can pay for it in small weekly payments, will you join the Colony and out of the little money you earn settle with the man you have wronged?”

“If you will help me,” returned the lad hopefully, “I will make good to the man and to you.”

The next morning I talked the boy’s case over with an elderly attorney who lives with us, and who knows of his own knowledge the ruin one can bring upon himself if he does not follow proper methods. The old man gladly undertook to settle with the owner of the stolen bicycle, and save the boy from the consequences of his wrongdoing.

The boy worked industriously about the place and in a few weeks had earned sufficient money to settle satisfactorily for the bicycle. He is now working on a neighbor’s farm and says that he is determined to make something worth while out of his life.

“Do you know,” said the old attorney to me recently, "if anyone ever charges us with having compounded a felony in the case of this boy and his bicycle we can defend ourselves on the technical ground that the bicycle was of such slight value that the stealing of it was only a petty crime."

“In this case – the saving of a boy from prison” – I answered him, “if a technicality saves us from a criminal charge which might be brought against us, I for one am perfectly satisfied with such a defense.”

THE PASSING OF SULLIVAN

“Friar Philip, you are the tuning fork from whence my conscience takes its proper tone.”

– Richelieu.

The Passing of Sullivan

 
"What’s the name that grows
Upon you more and more?"
“Sullivan!” – “That’s my name.”
 
 
"Who’s the man who wrote
The opera, Pinafore?"
“Sullivan!” – “That’s my name.”
 
 
"Big Tim, you all knew him;
John L., you know him well.
There never was a man, named Sullivan
Who wasn’t a d – fine Irishman."
 

– George Cohan’s Song, “Sullivan.”

If you thought it was imperative to change your name and you had access to all the Literature – Ancient and Modern – to be found in a Carnegie Library, would you select for yourself the name “Sullivan?”

Evidently our Irish Lad agreed with Cohan – that “it is a d – n fine name” – for when I recognized in him one of my Family of Homeless Men as he walked aimlessly along the city streets, and asked him rather abruptly, what his name might be, his reply – too long considered to be truthful – was, “Frank Sullivan.”

“Pardon me,” I said, immediately realizing that I had no right to ask of him the question and that my thoughtlessness had caused the boy to answer falsely. The outcast, distrustful of his fellow, frequently seeks safety in falsehood until friendship disarms suspicion and Love calls forth the Truth for which it has not asked.

“Frank Sullivan,” I said. “I, too, like the name.”

So upon my invitation he came gladly into our little Family to share the happy freedom of a peaceful home, where others like himself give honest work and receive – not in the spirit of organized charity, but in the true warmth of fraternal love – the hospitality of a welcome guest.

His Irish heart soon caught the meaning of the work, and responded readily in thoughtful service… If our Self Master Colony attracted the attention of some broad-minded man well known in humanitarian work so that encouraged, it carried me and my dreams of uplift higher and higher until the stars were our near neighbors – Sullivan, silent and attentive, followed me in my dreams.

If my work was misunderstood and my best efforts discredited, Sullivan was at my side silently consoling me with his loyalty and friendship.

He grew into my life. I depended upon him and he did not fail me.

“Richelieu,” I would often say, “had his Friar Philip to aid him in his ambitions and I have my good friend Sullivan.”

Then as the months passed, once again, the grass spread its delicate carpet beneath our feet, the trees blossomed sending a perfumed message to us, the bluebird and the thrush called through the open windows until we, busy with our work, were forced to remark that Spring time had come – the beginning of another year… Then the Brothers observed the progress we had made in the twelvemonth… It seemed so much to them, so little to the outside world.

“It looks more prosperous now,” said Sullivan proudly as he observed the automobiles stopping at the door, “you make Prince as well as Pauper do you homage.”

“No, Sullivan, not I; it’s the Truth that all are hungry for – Pauper and Prince alike – and while the few may reach it by meditation and the more by prayer, the most of common clay like you and I must reach it by service.”

“I never quite understand you when you speak,” he said, “I never could read those dry old books however much I tried… But by the way, I wonder if we have blankets for the new arrival who just came in.”

For the Stranded Sons of the City come often to join our Family and share our simple hospitality.

“Sullivan,” I said one day, “this work is going to grow and grow… When we have won I want you to share the credit with me – you will remain, will you not?”

Then receiving no reply, I turned to look and he had gone – gone to offer his blanket to the new guest.

“Yes,” I heard him say, “I have some extra covers on my bed you may have.”

"Another falsehood. Sullivan, you should always speak the truth." For the nights were cold and the blankets none too many. And yet since many prayers are lies, why may not some lies be prayers? “Maybe in your dark purgatory, my Irish lad, these little falsehoods of yours will be counted as prayers.”

One afternoon a letter came for my friend – in a young girl’s rather labored writing – he had received many such, and as I gave it to him I smiled a little. To him I had always been an indulgent Father – for a boy and girl will love, even though he or she may be our favorite child.

That night when the day’s labor was over, Sullivan came to me, asking if he could talk to me. It was a strange request, for he never seemed to wish to talk, and I knew that something had moved him deeply.

“You know my name is not Frank Sullivan,” he asked.

“Yes, I know,” I answered.

“But did you know I was married?” he inquired.

“What, a boy like yourself married?” I asked.

"Yes, I have been married over two years and have a little girl a year old. The letters that I have received have been from my wife Josephine. She and I ran away and were married, but on our return her father wouldn’t accept me. He said I was not worthy of his daughter – and no doubt he is right. He is wealthy and I could not support her in the way to which she is accustomed. So I was forced to leave her. But Josephine and I couldn’t forget.

“All these months she has been working to interest her father in me, and now the baby is a year old, he has decided to help me… We – Josephine and I – knew he would soften in time; you see he, too, loves Josephine and the Baby. So I want to go to them.”

“Yes,” I said simply, for a sense of approaching loss had robbed me of my pretty speeches.

“When you met me, I didn’t know where to go, nor what to do,” he said.

“Yes.”

“I have flattered myself I have been some help to you in starting your work. Tell me have I made good to you?”

“Yes.”

“I shall try to make good to Josephine’s father.”

“Yes.”

Then in a few moments he said:

“Now that it is time to go from you, I hate to leave you and the boys.”

“But you must go,” I said, “your wife and child have the first claim.”

“Josephine wanted me to ask you for two or three rugs that the boys weave. We want them for our new home.”

“You may have them.”

And I took him by the hand, “Good-by, Sullivan.”

“Not Sullivan anymore, but McLean,” he replied.

As he turned away he said half regretfully, “It is the Passing of Sullivan.”

“I wonder if Richelieu, after all, lost his Friar Philip?” I asked myself as I waved my hand in farewell to him.