THE WICKED 
 JOHN GOODE 
 
 ^HORACE WINTHROP^ 
 SCANDLIN
 
 
 " TT7HEN I was a child, I spake as 
 '' a child, I understood as a child, 
 I thought as a child; but when I be- 
 came a man, I put away childish 
 things. 4 
 
 "For -now we see through a glass, 
 darkly; but then face to face: now I 
 know in part; but then shall I know 
 even as also I am known." 
 
 I COHINTHIANS 13:11,12
 
 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 HORACE WINTHROP SCANDLIN
 
 JOHN GOODE
 
 THE WICKED 
 JOHN GOODE 
 
 BY 
 
 HORACE WINTHROP SCANDLIN 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 THOMAS MOTT OSBORNE 
 
 AND AN EPILOGUE BY 
 
 REV. J. G. HALLIMOND 
 
 SUPERINTENDENT OF THE BOWEBY MISSION 
 
 NEW YORK 
 THE CHRISTIAN HERALD
 
 COPTRIGHT, 1917, 
 BY GEORGE H. DOBAN COMPANY 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1916, 1917. BT THE CHBISTIAN HERALD 
 PRINTED IN THE tTNTTED STATES OF AMERICA
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 RECALLING my early reading of ^Bsop's 
 Fables, I always enjoyed the Moral at the 
 end of each story; for then I felt quite 
 sure I had understood; and I liked to be 
 quite certain of that. 
 
 In that most delightful of nursery clas- 
 sics, "Alice in Wonderland," one of the 
 characters gravely remarks: "Every- 
 thing's got a moral if only you can find it." 
 I confess to an increasing desire, as the 
 years advance, to find the moral of things. 
 
 In the story of John Goode one can 
 find several good morals, but the one that 
 appeals most to me might be worded thus : 
 Take care of the boy and the man will 
 take care of himself. 
 
 Do what we will, there will always be 
 
 21326BS
 
 vi INTRODUCTION 
 
 need of correctional institutions to care 
 for those who, for some reason or other, 
 cannot or will not play the game of life 
 according to the rules laid down by the 
 community "Society Misfits.'* Whether 
 it is their fault, or the fault of their ances- 
 tors, or of the environment, matters little 
 to the public which suffers from their de- 
 structive activity. When the law lays its 
 hands upon these mischief-makers it sends 
 them to some institution; and when they 
 make trouble there we call them "incor- 
 rigibles," thus assuming that it must be 
 the fault of the inmates rather than of 
 the institution. 
 
 
 
 John Goode, at the age of ten, was an 
 "incorrigible"; so he tells us. But was 
 he? Suppose he had found, in one of the 
 institutions to which he was sent, an in- 
 telligent system which would have stimu- 
 lated his sense of honour and his capacity
 
 INTRODUCTION vii 
 
 to bear responsibility, as well as a super- 
 intendent who was a sympathetic teacher; 
 can one doubt that the inherent strength 
 and goodness of the man, which at last has 
 seized upon him and now dominates him, 
 would have emerged then? Are we to 
 suppose that the sacred fire cannot be 
 kindled in these men until the soul has 
 been smirched ? Perhaps if I had not seen 
 young boys as incorrigible as John Goode 
 ever was at the age of ten, turned by 
 humane and sensible treatment into good 
 and useful citizens, I should think other- 
 wise ; but having beheld with my own eyes 
 the gradual but complete reformation of 
 many such youthful delinquents, long be- 
 fore I saw the same thing among the adult 
 prisoners of Auburn and Sing Sing, I 
 know that there was no reason for John 
 Goode's early failure to reform, except 
 the stupid maladministration of the insti- 
 tutions which received him bad and made
 
 viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 him worse. It is only another case where 
 "Man's inhumanity to man makes count- 
 less thousands mourn." 
 
 
 In the course of time John Goode re- 
 formed. But the reform of an individual 
 criminal here and there is no new thing. 
 It may happen, and has happened, in any 
 one of several ways among them the way 
 it happened to John Goode. But one of 
 the important lessons to us is that it did 
 not happen through the agency of any 
 one of the institutions in which he was 
 placed. Every one of them made a fail- 
 ure of him. As the event showed, he was 
 good material all the while; yet so far as 
 society's official agencies of reform were 
 concerned he was the worst for all of 
 them. And such conditions should be a 
 matter of shame to us. Think of the many 
 years of life wasted and worse than 
 wasted, in which the man's strength might
 
 INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 have been used for the benefit of society, 
 instead of towards its destruction! Also 
 think of the thousands whom the light 
 never strikes as it struck John Goode. 
 
 The chief moral, therefore, which I find 
 in this story deals with the obligation that 
 is upon us to reform the reformatory in- 
 stitutions to which our little John Goodes 
 are sent and which are now little else than 
 feeders to our state prisons. Every state 
 has juvenile refuges and children's pro- 
 tectories and industrial schools and refor- 
 matories. I have heard of very few which 
 allow the children enough initiative to en- 
 able them to prepare themselves thor- 
 oughly and efficiently for life. We swing 
 from brutality to benevolent paternalism ; 
 and while the latter is pleasanter, it is 
 almost as harmful. 
 
 In the meantime, let us be grateful that 
 we have occasional John Goodes, strong
 
 x INTRODUCTION 
 
 enough to seek and find God in spite of 
 the barriers we ignorantly and stupidly 
 place in their way. 
 
 THOMAS MOTT OSBORNE.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION BY THOMAS MOTT OSBORNE v 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I MY START 15 
 
 II AN ELEVEN- YEAR-OLD RUNAWAY! 27 
 
 III MY FIRST ARREST AGE ELEVEN 33 
 
 IV IN NEW YORK AND IN TROUBLE 
 
 IN ONE NIGHT 44 
 
 V DOING MY FIRST "BIT" ... 47 
 
 VI IN WHICH I AM BOUND Our . . 54 
 
 VII ON BOARD SHIP BOUND Our . 63 
 
 VIII IN WHICH I MEET MY AUNT . 67 
 
 IX Now A PROFESSIONAL THIEF . 71 
 
 X GETTING IN RIGHT 76 
 
 XI IN WHICH I MARRY .... 79 
 XII IN WHICH I BEGIN TO SLIDE DOWN- 
 HILL FROM WHICH THERE IS BUT 
 
 ONE PATH BACK 85 
 
 XIII MY LAST PRISON TERM ... 93 
 
 XIV AT THE BOTTOM OF THE BOTTOM . 102 
 XV JUST BEFORE I TURNED! . . . 110 
 
 XVI IN WHICH I FIRST VISIT THE BOW- 
 ERY MISSION . 117
 
 xii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAOt 
 
 XVII HARD MANUAL LABOR A NEW 
 
 SENSATION 127 
 
 XVIII I JOIN THE BROTHERHOOD AND 
 
 MEET DR. HALLIMOND . . . 138 
 
 XIX Our OF WORK 143 
 
 XX IN WHICH I FALL 150 
 
 XXI IN WHICH I SUFFER As NEVER 
 
 BEFORE 162 
 
 XXII IN WHICH Is HELL .... 177 
 
 XXIII TOGETHER AT LAST .... 186 
 
 EPILOGUE BY REV. J. G. HALLIMOND 203
 
 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE
 
 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 MY START 
 
 IT was cold and sharp with wind and 
 the snow crunched crisply underfoot as 
 host and guest entered the grounds of a 
 modest and comfortable country home. 
 The log fire in the cozy living room hurned 
 cheerfully and cast a soft, mellow light 
 halfway into the room as the two men 
 dropped into huge leather chairs inviting- 
 ly placed before it. They awaited the call 
 to dinner. Weary and footsore they were 
 after a five mile jaunt from the club where 
 they had spent the morning. 
 
 With keen appetites the two men par- 
 took of a roast and its fixings in silence. 
 
 15
 
 16 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 Each seemed absorbed with his own re- 
 flections. Reaction after the walk per- 
 haps, or was it the season? It was the 
 last day of the year. Was it the year they 
 were about to leave behind, the years they 
 had left behind, or the year they were 
 about to enter of which these two men 
 were thinking? At any rate, their silence 
 remained unbroken. They seemed to un- 
 derstand these two men the silence 
 seemed as satisfying as the meal. 
 
 Coffee and cheese were served at a small 
 table in front of the fireplace amid the 
 still unbroken silence. And as if to hold 
 unbroken their reverie they settled deep 
 down in their chairs. 
 
 The guest was massive a giant of New 
 England origin developed into rugged 
 manhood by a strenuous early life in the 
 far and middle West. Close cropped hair 
 grey and deep facial lines indicated 
 his age as sixty-five, but the huge unbent
 
 MY START 17 
 
 frame and the steel like muscles of the 
 big limbs seemed not more than forty. 
 The high and heavy forehead and the 
 overhanging brow bespoke intellect. The 
 keen, steel blue eyes spelled determina- 
 tion. Yet those eyes had a soft, kindly 
 look, one that invited confidence. It was 
 a look not at all like what one would as- 
 sociate with the rest of the portrait. A 
 square protruding chin completed the pic- 
 ture of a man who could and would in- 
 dulge and who had indulged his every 
 desire. 
 
 The guest drew from his pocket a pack- 
 age of papers and extracted a typewrit- 
 ten letter which he read and re-read many 
 times. 
 
 "That's an invitation to speak at a 
 Men's Club," he said quietly as though 
 continuing aloud a mental conversation. 
 
 "I've done a pile of thinking ever since 
 it came. Last night Dr. Hallimond asked
 
 18 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 me to be sure and accept it. Of course 
 I'll do anything he asks. 
 
 "As I look back sometimes like to-day, 
 for instance it seems as though I must be 
 dreaming or as though Aladdin had 
 crossed my path. Just think of all the 
 friends I've got. Just think what you've 
 all meant to me and who you all are 
 business men, doctors, lawyers, ministers, 
 editors, scores of you, and look at me! 
 
 "I'm a porter, ten hours a day, eleven 
 dollars a week, 52 years old and and 
 The sentence remained unfinished. 
 
 I hesitated about replying, for I knew 
 well the man and his manners. If I spoke 
 the wrong reply I would divert the trend 
 of his thoughts. So I kept silent, know- 
 ing instinctively I was to hear again as 
 remarkable a story as was ever told a 
 story of absolute truth and one that would 
 do both teller and hearer much good.
 
 MY START 19 
 
 And then John Goode began and told 
 me for the second time this tale. 
 
 "I was two years old when my parents 
 took me from Massachusetts to a silver 
 camp, the town of Caribou in the northern 
 part of the state of Colorado. She my 
 mother was a good woman. My father 
 was a fighting, whiskey-drinking Irish- 
 man, as irritable when sober as he was 
 cruel and vicious when drunk. I very 
 rarely saw him when he was sober. He 
 was a bad acter and had left Canada 
 some years earlier just in time to escape 
 the noose in a good stout rope. The town 
 was sixty miles from the nearest railroad 
 and the only Bible it contained was my 
 mother's. My mother also had the dis- 
 tinction of being the only woman in that 
 camp in the early days. 
 
 "Before long other children were born
 
 20 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 to my parents and as my mother's duties 
 were many besides caring for her children 
 I need not tell you that my early training 
 was a totally minus quantity. My par- 
 ents kept a boarding house for miners and 
 you can easily imagine the environment I 
 found myself in and how much attention 
 my mother could give to us. There sim- 
 ply was no discipline. I grew up that's 
 all. 
 
 "In those days a mining camp was no 
 fit place for children. All that these 
 camps knew was rough work, rough peo- 
 ple, rough times. Everything was hard. 
 
 "I'll never forget how in two winters 
 two of my younger brothers and one sister 
 died. The men, my father and a friend, 
 built tiny coffins out of pine soap boxes 
 which I fetched from the store. In these 
 crude, rough, unlined affairs they placed 
 the little bodies and then nailed on the lids. 
 In each instance the death occurred in
 
 MY START 21 
 
 winter and the frost was deep in the 
 ground. Before the graves could be 
 opened huge fires were built on the select- 
 ed spots. We waited, my mother, father 
 and me with a few friends till the ground 
 thawed out. No stone or wood marked 
 these graves. No enclosure protected the 
 little bodies. Soon even the little mounds 
 had disappeared, and not long after that 
 the incidents themselves were forgotten, 
 for it was work, work, work of the hard- 
 est sort, with no time or place for senti- 
 ment or sorrow. 
 
 "Nor was there time or place for disci- 
 pline. When we were well we kept out of 
 the way. When we were sick we were a 
 trouble, but in the crude manner of the 
 day and place we were cared for and re- 
 stored to health or we died. 
 
 "Had there been time for discipline it 
 would have had no effect on me. My 
 father blocked all eff orts at anything but
 
 22 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 work. The only times he noticed me was 
 when I crossed him in some childish way 
 and then he beat me unmercifully. I soon 
 learned that it was safest to keep out of 
 his way, and thus it was that I also learned 
 to know what "father" meant. My ha- 
 tred of him grew apace while my love for 
 my mother if I knew then what love 
 meant deepened. I remember her as a 
 meek, quiet, sorrowful woman a woman 
 of few words. She always shielded me as 
 best she could, from my father and cov- 
 ered up my misdeeds. The beatings he 
 gave me hurt her as much as they hurt 
 me. I can vividly remember her pleading 
 with him to be merciful as he brought a 
 stick down on my bare back, blow after 
 blow. Sometimes after she had lied to 
 save me, a neighbor would tell him, and 
 then I would pay dearly for my wrong 
 and for my mother's intended kindness. 
 "By the time I was seven I had learned
 
 MY START 23 
 
 well the need of keeping out of my fa- 
 ther's sight and I had learned still better 
 how to take care of myself. I had done 
 my first stealing before I was five years 
 old. I had helped myself to money from 
 the cash drawer of the only store in camp. 
 Why shouldn't I? I didn't know it was 
 wrong! All I knew was that I couldn't 
 get candy at home. There most of the 
 money went for whiskey. No one saw me 
 steal the first time or the second time, so 
 no one scolded me. No one beat me for 
 stealing, so it couldn't be wrong, my child 
 mind reasoned. 
 
 "At ten I was incorrigible! I had felt 
 my own power. I had experienced every 
 sensation, good and bad, the town was 
 able to supply. Caribou had become too 
 small and my father too cruel. I had 
 never been to school, for there was no 
 school to go to! And so I reached the 
 age of eleven a liar and a thief!
 
 24 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 "With that year came the most brutal 
 beating a boy ever received. It developed 
 into a fight father and son. I was well 
 put up and well versed with my hands and 
 he was beastly drunk and mad. With 
 that beating came an instant determina- 
 tion to run away. Never for an instant 
 would I regret leaving home my broth- 
 ers and sisters my father and mother. 
 What were they to me? Had I not shift- 
 ed for myself all my life? I could con- 
 tinue to do so. 
 
 "I walked the sixty miles to the rail- 
 road, to the then little wooden city of 
 saloons, gambling houses, and dens of ill 
 repute called Denver. It was fed then 
 by but one railroad the old Kansas Pa- 
 cific, now the Union Pacific. 
 
 "I remember the thrills as they chased 
 themselves up and down my spine when 
 from a mountain top, afar off, I caught 
 my first glimpse of the city.
 
 MY START 25 
 
 "It was a walk I'll never forget. Bears 
 and Indians and wolves were plentiful, 
 and it was a trip that would test the nerves 
 of the bravest boy. The long, long day- 
 light hours and the dreadful, fearful 
 thought of those surely coming nights 
 with inky, inky blackness. . . . But little 
 did I realise that the blackness of those 
 black nights on that runaway journey 
 were as broad daylight compared to the 
 blackness of the life I was slowly but sure- 
 ly walking into. 
 
 "I was on the road four days and three 
 nights. I slept on the ground two nights 
 and in a deserted mining shack the other. 
 I can distinctly remember the howling of 
 the wolves and how lonely and frightened 
 I was. But not once was I tempted to re- 
 turn to my father. He had taught me too 
 well his lessons. All during the trip I 
 had been fearful lest he should seek me,
 
 26 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 knowing, of course, that Denver was the 
 only place to which I could head. 
 
 "I wonder if he made any effort to find 
 me? I wonder what my mother thought 
 and how she felt? Never once since I 
 passed through the camp on my way to 
 the railroad have I seen my father nor 
 even heard of him. He must have long 
 since passed over the Great Divide, for 
 his manner of living fifty years ago could 
 only have meant an early end. I have 
 seen my mother only twice since and she 
 too, no doubt, has passed to her reward. 
 All that I ever knew of her life was hard, 
 cruelly hard. No woman could stand it 
 long.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 AN ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD RUNAWAY I 
 
 "ON leaving the mountains and drop- 
 ping onto the plain in which is Denver 
 I proceeded slowly, walking twice around 
 it before entering or speaking to any one. 
 After I had sized up the place, I singled 
 out what looked to be a boarding house 
 and applied for a job. My surmise proved 
 to be correct and I was set to work at once 
 washing dishes. I didn't like the place 
 nor the work, which was the first I'd ever 
 done, and so after three days I beat it. 
 As nothing had been said about wages, 
 none were due me. 
 
 "I went to the railroad yard and picked 
 up an acquaintance with an engineer who
 
 28 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 took my cock and bull story in whole. 
 He was a good man and readily consented 
 to my riding in the caboose of his freight 
 leaving that day for Kansas City. My 
 reception on the train of fifty odd freight 
 cars and one caboose was cordial. My age 
 of course was responsible for that. 
 'Where yer going, son?* 
 
 ' '.Where yer been?' 
 
 " 'Yer hungry?' 
 
 "The ice was broken. They took me in 
 and shared their grub and bunks with me. 
 Here I again experienced what I now 
 know to be kindness. It made me feel 
 queer. Here were all these rough look- 
 ing, dirty men and no one hit me no 
 one was drunk. They told me stories of 
 railroading as it was done in those days, of 
 holdups, of wrecks, and my blood fairly 
 raced through my system, propelled by 
 the beats of a little eleven year old runa- 
 way heart.
 
 A RUNAWAY! 29 
 
 "I'm not telling you this for sympathy, 
 God knows I'm not! I'm telling it to you 
 so that the next time you are told of a man 
 who is a criminal and who will never be 
 anything else, remember my story and of 
 the inherent good there was in me and is 
 in every other human being, of how that 
 little bit of goodness was kindled into 
 flame of how that little flame was nursed 
 until it could keep aglow alone. Remem- 
 ber my start in life, perhaps the other fel- 
 low's start was like mine. I was as yel- 
 low a cur as ever lived a man couldn't 
 be more yellow and yet I had what every 
 mortal has an inherent grain of good- 
 ness that's God-given and which no man 
 has the right to deny. 
 
 "In four days the train pulled onto a 
 siding in the freight yards at Kansas City. 
 It had reached the end of its journey. 
 
 "Where was I going? 
 
 "I did not know.
 
 30 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 "I had heard my mother say she had a 
 sister in Massachusetts. I made up my 
 mind then that I would go to her. At that 
 time I had no idea I was different from 
 any normal boy. There had been no means 
 of my knowing that the life I was leading 
 would take me to state's prison or the gal- 
 lows, unless it was checked. I didn't know 
 there was such a thing as a prison and gal- 
 lows. But I learned about them soon 
 enough. Then, however, I was just a 
 healthy boy running away to escape a fa- 
 ther's uncontrollable temper and desire 
 for whiskey. I was on a train of freight 
 cars and the men knew why I was there. 
 They treated me kindly. But three days 
 of kind treatment on a freight train won't 
 alter a boy's character. Perhaps if I had 
 met men on leaving that freight gang, 
 who treated me as they did, this sort of a 
 story would never have been told. But I 
 didn't meet the same sort of men.
 
 A RUNAWAY! 31 
 
 "I met men and boys who like myself 
 couldn't or wouldn't or didn't recognise 
 the difference between right and wrong. 
 I met men whose business it was to teach 
 young boys to steal and pick pockets just 
 as carefully as your boy is being taught 
 how to become a manly man and, just like 
 your boy, I learned my lessons well. I 
 met other men who took these boys, when 
 they had become expert, onto the road to 
 steal and plunder and for other unspeak- 
 able purposes. 
 
 "As I say I learned my lessons well. I 
 was an apt pupil had begun early. My 
 age was with me, for who would suspect 
 an eleven year old boy of being a thief? 
 
 "I didn't stay long in Kansas City. I 
 don't know why, except that way back 
 somewhere in my head was that wish to go 
 to my mother's sister. I beat my way to 
 St. Louis on the Missouri Pacific. Some- 
 times I rode in coaches, more often under-
 
 32 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 neath. Sometimes I begged my food, 
 sometimes I stole to procure it, but the 
 point is I always got it. Back door and 
 front door alike yielded all the food I 
 asked. Always my age and story brought 
 the lady of the house across. And each 
 time I told the story I added more sob 
 stuff. Open windows and cellar doors 
 got me all else I needed. 
 
 "And then the inevitable happened. 
 Why it hadn't happened sooner I can't 
 understand.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 MY FIRST ARREST AGE ELEVEN 
 
 "I MADE St. Louis late at night and 
 forced a window in a stable. Crawling 
 into a warm corner of the hay I was soon 
 fast asleep. Towards morning the owner 
 of the building and a cop appeared. I 
 was picked up for entry and further ac- 
 cused of threatening to set fire to the 
 premises ! 
 
 "The Judge before whom I was ar- 
 raigned tried as well as he knew how, to 
 show me the folly of my ways. I wonder 
 if he had boys of his own. I hope not. I 
 wonder how many other boys had previ- 
 ously been brought before him. I wonder 
 
 how many followed me into his kindly con- 
 ss
 
 34. THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 siderate hands. What a story the history 
 of all those lives would probably make 
 could they now be written. 
 
 "He listened carefully to the charges 
 they preferred against me that one paid 
 officer of the law and that big man, the 
 owner of the stable the charges they pre- 
 ferred against me, an unknown child. 
 
 "Instantly he made up his mind he 
 knew at once just the best way to handle 
 my case how best to put me in the frame 
 of mind not to go into another man's 
 stable to sleep. Why shouldn't this man 
 this judge know what to do with me? 
 Hadn't he been practising on other boys 
 for years? 
 
 "And so this judge this man who had 
 taken an oath to administer justice impar- 
 tially to all who came before him, told me 
 in open court before many people that I 
 was a worthless, vicious boy that there 
 wasn't room for me in his city, and he
 
 MY FIRST ARREST 35 
 
 wound up his tirade by giving me the priv- 
 ilege of leaving the city for good within 
 twenty-four hours or of being sent away 
 for a year. I chose the former. 
 
 "Picture that crime against me! 
 
 "Imagine such a man as that holding 
 down such a job! 
 
 "He practically said to me that morning 
 in court 'You're helpless and worthless. 
 You'll never be any good. You belong in 
 prison, but get out of here. We don't 
 want to clog our jails with the likes of 
 you. Get out of St. Louis. Go some- 
 where else and break the law there not 
 here/ 
 
 "I crossed the river to East St. Louis 
 on a boat. I don't think the bridge had 
 been built then. A freight on the Ohio 
 and Mississippi, now the B. & O., was 
 pulling out and I made it. 
 
 "I got as far as Sandoval, 111., before 
 the crew found me and put me off. Night
 
 36 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 was falling and the men working about 
 the fires let me lie down in the warm sand, 
 where I was soon fast asleep. They evi- 
 dently suspected I was a waif, for they 
 saved scraps of bread and meat from their 
 dinner pails, which I ate with great relish 
 in the morning. Between the time the 
 night shift quit and the day gang went on 
 I was on my way afoot down the railroad 
 tracks. At Odin, about five miles distant, 
 a man stopped me on the main street and 
 asked me who I was and where I was 
 going. He was Levi Meredith, the county 
 surveyor. My size or, rather, lack of it 
 and my dilapidated appearance interested 
 him. I assumed the name of Harry Rob- 
 inson, and told him my parents were dead. 
 He questioned me at some length and 
 finally offered me a home, which offer I 
 accepted. In a week I was sick and for 
 almost a week out of my head. To my 
 knowledge it was the first time I'd ever
 
 MY FIRST ARREST 37 
 
 had a doctor. I was living in their stable, 
 and it was then I got sick and recovered. 
 I lived there five weeks before the wan- 
 derlust overtook me. Mr. and Mrs. 
 Meredith were away the day I left, and 
 before going I emptied the pantry of a 
 batch of gooseberry pies there were 
 seven large ones, freshly baked. 
 
 "I caught a freight and made Vin- 
 cennes, Ind., the end of the division I was 
 riding. It was early in the day, and on 
 the outskirts of the quaint French town 
 I saw a substantial brick house, where I 
 applied for food. The lady of the place 
 made me go to the stable, where she filled 
 a half barrel with warm water and I took 
 a bath the freight of the night previous 
 had been none too clean. After breakfast, 
 and a good one, too, I went to sleep in the 
 barn. About one o'clock a coloured girl 
 from the house awakened me and, giving 
 me a tin pail, informed me that I was to
 
 38 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 go to the raspberry patch and pick berries. 
 The pail I threw away, by way of thanks, 
 and struck out along the tracks of the 
 Terre Haute and Vincennes R. R. It 
 was very hot, and before I had gone far 
 I fell in a faint on the tracks. 
 
 "Just ahead of me was a work train 
 of twelve or fifteen flat cars heavily loaded 
 with sand and railroad ties. In order to 
 side-track for an express the engineer 
 backed his train on top of me. The pain 
 and shock as I was dragged along in the 
 sand and cinders brought me back to con- 
 sciousness and I screamed as men never 
 heard mortal scream before. The brake- 
 beam of the last car, which came on me 
 first, caught my arm and clothing, and 
 instead of being cut in two I was pushed 
 and dragged along. My screams of agony 
 were heard above the noise of the moving 
 train and it was brought to a stop. Men 
 hurried to the spot and lifted me out, torn
 
 MY FIRST ARREST 39 
 
 and bleeding. They put me on a sand car 
 and backed into Vincennes, where I was 
 removed to a hotel and laid out on a card 
 table, where a doctor went over my hurts. 
 Miraculous as it may seem, I was not 
 seriously injured, although the flesh was 
 badly torn from my right arm, both above 
 and below the elbow. A carriage took me 
 four miles outside the city to the poor 
 farm, where I was admitted under the 
 name of Harry Robinson. I am sure if 
 any of the papers of that date remain on 
 file, an account of the accident will be 
 found. The story spread rapidly, and a 
 score or more of people drove out the next 
 week to see the boy who had been run over 
 by a train and had lived .to tell of it. In 
 ten days I was able to be about again and 
 ran away to the railroad, where I went 
 blind baggage, and at Tunnelton, Ohio, 
 the crew found me all but blinded by the 
 smoke and cinders. I was in mighty bad
 
 40 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 shape. They took me off and left me with 
 some railroad men, who, taking pity on 
 me because of my age, fixed me up and 
 fed me up. In a short time I was able to 
 travel. The men then gave me a pass on 
 a passenger train to Cincinnati. 
 
 "I was sick again before I left the train, 
 and, after two or three days of aimless 
 roving about Cincinnati, I was desperate- 
 ly ill with malarial fever. Being a Cath- 
 olic by birth I experienced no difficulty 
 in securing admittance to a Sisters' Hos- 
 pital. I've forgotten the name of the In- 
 stitution, but for two months I lay there 
 seriously ill. Finally when I became con- 
 valescent they transferred me to a Cath- 
 olic Protectory two or three miles outside 
 the city. There a young student for the 
 priesthood became interested in me and I 
 spent a good deal of time in his company. 
 Two or three times he took me to a show 
 in the city. On one of these trips, in the
 
 MY FIRST ARREST 41 
 
 meantime having become restless, I ran 
 away from him and the institution. I re- 
 member how he begged me not to leave 
 him as an escape would count against him. 
 His appeal was useless! He was a kind 
 fellow, for he might have spoken to the 
 policeman who stood near us, and who 
 would have arrested me at once. 
 
 "You mustn't forget that all this time 
 I was stealing everything I wanted from 
 any one I wanted to. I had become very 
 expert with my hands. I could pick a 
 door lock, open a locked window, extract 
 a pocket-book or open a cash drawer with 
 great skill and dexterity. Nothing fright- 
 ened me, nothing stopped me, and yet I 
 hadn't reached the age of twelve. 
 
 "Not liking Cincinnati, now that I had 
 run away from the Protectory, I jumped 
 a freight on the Panhandle and made 
 Pittsburg. On leaving the railroad yards 
 I braced the first man I met and told
 
 42 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 him a hard luck story a bunch of lies, of 
 course. He proved easy, and took me to 
 his house near an iron foundry, of which 
 he was assistant superintendent. Fred- 
 erick Jones was his name. I wonder if 
 he is still alive? He did all for me that a 
 father could have done. He clothed and 
 fed me and insisted that I stay with him 
 till I fully recovered from the effects of 
 the fever. When I was again able to 
 travel he took up a collection for me from 
 among his friends, and with the money we 
 bought a ticket to New York. That was 
 the first time I'd ever paid for a fare on a 
 railroad, and yet I'd ridden hundreds and 
 hundreds of miles. 
 
 "Notwithstanding the fact that in those 
 days a boy with a ready tongue could beg 
 almost anything he wanted, I did compar- 
 atively little of it. It was too tame, it 
 offered no excitement. I much preferred 
 to steal, for that seemed to satisfy me.
 
 MY FIRST ARREST 43 
 
 'Canada Blackie,' that wonderful exam- 
 ple of what 'love' can do for a bad man, 
 said, before his regeneration, that the 
 greatest sensation he ever had in his life 
 he experienced while he held a loaded re- 
 volver to the head of an engineer and or- 
 dered him to stop the train. I know what 
 he meant, for even as a boy I experienced 
 my greatest thrills in my most reckless 
 and daring crimes.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 IN NEW YORK AND IN TROUBLE IN ONE 
 NIGHT 
 
 "ON my very first night in New York 
 I was picked up by a cop. I was charged 
 with a terrible crime sleeping in a hall- 
 way! The authorities didn't know, mind 
 you, whether I was a good boy or a bad 
 boy, or whether I had ever been arrested 
 before, but they locked me in a cell all 
 right. In the morning a chance was given 
 me to tell my story and I told it. I told 
 them I was an orphan with an aunt in 
 Boston. They didn't know whether I 
 lied or told the truth. They made no ef- 
 fort to find out. 
 
 "Without notifying the Boston authori- 
 
 44
 
 IN TROUBLE 45 
 
 ties that they were sending them a young 
 boy and to be on the lookout for him; 
 without waiting to learn whether I would 
 shortly be reported missing from some 
 home in New York, a policeman took me 
 to the Fall River Line and shipped me 
 East, like a barrel of pork. 
 
 "Suppose your little boy should run 
 away, and should later reach the police. 
 Suppose he was foolish enough or wicked 
 enough, call it whatever you will, to tell 
 the police he lived in Boston. Suppose 
 the police did with him as they did with 
 me. Would you feel that such a system 
 was a wise one? It makes a vast differ- 
 ence, you know, whether a man thinks 
 generalities or whether he brings the case 
 right close home. 
 
 "In those days and in much later days, 
 too, such occurrences were common. 
 There was no reason other than custom 
 for dealing with police cases. Everybody
 
 46 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 got the same sort of senseless treatment 
 dictated by custom. And that method 
 came right on down through the years un- 
 altered, until recently such men as Judge 
 Ben Lindsey of Denver began to use com- 
 mon sense and humane methods with re- 
 sults that have astonished a public long 
 asleep, and have saved hundreds and hun- 
 dreds of boys from leading lives of crime. 
 And now an era of common sense and 
 humanity is dawning in our manner of ad- 
 ministering prisons. For years we threw 
 men into our prisons. And what did we 
 release at the end of the term ? Were they 
 better or worse for the punishment? 
 What chance had they to go straight? 
 What does the average individual think 
 of a man who has been branded as a crim- 
 inal? Tell me!
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 DOING MY FIRST "fill" 
 
 "BOSTON proved easy. For about four 
 months I lived high and indulged my 
 every boyish fancy on the proceeds of my 
 stealing. I tackled everything that came 
 within my ken and which looked at all 
 promising. I knew no fear. Desire at 
 once became determination determina- 
 tion at once became action. 
 
 "One day I deliberately walked into a 
 candy store, helped myself to the contents 
 of the cash drawer and got away before 
 the eyes of the astonished proprietress. 
 But I had been too bold, too many had 
 seen the trick and I was picked up, tried 
 and sent away. 
 
 47
 
 48 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 "They took me first to the almshouse at 
 Tewkesbury, a sort of detention station 
 prior to delivery at a reform school. But 
 they didn't know the boy they were hand- 
 ling, and as they made no effort to size 
 me up they paid for their carelessness. 
 On the third day I planned to escape and 
 the next night made a clean 'getaway' and 
 took five other lads with me. All these 
 boys weakened once they got beyond the 
 walls and in a few hours all of them had 
 returned and given themselves up to the 
 authorities. Not me, however ! 
 
 "Daredevil, reckless kid that I was, I 
 at once returned to Boston and stole right 
 and left under their very noses. Five 
 weeks, or thereabouts, thus went on be- 
 fore they caught me, red handed, too, 
 stealing fruit from a freight car. 
 
 "They were more careful in their hand- 
 ling of me this time and saw to it that I 
 was safely landed at once in the State Pri-
 
 DOING MY FIRST "BIT" 49 
 
 mary School near Palmer, Mass. Al- 
 though it was about noon when I arrived, 
 I had managed, quite easily by the way, 
 to get into trouble by night, and then it 
 was that I met Jimmy Lally, the hospital 
 nurse. 
 
 "With the exception of one of the prin- 
 cipal keepers of Sing Sing Prison, he was 
 the most cruel and heartless man I ever 
 knew. Each of them gloried in and 
 thrived on misery and pain and discom- 
 fort in others and neither of them was ever 
 known to allow an opportunity to go by 
 uncancelled. Two men more wholly un- 
 fit for the jobs they held never lived. I 
 know. I served under each. Under one 
 as a boy. Under the other as a man. 
 Who knows better than I know? Who 
 could know better than I know? Each of 
 these men secured his job through politics. 
 Each man held his job through politics. 
 
 "Jimmy Lally looked at me. I wonder
 
 50 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 if he knew I was only 12 years old? I 
 wonder if it would have made any differ- 
 ence if he had known? Two huge brass 
 keys, each nearly a foot long, were sus- 
 pended about his waist by a stout cord. 
 And as he looked at me he slowly drew 
 this cord in until the two big keys came 
 into his hands. He held one in each fist. 
 
 ' 'Jack and Mick can play a trick,' he 
 said. 
 
 "As he spoke the word 'Jack' he 
 brought the key in his right hand down on 
 the top of my head with a resounding blow 
 and as he spoke the word 'Mick' the key 
 in his left hand struck my head an even 
 harder blow. 
 
 "The scalp had broken in two places 
 and blood streamed down my face. 
 
 "This paid officer of the law was re- 
 forming me! 
 
 "You know what hate does for a boy. 
 You know what brutality does for a boy.
 
 DOING MY FIRST "BIT" 51 
 
 I was no exception. I hated that man 
 from that moment. At times I would 
 have killed him had I found the chance. 
 He was a big man and strong. At the 
 time I met him he was about sixty years 
 old. I wonder how many other boys' 
 heads he busted? While I was there it 
 was a frequent event, and he always pref- 
 aced the action with the same remark 
 about 'Jack' and 'Mick/ 
 
 "Nor was he the only brute in charge 
 of us. I was struck full in the face and 
 knocked prostrate by a keeper's clenched 
 fist many times. The assistant superin- 
 tendent, a big, powerful fellow named 
 Tibbetts, set the styles in discipline and as 
 he had been, prior to his appointment at 
 Palmer, a first mate on deep sea sailing 
 vessels, you can imagine how kind, con- 
 siderate and gentle a fellow he was to 
 place in charge of boys with whom any
 
 52 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 results were wished for other than hard- 
 ened, vicious characters. 
 
 "Tibbetts, like the large majority then 
 and now, was a political office holder. 
 
 "I was always a rebel, mind you; al- 
 ways on the wrong side of everything. I 
 needed discipline, and that badly. But 
 every day I stayed at Palmer the chances 
 of my reforming were growing less and 
 less. I possessed and used the faculty of 
 causing more trouble in less time than any 
 boy I ever knew or heard tell of. But 
 each time I got beat up and came away 
 bleeding I added a little more to my al- 
 ready large quota of viciousness. What 
 could you expect if not that? I wasn't 
 old enough to reason that anger and hate 
 and viciousness would get me nowhere. 
 
 "After two visits to the dungeons or 
 punishment cells I did learn to avoid those 
 infractions of rules which meant 'down 
 stairs.' It was too terrible. The dun-
 
 DOING MY FIRST "BIT" 53 
 
 geons and all they meant in that boys' 
 school at Palmer were as terrible and as 
 cruel as those for hardened burglars in 
 San Quenten and Sing Sing in their palm- 
 iest days. Again, I know! 
 
 "Can you imagine the effect of such 
 treatment on the minds and morals of 
 young boys? Thank God that the boys 
 of to-day are being treated in a somewhat 
 more humane manner. Thank God that 
 correctional institutions are now making 
 an effort to correct rather than to crush 
 to build up rather than to tear down. 
 Thank God for such a woman as Mother 
 Booth and for such men as Thomas 
 Mott Osborne, Dean Kirchway, Canada 
 Blackie, Jack Murphy, Donald Lowrie, 
 and others of the new penology! A bright 
 era has dawned and we've all got to keep 
 it going!
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 IN WHICH I AM BOUND OUT 
 
 "AFTER I had been at Palmer about a 
 year, or possibly a little longer after my 
 body was covered with marks and bruises 
 where they had beaten me black and blue 
 to reform me and teach me what love 
 meant, the great state bound me out to a 
 German and his wife at East Hampton. 
 This man, whose name I've forgotten, was 
 the foreman in a suspender factory. As 
 was then the custom I was to remain with 
 him until I was twenty-one, during which 
 time he was to care for me and give me a 
 home. And I in turn was to learn his 
 trade and answer to him in all ways. And 
 so I went to work in his shop. It lasted 
 
 54
 
 IN WHICH I AM BOUND OUT 55 
 
 longer than I had expected it would. A 
 long five weeks went by before I decided 
 that I had learned all I wanted to about 
 the manufacture of suspenders. I made 
 up my mind to beat it. How was I to do 
 it? Instantly the answer came. I was at 
 my bench at the time. I dropped what I 
 was doing and went straight away to the 
 grocer with whom the foreman traded. I 
 told that grocer in a plain, simple manner 
 that my boss had sent me to him to borrow 
 ten dollars until that night. Of course 
 the merchant was sceptical and refused to 
 let me have the money. Instead of letting 
 it go at that (as most boys would have 
 done) I argued with him until he was 
 finally sorry I hadn't asked him for twen- 
 ty. He gave me the ten. 
 
 "I thanked him and left the store. In- 
 stead of walking in the direction of the 
 shop where my boss was, I went in the op- 
 posite direction down the railroad ties
 
 56 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 at that with the ten dollars in my pocket 
 and with the grocer looking at me in open- 
 mouthed amazement. However, he wasn't 
 long in reaching my boss with the story 
 and they lost no time in getting a horse 
 and buggy. They caught me, of course, 
 and brought me back to town. That night 
 after supper we took a second buggy ride 
 and the big front doors of the State Pri- 
 mary School at Palmer closed with a bang 
 at my back and I was again a prisoner. 
 
 "During the few weeks in which I had 
 been away from the School, the Super- 
 intendent had gone and a new man 
 had been appointed in his place. Mr. 
 Bradford was a very different sort. He 
 was kind, naturally. His being a relative 
 of the then Lieutenant Governor of the 
 State accounted no doubt for a man of 
 his temperament being appointed to the 
 School. During the Civil War he had
 
 IN WHICH I AM BOUND OUT 57 
 
 served as a chaplain of a Massachusetts 
 regiment, I believe. 
 
 "Very soon Mr. Bradford began to have 
 serious trouble with me and my record was 
 looked up more thoroughly than ever be- 
 fore. He decided that Palmer was not 
 the sort of a place I required and so he 
 had me transferred to the Home for In- 
 corrigible Boys at Deer Island. 
 
 "At this place I came under Superin- 
 tendent Blackstone. Here I found the 
 food was quite a bit better than at Palmer, 
 but outside of that I had stepped from 
 the frying pan into the fire or even worse. 
 It was an institution for incorrigibles ! 
 They said so themselves! They admitted 
 that each inmate was a hopeless case, so 
 why question it. Why try and find even 
 one soul among them who wasn't ? What 
 was the use of trying to make them better 
 boys? You wouldn't treat a dog one-half 
 as badly as they treated us. You'd be
 
 58 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 afraid the dog would spring at you and 
 tear you to pieces. And the dog would, 
 too, if it got the chance and no onlooker 
 would blame the animal. They had the 
 school at Palmer resembling a kindergar- 
 ten by comparison. If you fell asleep in 
 church you got three or four days in a 
 dungeon on a scant measure of bread and 
 water once in twenty-four hours. These 
 dungeons were dark, damp holes in the 
 cellar, without a bed or mattress. Some- 
 times you got a board to sleep on. There 
 were no toilets, so we used the bucket sys- 
 tem. 
 
 "If an instructor or a guard smashed 
 you in the face and floored you and you 
 happened to crawl to your feet sooner 
 than was expected you got a second smash 
 or a vicious kick. Then after that you lay 
 still! 
 
 "I went through all this! I went 
 through it at a time in my life when a
 
 IN WHICH I AM BOUND OUT 59 
 
 boy's character is most easily swayed and 
 bent and moulded into something very dif- 
 ficult to change as year follows year. 
 
 "However, I had broken laws. I was a 
 thief and I should be punished. The fact 
 that I was only a young lad (as were all 
 the inmates) didn't seem to make any dif- 
 ference as to the kind of punishment they 
 handed out. 
 
 "Blackstone soon discovered that his 
 brutal treatment had but one effect on 
 me. It increased my viciousness and 
 wickedness and so again I was bound out 
 to serve a new master. This time it was 
 to a young farmer whose name I can't 
 recall. The exact location, too, I've for- 
 gotten, although I remember it was a 
 small village on the border between Maine 
 and New Hampshire. 
 
 "The night of my arrival he met me at 
 the train, assumed responsibility for me 
 and away we went. We sat up nearly
 
 60 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 all night in front of a big log fire and 
 talked. He asked me a thousand and one 
 questions about myself and about the jails 
 I'd been in. He called them jails, but the 
 state called them reform schools. I told 
 him all he wanted to know and more. 
 Without realising it I frightened him so 
 badly that when at last I went to bed he 
 sat down and wrote the authorities at 
 Deer Island to come and get me, which 
 they did and so I didn't become a 
 farmer. 
 
 "Back at Deer Island among the in- 
 corrigibles, myself one of them! Back in 
 the dungeon ! Unconscious on the floor 
 knocked there by a paid servant of the 
 law ! And me a young boy 1 
 
 "They simply couldn't stand for me; 
 that was all tiiere was to it. They must 
 get rid of me. This time they bound me 
 over to Sanborn and Boardman Co., of 
 Newburyport, Mass., the owners of the
 
 IN WHICH I AM BOUND OUT 61 
 
 good ship Hiawatha, a two-master in the 
 cod fishing industry plying between New- 
 buryport and Labrador. For them I was 
 to make one voyage and need not return 
 to the Home at Deer Island. 
 
 "And so for the last time I left a Re- 
 formatory re-form a place where a 
 boy's habits, character and thoughts are 
 supposed to be made over again new and 
 fresh and good. 
 
 "Perhaps they did try! 
 
 "Perhaps the fault was all mine! 
 
 "I knew little enough of good the first 
 time I went to a Reformatory, but I knew 
 everything that was wrong when I left 
 my last one! 
 
 "When I was 46 years old after my last 
 prison term I didn't know a bit more 
 wrong than I had been taught or had gath- 
 ered in Reform Schools. I simply had 
 had more experience, that's all. 
 
 "When I stood, unashamed, before
 
 62 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 Judge Cowing to receive a sentence that 
 was to take me to Sing Sing Prison he 
 said to me in effect, 'John Goode, your 
 name had better have been John Bad. 
 You've broken every trust ever laid on 
 you. You were paid to uphold the law 
 you were a policeman, and yet you've 
 broken the law time and time again. 
 You're a bad man; I wish I might give 
 you a longer sentence. You deserve it.' 
 
 "Yes, he was right. But he didn't go 
 far enough, that's all. He might, and I 
 think he should, have told the crowd of 
 morbid people who were eagerly listening 
 that I had received my criminal educa- 
 tion in reform schools : that I was a prod- 
 uct of the then method of handling bad 
 boys.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 ON BOARD SHIP BOUND OUT 
 
 "THE night before the schooner sailed 
 I was delivered to the skipper and locked 
 in a top floor room of his house with the 
 grown daughter of the family on guard 
 outside. 
 
 "I was to sail in the morning on that 
 ship that abiding place of the devil that 
 piece of hell ! I figured anything was bet- 
 ter than the place I had left, so I lay down 
 and went to sleep ! 
 
 "Never so long as I live will I forget 
 the scene on the wharf at sailing time. I, 
 alone, of all who sailed, walked aboard the 
 vessel. Some crawled aboard, others were 
 carried aboard and the rest were thrown 
 
 63
 
 64 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 aboard. Each man had a skinful of booze. 
 It had been their last night ashore for six 
 months to cornel As we were to be towed 
 out of the harbour and sail up the coast 
 light there was no last minute loading or 
 work to do and the men made the most 
 of their time in the neighbouring 'shock' 
 houses. 
 
 "And thus we sailed! At the time it 
 made no great impression on me because 
 that's about all I'd ever seen. But now 
 as I look back at it I sicken positively 
 sicken! You know what the voyage must 
 have been! You've seen both sides of life. 
 Fourteen men with little to do on the run 
 up, more than enough to do while fishing 
 and little to do on the run down. Away 
 from civilisation, away from booze away 
 from women ungovernable tempers 
 vilest of tongues ! 
 
 "I needn't tell you how I was mistreat- 
 ed and abused and struck. I won't tell
 
 ON BOARD SHIP BOUND OUT 65 
 
 you why I was kicked bodily down into 
 the hold of that vessel among thousands 
 of dead fish and the man who did it not 
 knowing whether I was dead or alive and 
 not caring! The point is I lived through 
 it and in six months' time was back home. 
 Home! .What a word for me to use about 
 myself. 
 
 "The skipper gave me an old sou-west- 
 er, a pair of rubber boots and two dollars 
 and I had been paid! I was free! 
 
 "I need not go back to the reformatory 
 for they were through with me. They had 
 reformed me the great State of Massa- 
 chusetts virtually said so in releasing me. 
 And, furthermore, had they not found a 
 place for me where I could prove my fit- 
 ness and prove myself a good boy? Had 
 they not bound me out to the skipper of 
 the good ship Hiawatha? Surely they had 
 done enough ! Had they not left my body 
 covered with marks where they had beaten
 
 66 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 me to teach me the difference between 
 right and wrong? What more could any 
 reasonable boy expect? Yes, I was free! 
 And so out again I went alone to face the 
 world to buck and beat the tides of for- 
 tune.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 IN WHICH I MEET MY AUNT 
 
 "THE old desire to go to my mother's 
 sister again came over me and at once I 
 was on my way. Well do I remember ar- 
 riving at her house and how shy I felt and 
 how I hesitated about entering. Well do 
 I remember how glad she was to see me, 
 how she cried and hugged and kissed me 
 on learning who the big, raw lad in front 
 of her was. 
 
 "How strange it seemed! How awk- 
 ward I felt! How I shrank from her 
 caresses ! It was more than I could under- 
 stand. Other women and girls had kissed 
 me. But not because they were glad to 
 see me. Not because they had learned 
 
 87
 
 68 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 who I was. Why did she ? I know now 
 she loved me but I didn't know then. 
 
 "I had no more than arrived when I be- 
 gan to get uneasy. I remained with her 
 only a few hours. The rooms seemed to 
 suffocate me and the thought of remain- 
 ing inactive and in such small quarters 
 sickened me. 
 
 "At noon time my aunt put a good, big 
 hot meal in front of me. It was then that 
 I told her I must be going on my way. 
 One of the fishermen had told me about 
 Philadelphia and I had decided to go 
 there. My aunt gave me five or six dol- 
 lars, all she had in the house. As I was 
 leaving I remember her looking at my feet 
 and all that remained of the boots I was 
 wearing tied to my feet with coarse string. 
 She called me back and taking off her 
 own shoes gave them to me and I was 
 off!
 
 IN WHICH I MEET MY AUNT 69 
 
 John Goode paused, arose from his 
 chair and strode heavily up and down the 
 room. Violent emotions surged through 
 his huge frame. He stopped in front of 
 his chair. I feared he had reached a point 
 \vhere he could go no further. I was about 
 to speak to change the subject when 
 he resumed his seat, and looking me full 
 in the eyes, said : 
 
 "I remember I was tempted to go back 
 to my aunt late that afternoon.'* 
 
 A far-away look settled over his face 
 and I knew he was thinking of all the 
 years he had lost of all that might have 
 been his had he but heeded the first good 
 temptation he had ever known. After a 
 while he regained his composure and re- 
 sumed: 
 
 "I made Philadelphia on the trucks in
 
 70 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 four days. Part of my money I spent on 
 clothing of which I was in sore need. 
 
 "What a strange thing it is how easily 
 like meets like in this world ofttimes with 
 little or no effort. Immediately I ran 
 into a gang of men who had boys stealing 
 for them both in the city and on the road, 
 and as I knew that well and nothing else 
 I had no difficulty in securing a job and 
 on the road I went. 
 
 "You probably wonder how it was that 
 most of the people I met were thieves 
 working gangs of boys. Wouldn't it have 
 been stranger otherwise? I was riding 
 freights mostly. Such men in those days 
 made their headquarters in or near rail- 
 road yards and they were on the lookout 
 for boys. I was a boy. They knew the 
 type of lad I represented. I knew the 
 type of man they represented. It didn't 
 take long to get wise, for we didn't talk 
 weather, politics or foreign exploration.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 NOW A PROFESSIONAL THIEF 
 
 "!N exactly the same way that I beat 
 my way East as an eleven-year-old boy I 
 now retraced my steps and beat my way 
 West as an experienced and expert thief. 
 I can't tell you how it was that gambling 
 got so strong a hold on me. I had always 
 gambled even as a small boy, but the habit 
 grew on me rapidly now as all evil habits 
 do until all at once I realised that I was its 
 slave I was completely in its grip. So 
 badly had I the habit that instead of steal- 
 ing because stealing satisfied me, I found 
 I was stealing in order that I might have 
 means with which to satisfy my desire for 
 chance for the table, the cards and the 
 horses. 
 
 71
 
 72 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 "By this time I must confess I knew 
 fully the wrong in the life I was leading. 
 I was now beyond fifteen and ignorance 
 could excuse me no longer. My powers 
 of observation were naturally keen and 
 the training they had received had not 
 dulled them any. I had suddenly realised 
 that the side of the fence I had chosen for 
 my path through life was the crooked one. 
 
 "I began to think about it. I began to 
 wonder about people and about things. 
 This was something I'd never done before. 
 It proved mighty interesting. The peo- 
 ple I thought about and the things I 
 thought about were the only people and 
 the only things I knew. I couldn't get 
 outside of my environment and so I didn't 
 change. And I know lots of people to- 
 day who ought to get outside of their pres- 
 ent environment but who can't. 
 
 "I knew the biggest gamblers between 
 New York and Chicago and I frequented
 
 NOW A PROFESSIONAL THIEF 73 
 
 their places. I knew the most daring 
 'yeggmen' the most skilful 'dips' the 
 whole profession in fact. And so when I 
 began to think about people those were 
 the people I thought about. I knew those 
 people were doing dishonest and unlawful 
 things and so when I began to think about 
 things those were the things I thought 
 about. Like thousands and thousands of 
 other folks I did all my thinking along the 
 lines of least resistance ! 
 
 "Heretofore most of my stealing had 
 been done because I needed something 
 food clothes fares or living necessities 
 of one sort or another. Now, however, 
 came the big change. I began to steal as 
 a business, as a profession. And at fif- 
 teen then I had become a professional 
 thief. That means one who realises the 
 wrong when he stops to think about it 
 (which he never does), one who willingly 
 and without duress accepts such work as a
 
 74 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 life task, as a means of accomplishing that 
 which has domination over the mind. As 
 the desire for gambling dominated all else 
 in me I became a professional thief that I 
 might gamble with the proceeds ! 
 
 "What does it matter how many other 
 times I was arrested for breaking the law 
 or how many other prison terms I served? 
 I've told you in detail my life to this point 
 simply because these events took place 
 when I was a boy. And an uneducated, 
 untrained and naturally wild boy of eleven 
 or thirteen or fifteen should not be expect- 
 ed to reason out successfully problems as 
 big as my problems were. It isn't reason- 
 able. As I look back at it all now I can 
 excuse the result I had become at fifteen. 
 From then on, however, I can't excuse it 
 and I make no effort to do so. 
 
 "I want to pass over the next ten or 
 fifteen years quickly but I want you to 
 know them because I want you to know
 
 NOW A PROFESSIONAL THIEF 75 
 
 the sort of a creature I was when I first 
 began to know what life really meant to 
 know what opportunities life gives us to 
 know the joy of being of use and of do- 
 ing for others to know the purpose for 
 which God put me here. 
 
 "Yes, I went to prison again and again. 
 The only reason I am not a murderer is 
 because the bottle I used as a club was a 
 full one and it broke when it smashed his 
 skull. In prison I was punished again 
 and again. And after an absence of about 
 fifteen years New York again became my 
 hangout. 
 
 "I had reached manhood and ten years 
 more physically, I mean. Mentally and 
 morally I hadn't even begun. Each suc- 
 ceeding year my disposition had become 
 meaner, dirtier and blacker. My temper 
 was a thing to dread and my size and 
 strength coupled with it made a combina- 
 tion few men dared question.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 GETTING IN RIGHT 
 
 "SOCIETY owed me a living, I reasoned 
 out and I proceeded to collect it. Noth- 
 ing good got even a look-in at my soul. 
 I hated all men who were honest and I be- 
 lieved there were very few such. Every 
 one I knew was a grafter. My only de- 
 sire was to gamble and I was cheap and 
 dishonest even among my own kind. 
 
 "What thief and gambler is there who 
 doesn't finally locate in New York to stay 
 until it gets too warm for him? And so 
 I came. The crowds of visitors, the ex- 
 citement, the chance for easy money, all 
 these things entranced and held me. Co- 
 ney Island and its adjacent race tracks 
 
 76
 
 GETTING IN RIGHT 77 
 
 thrilled me. It goes without saying that 
 I was a hard drinker a drunk. For a 
 long time I didn't use whiskey, but the 
 day came. After repeated losses my 
 nerves needed something to brace them 
 and whiskey did the trick. Thousands of 
 men start that way. 
 
 "I hadn't been here in New York long 
 before I became acquainted with a bunch 
 of cheap ward politicians the hangers-on 
 to those who governed your city. Thank 
 God their kind is fast disappearing. 
 Events of the past few years have either 
 cleaned them out or compelled them to put 
 on the soft pedal. Things began to come 
 easier. My new friends, each a gambler 
 and drinker, were wise and I lost no time 
 in getting wise too ! 
 
 ".With friends like my new ones, poli- 
 ticians, I became more daring, more reck- 
 less. It was easy to avoid trouble, for in- 
 fluence was bought and sold like any of
 
 78 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 the household commodities you are fa- 
 miliar with. Protection was an article of 
 merchandise like coal or like stocks. The 
 price fluctuated with the conditions. 
 Sometimes it was cheap sometimes ex- 
 pensive, but it could always be had. Some- 
 times it was bought with cash, sometimes 
 with cigars, whiskey and women, and at 
 other times with personal service. 
 
 "I became a part of that side of New 
 York. I aligned myself with the lowest 
 and most despicable end of society and I 
 did it all with a full knowledge of what 
 it meant. 
 
 "It was about this time that women be- 
 came a factor in my life. Women figured 
 largely in the new circle of friends among 
 whom I was now travelling. I mean 
 women not wives 1"
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 IN WHICH I MAERY 
 
 "ABOUT this time I learned of a woman 
 who was employed in the rectory of one of 
 New York's swellest churches on a street 
 in the Twenties. This woman had a bank 
 roll of about two thousand dollars, the 
 hard-earned savings of many years of toil. 
 To me that sounded good. With two 
 thousand dollars I cquld make a killing at 
 the track. The more I thought about that 
 two thousand the more I wanted it. The 
 more I thought about owning it the more 
 I thought about owning the owner of that 
 two thousand also. I laid a wager I'd 
 get her. 
 
 "It was time I married. All my friends, 
 
 79
 
 80 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 the cheap politicians, were married. There 
 were times in the life we were leading 
 when it was a good thing to be known as 
 being married. When it wasn't necessary 
 as a sort of protection they didn't care 
 whether any one knew they were married 
 or not. And then again, a home and a 
 wife were handy, convenient things when 
 one wanted to sleep off a drunk or when 
 one wanted a game of poker. It would 
 be convenient for me to have a wife now 
 and so I promptly set out to get one. 
 
 "Did I love this woman? No, I did not. 
 I couldn't for the life of me have told what 
 it meant to love. And so I deceived this 
 good, pure woman that I might make her 
 my wife, secure her savings and then treat 
 her as fancy dictated, keep her or throw 
 her over. I covered up my past. That 
 was easy for she believed in me. I asso- 
 ciated myself with her church and through 
 her I was made its janitor. It's hard for a
 
 81 
 
 man to believe that any one could be as 
 yellow as I was with that woman. But 
 the fact remains that I was. I married 
 before she even suspected that I drank. 
 Here I was, a lying, drinking, gambling, 
 thieving man, a Catholic janitor of a 
 Protestant Church and the husband of as 
 pure and innocent a woman as ever lived. 
 
 "It's hard to tell a story like this, but 
 it's the truth! That's the thing I had be- 
 come ! That's what years of sin made me 
 that's what sin will make of any one if 
 given time. Not only because it's true do 
 I want to tell it but because through sev- 
 enteen years of the same treatment, yes 
 and worse treatment, that true and brave 
 and loyal little woman stood by me and 
 her marriage vows for better or for 
 worse, they had been I 
 
 "The two thousand was easily obtained 
 and went as easily just as planned. Then 
 we were busted. And so again I went to
 
 82 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 stealing for I had to drink and I had to 
 gamble and that required more money 
 than the church paid me. 
 
 "We were now in a little place of our 
 own, she in the meantime having left her 
 duties in the rectory. The women of the 
 parish, many of them very wealthy, loved 
 my wife and some of them visited her in 
 our little home. I met them both at home 
 and at the church, and I acknowledged 
 their love and their many kindnesses to my 
 wife by helping myself to those of their 
 belongings which pleased my fancy. 
 
 "Sometimes I came home to her regu- 
 larly. Sometimes for days and weeks at 
 a time she didn't know whether I was dead 
 or alive. 
 
 "But she prayed! 
 
 "She prayed for me till the day she 
 passed away. 
 
 "God answers prayer. He answered 
 hers. That's my greatest comfort now!
 
 IN WHICH I MARRY 88 
 
 "And then came a time when she, penni- 
 less and alone, was forced to go out and 
 earn her own living. She could get noth- 
 ing from me and she was too proud to ask 
 for aid at the only other place where she 
 might have expected to find it and where 
 she would have found it. And thus things 
 went on! More and more of the time I 
 was away and one after another of her 
 friends dropped their calling. She would 
 not give me up so they were forced to give 
 us up. 
 
 "When I needed money quickly, which 
 happened frequently, I'd take all she had 
 steal her paltry earnings clean her out 
 of everything of value. Time after time 
 this happened and still she stuck, wishing, 
 hoping, begging, crying, praying that I 
 would change. 
 
 "And me? Yes, I promised! I'd 
 promise anything for money!
 
 84 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 "That then was the sort of husband I 
 made her. 
 
 "There are men to-day doing the same 
 things. I want them to know my story 
 to know that no matter how far down a 
 fellow gets there's a sure road up a sure 
 road to happiness for them and for their 
 wives 1
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 IN WHICH I BEGIN TO SLIDE DOWNHILL 
 FROM WHICH THERE IS BUT ONE PATH 
 BACK 
 
 "THE New York pace in the under- 
 world to which I belonged was a pretty 
 stiff one. It required great nerve force to 
 keep it up. A man needs stimulation in 
 order to stand it long. The life keeps a 
 man up day and night. I was no excep- 
 tion and I needed stimulation. Like all in 
 my class I thought whiskey gave it to me. 
 Before long I was either drunk or half 
 drunk day and night. And then my skill 
 as a thief began, little by little, to disap- 
 pear. I bungled things that I used to get 
 away with easily. My nerve had gone too. 
 
 85
 
 86 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 The sharp, keen edge of my wits had be- 
 come dulled by drink. The days of easy 
 money were gone. It was harder and 
 harder to get. And then came a time 
 when I was forced to go to my friends, the 
 politicians, and ask for a job. 
 
 "There was still enough of me left in- 
 tact so that at times I could be of use to 
 them and I got the job. They made me a 
 foreman in the Street Cleaning Depart- 
 ment. What a fine specimen of a man to 
 be working for the city ! What a type to 
 put in charge of their workmen. How- 
 ever, I was part of a rotten political bunch 
 and I was taken care of just as others, be- 
 fore and after me, were cared for. 
 
 "There on the department things eased 
 up a bit. There was considerable to be 
 had in the way of graft and I wasn't long 
 in getting wise. To most of it, I had been 
 tipped off in advance. The rest I dug up
 
 I BEGIN TO SLIDE DOWNHILL 87 
 
 and developed myself. The biggest clean- 
 up came from the snow. 
 
 "My wife got none of my money, not 
 even my salary. I gambled it all away 
 long before I received it. She was earn- 
 ing what she could in a bitter fight to 
 clothe and feed herself and pay the rent. 
 
 "I pulled myself together temporarily 
 after I had been on the Street Cleaning 
 Department about three years. I went a 
 step higher through the same politicians. 
 
 "All my life, mind you, I had broken 
 the law the law of every state and city 
 I'd ever visited. Law was nothing to me. 
 Those who were paid to uphold the law 
 were nothing to me except grafters. I 
 didn't believe there was an honest police- 
 man in the world. Every one I had known 
 was crooked. Understand me, please, I 
 don't want to cast any suspicion on police- 
 men as a group. I am telling only what 
 I know from personal experience. All of
 
 88 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 my intimate friends among them and 
 among those who in any way contributed 
 to the conduct of the great city of New 
 York were crooks or grafters- in a small or 
 big way, depending only on opportunity. 
 
 "Despite my record and my principles, 
 well known to all who were instrumental 
 in securing my appointment, I was made 
 a member of the city police force in June 
 of 1900. There, of course, I had all sorts 
 of opportunity for inside information on 
 the ponies. I knew all the poolrooms and 
 all the bookmakers. In addition there 
 were always crooks and gamblers anxious 
 to stand in with the cops and thus I was 
 always getting good tips. 
 
 "Never in my life had I gambled so 
 recklessly. I could think of nothing else 
 and did nothing else. In all the time I 
 was on the force I didn't do one honest 
 day's work. I didn't have to. I was in 
 right at first and after that I didn't know
 
 I BEGIN TO SLIDE DOWNHILL 89 
 
 or care what I did for I was nearly dead 
 from drink and all else that went with the 
 life I was leading. 
 
 "It was while on the force and in my 
 uniform too that I escaped being a mur- 
 derer by the smallest possible margin. I 
 had left my beat to get a drink at a joint 
 which was being run by the mistress of a 
 man well up in city affairs. The place 
 was a favourite hangout for members of 
 the force, officers as well as patrolmen. 
 I was drunk at the time. An Italian 
 stood at the bar. We had never seen one 
 another before. He misunderstood a 
 drunken jeer I made to a friend and he 
 called me a name not even a low-down 
 thief would tolerate. Blind with rage I 
 picked up a full bottle of soda, raised it 
 high above my head and brought it down 
 on the top of his skull with all my 
 strength. Again the politicians! They 
 sent me into retirement for three days
 
 90 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 while the affair was hushed up. The man 
 didn't die, although it was five weeks be- 
 fore the doctors would admit that he could 
 live. On the fourth day I returned to my 
 post. Fifty dollars' worth of cigars and 
 liquors squared off my indebtedness to the 
 gang who had covered up for me ! 
 
 "Another man than yourself, one not 
 familiar with the human dregs who popu- 
 late certain sections of New York, would 
 not admit that I could go any lower down 
 the social scale. But I was a long way 
 from the bottom still! 
 
 "Before long the day came when even 
 my friends, the politicians, could not longer 
 afford to cover my tracks to back me up 
 in the front office. Shortly thereafter I 
 was transferred to a precinct on Staten 
 Island. There I went gambling without 
 restraint. My nerves broke completely in 
 two for the first time. I was heavily in 
 debt. My courage was gone and I was
 
 I BEGIN TO SLIDE DOWNHILL 91 
 
 on the verge of D. T.'s; I hadn't a cent. 
 My room rent was due and the landlord 
 was insisting on payment. Had I been 
 able to go to New York I would have 
 stolen or borrowed the few necessary dol- 
 lars from my wife. 
 
 "As I left the station house that night 
 I raised a twenty-five cent loan and 
 bought a vial of poison for a dog I told 
 the druggist but in reality it was for 
 something far worse than a dog. I was 
 through with it all and had decided to go 
 the 'Dutch route.' I wrote a couple of 
 letters, sealed them and then locked the 
 door to my room from the inside. I 
 thought I was a man. I didn't know how 
 big a coward I was. I removed my coat, 
 vest, trousers, shirt and shoes and stood in 
 my underwear with a big flask of whiskey 
 in one hand and the vial of acid in the 
 other. Try as I would I couldn't muster 
 sufficient courage to drink the stuff. A
 
 92 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 dozen times the vial got almost to my lips 
 but no further. Not so the whiskey, how- 
 ever, and I finally fell to the floor in a 
 dead, drunken stupour. In the morning 
 I threw the poison down a sink. That 
 debauch lasted about three days for I 
 made a killing early that day in a pool- 
 room and cashed in about twenty. 
 
 "When I finally returned to my station 
 house I found serious charges, which I 
 could not successfully beat, had been pre- 
 ferred against me. I removed my shield, 
 unbuckled my belt and turned in my gun 
 and stick. I had beaten a dismissal by 
 only a few days!
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 MY LAST PRISON TERM 
 
 "BACK in New York again and without 
 money, without pull, without friends. No, 
 that was not so! I knew there was one 
 who was still my friend, my wife! She 
 had moved and I had some little difficulty 
 in locating her. Then I found that one 
 of her former loyal friends, a member of 
 her old church, was again in touch with 
 her. 
 
 "Jane was glad to see me she cried 
 and implored me to stay with her and to 
 behave myself. This, of course, I readily 
 agreed to do and I did so until she got 
 together a few spare dollars and then I 
 left and took the money with me. I did 
 
 03
 
 94 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 not see her again until I was sentenced to 
 six years at hard labour in Sing Sing 
 Prison by Judge Cowing. 
 
 "With the few dollars she gave me I 
 got beastly drunk. I met an old acquaint- 
 ance who tipped me off to a good thing. 
 I needed money quickly if I was to make 
 use of this information. A car soon 
 brought me to the home of my wife's old 
 friend, this woman who was again be- 
 friending her. On other occasions I had 
 stolen from her, but because of her friend- 
 ship for Jane she had refused to prosecute 
 me. I entered her house and stole an ex- 
 pensive silver service. 1 was caught, tried, 
 convicted, sentenced, and away I went, 
 with my wife promising me her continued 
 love and support and begging me to turn 
 over a new leaf. Again I promised her I 
 would. 
 
 "I was an interesting and strange crea- 
 ture as with nineteen others I was taken
 
 MY LAST PRISON TERM 95 
 
 over the New York Central to Sing Sing 
 to serve my last 'bit.' The fact that I was 
 going to 'stir' didn't disturb me. I felt no 
 shame or remorse over that. Nor did I 
 regret the act for which I had been sent 
 away. My friends had deserted me, the 
 old 'pull,' which had safeguarded me so 
 many times, had been withdrawn, and I 
 was sore. I wanted to get even. 
 
 "One by one the big events in my life 
 passed in review before my eyes. I saw 
 my mother and my father. I saw the 
 Judge who drove me out of St. Louis as a 
 boy. I saw Jimmy Lally and the 'screws' 
 and keepers who had mauled and beaten 
 me in all the different places where I had 
 done time. And then I saw my wife in 
 her poverty and anguish of heart. So far 
 as any effect was concerned I might as 
 well have been thinking of the moon or 
 the stars. All emotion, all feeling of 
 right, all honour, were buried in me.
 
 96 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 Buried under years of dissipation and sin, 
 buried so completely that I was as vicious 
 and heartless a man as ever lived. 
 
 "Life in the various 'stirs' I had been in 
 taught me one thing well to obey rules. 
 Not because they were rules or because it 
 was right to obey rules, but because the 
 powers that made them had sticks loaded 
 at the end with lead, and guns and pistols 
 and solitary punishment cells and the 
 power to deprive me of food and water 
 and all I had was a pair of bare fists. And 
 bare fists against a dozen armed 'screws' 
 didn't stack up good. As a rule prison 
 authorities have no trouble with second, 
 third and fourth termers. They're wise! 
 Their spirit has been broken. It's only 
 the new fellows, the men with spirit and 
 blood, full of life and fight, that cause 
 trouble in prisons ! And instead of taking 
 that spirit and blood and fight and turning 
 it in the right direction they kill it grind
 
 MY LAST PRISON TERM 97 
 
 it out of a man, crush his very soul, make 
 him detest himself for being alive and 
 make him hate with a fury that would kill 
 if it got the chance. And then those men 
 are turned loose and expected to go 
 straight expected to be good ! 
 
 "During the whole of my stay I locked 
 on 'The Flats.' That's the ground floor of 
 the cell house. It's only eighty-two years 
 old and it's only been condemned about 
 eight times. For eighty-two years human 
 beings have been thrown into 'The Flats' 
 where the larger majority, myself one of 
 them, contracted rheumatism. Don't 
 blame the authorities, blame the cell house. 
 The authorities wouldn't give us toilets so 
 why should they give us rheumatism ? Be 
 reasonable, man! The whole system of 
 caring for us was worse than disgraceful 
 it was barbaric. .We were locked in 
 dirty, filthy, vermin-filled cells late Satur- 
 day afternoon. We were kept there all
 
 98 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 night, all day Sunday, all Sunday night, 
 and when the Monday was a holiday we 
 had a 'double header,' as we called it, and 
 were released on Tuesday at 6 a. m. It's 
 impossible for you or any one else who 
 hasn't done a 'stretch' like that to realise 
 what it means. We came out with nerves 
 on edge, ready to fight at anything 
 ready to tear a man to pieces at the slight- 
 est provocation. 
 
 "I got along fairly well because I be- 
 haved myself. Being an ex-cop, I was 
 accepted only by a choice few as being all 
 O.K. Prisoners, as a class, have a motto, 
 'Once a cop, always a cop.' We even 
 made 'book' in the cart and wagon shop 
 where I worked. One of the 'screws' had 
 a 'runner* who kept me informed as to 
 what horses had already won their races, 
 and then we opened up and did a swell 
 business. I had been a stealing, grafting 
 cop had known other grafting cop?
 
 MY LAST PRISON TERM 99 
 
 had seen politicians get rich on graft- 
 knew judges who were grafters had 
 never known even one lawyer who wasn't 
 a grafter, and here on the inside were 
 prison attendants, lots of them, grafting 
 on the inmates. Do you wonder that con- 
 victs as a class doubt society is on the level 
 with them? 
 
 "The public is pretty well informed as 
 to what Sing Sing was in those days. Mr. 
 Osborne has taken care of that. I'd seen 
 lots of filth and rottenness in my day but 
 I'd seen nothing to touch what I found 
 there. The cell house was alive literally 
 with vermin. The stench from those 
 hundreds and hundreds of buckets was 
 awful at all times, and in the heat of sum- 
 mer was almost unbearable it made my 
 eyes feel like they were afire. The food 
 and the tin plates we ate from were rotten. 
 You'll wonder perhaps how anything 
 could make me less of a man than I was,
 
 100 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 but the conditions I've mentioned did do 
 that as they did in the case of every man 
 who lived under them. Such a result was 
 inevitable. 
 
 "The days and weeks and months 
 dragged by and then a year, and another 
 long year started in just the same way. 
 We were rotting. There was not any- 
 where near enough work to keep us busy 
 and so we rotted in those 3% x 6 x 7-foot 
 holes in that pile of granite put there 
 eighty-two years ago for men to suffer in, 
 that their evil ways might be made good 
 ways. What a chance! Finally the day 
 drew near when I could appear before the 
 Parole Board. Mrs. Booth, the 'Little 
 Mother' as she is affectionately called by 
 thousands of 'cons' and 'excons', came reg- 
 ularly to the prison, I attended her serv- 
 ices simply because I could get out of my 
 cell for a short time. And then one day 
 I spoke to her and she offered to help me
 
 MY LAST PRISON TERM 101 
 
 secure my release provided I would do as 
 I should have done long ago. Like I had 
 done hundreds and hundreds of times be- 
 fore, I made a promise on my honour to 
 reform and serve God from then on. 
 
 "And so Mrs. Booth secured my release 
 after a stubborn fight before the Parole 
 Board. 
 
 "Was I thankful and grateful? Yes, 
 just long enough to get clear of the joint 
 -that's all. The 'Little Mother' sent me 
 to Hope Hall where so many of her boys 
 have come to realise what right means and 
 how good it feels to be right where so 
 many of her boys have found God. 
 
 "Like a low-down cur I skipped in a 
 couple of weeks and landed down and out 
 in New York, but this time in a new sec- 
 tion the Bowery. 
 
 "Each month, in my report to the 
 Parole Officer, I lied. It was easy to put 
 it over what did they care?
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 AT THE BOTTOM OF THE BOTTOM 
 
 "JusT as there is but one New York 
 and one Paris and one Venice, so there is 
 but one Bowery! There's no other street 
 in the world like it that I know of. It's 
 peopled with the dregs of humanity from 
 the four corners of the globe good and 
 bad men, but all of them down and out. 
 Down so far that not many of them ever 
 get back. Down so low that there's just 
 one of two things left to do get up or die. 
 
 "The cheap, dirty lodging houses are 
 packed to the doors nightly with these 
 poor fellows, some of whom are there 
 reaping the harvest of their own sowing 
 
 while others there are the cruel victims of 
 102
 
 THE BOTTOM OF THE BOTTOM 103 
 
 circumstances over which they had little 
 or no control. 
 
 "The thief, the 'dip/ the 'yegg,' the 'con,' 
 the black sheep of the well-to-do family, 
 the green-goods man, all of them are there, 
 too old or broken to longer carry on their 
 shady trades. The sick men, young and 
 old, good and bad, they are there too, 
 roaming about, eating and sleeping when 
 and where they can, hoping against hope 
 that the next moment may be their last. 
 The bum is there too, living but never 
 working, and he's there in goodly num- 
 bers. By far the greatest number though 
 are there because of their inability or un- 
 willingness to desert the ranks of Old 
 King Booze. You can't call it alcohol, 
 it's anything but that. Those fellows 
 can't get a 'kick' out of good whiskey and 
 many of them can't get one out of 'third 
 rail.' What a life! 
 
 "There's still another class there and
 
 104- THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 Heaven forbid that it should continue. 
 It's the young class composed of boys who 
 have been unable to resist the call to come 
 to the great city, expecting to find plenty 
 of helping hands and lots of work. Who 
 is there, tell me, to take these boys by the 
 hand? They wind up, after the small 
 purse is gone, on the Bowery. 
 
 "Among that motley frightful popula- 
 tion I fitted into a waiting place. They 
 are always waiting for newcomers down 
 there and they don't have to wait long 
 either that's the greatest pity of it all 
 they come faster than they go. Thus the 
 great change that has taken place in the 
 last few years is accounted for. There 
 was a time when real 'bad men* haunted 
 the Bowery and there pulled down their 
 drag. Not so to-day, for the hard men 
 and the gangs have gone east or west and 
 some north, and left the old street ex-
 
 THE BOTTOM OF THE BOTTOM 105 
 
 clusively for the men nearly through for 
 the man who has failed. 
 
 "Failed! Yes, that's it the Bowery 
 might well be called the Street of Fail- 
 ures! 
 
 "Was I a failure? I wouldn't have 
 admitted it then. I'd soon be back up 
 town. I remember I figured it out that 
 way. 
 
 "While I had been doing my 'bit* up 
 the river I had worked out an elaborate 
 system to beat the ponies and had figured 
 that with $1,537.00 I could beat the book- 
 makers to a crisp. Any one would think 
 that I'd been up against them often 
 enough to know that in the long run they 
 always held the trump card and couldn't 
 be beaten. It takes a long time to teach 
 some people, doesn't it? 
 
 "It seemed as though it ought to be 
 very easy to get $1,500.00. In the old 
 days I could have done it, maybe in a day,
 
 106 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 certainly in a week. But on the Bowery 
 it might take two weeks, I figured. So 
 at it I went. The pickin' was poor, my 
 pep had gone and the 'rot-gut' I'd been 
 drinking for whiskey had taken all the 
 flexibility out of both fingers and brain. 
 * Suckers' were few and far between and 
 when you did get one a 'ten spot' was a 
 big haul. I never really knew how many 
 Ingersoll watches there were until I saw 
 the Bowery worked. I never got the 
 fifteen hundred or anything like it. 
 
 "A night or two ago as I walked up 
 that old sin-soaked sidewalk I passed a 
 party of shimmers men in evening 
 clothes attending an equal number of ex- 
 pensively dressed women. It gave me a 
 start, for do you know the feeling a party 
 like that arouses in the hearts of the poor 
 devils that invest the dives down there? 
 
 "I'll tell you! Picture a back room of 
 a saloon carpeted with dirty sawdust two
 
 THE BOTTOM OF THE BOTTOM 107 
 
 inches deep, spotted here and there with 
 filthy spittoons full and overflowing. One 
 or two yellow gas flames vainly trying to 
 fight a room full of foul, smoke-laden air. 
 Imagine a dozen to two dozen half-dead, 
 half-fed, half-mad, half-clad men lolling 
 and lying around in cheap rickety chairs. 
 Some are dead drunk, some are fighting 
 drunk, while the remainder would like to 
 be drunk only they haven't the price. 
 And then somehow, by means of a never- 
 failing underground system of communi- 
 cation, comes the single word 'Shimmers'! 
 "The swells march in, a merry, laugh- 
 ing crowd, trying hard to act as though 
 they were quite accustomed to it all. They 
 are more careful about ordering drinks 
 than they need be. They are served the 
 best in the house and the boss sees it 
 reaches them 'right.' No petering a lot 
 of drinks like that; it would mean too big 
 a fuss.
 
 108 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 "Some one of the men pulls out a bunch 
 of yellow stuff, settles for the round, and 
 passes the waiter a good fat tip. 
 
 "In that roll that's flashed there's often 
 more money than some of the poor devils 
 in the room have seen in a year. Those 
 not too drunk to comprehend, grip the 
 tables in front of them while beads of per- 
 spiration form in the hollows of their 
 hands. Their eyes light up with anger, 
 resentment and hate. But no further 
 sign is given. An attempt to pull any- 
 thing off on a bunch like that would mean 
 serious trouble 'down town.' It's better 
 to wait till they leave the joint and the 
 men separate into ones and twos after 
 leaving the women. 
 
 "I've felt all this many times. I re- 
 member one party in particular headed by 
 a fresh young guy who thought he knew 
 it all. He began by ordering, in a loud 
 voice, a round for the house. He flashed
 
 THE BOTTOM OF THE BOTTOM 109 
 
 too big a roll! Next morning we read in 
 the papers of a young fellow answering 
 his description, having been found uptown 
 in a hallway cleaned out completely and 
 still in a stupour. He never knew who 
 did it, nor did I. 
 
 "Slumming is not dangerous business 
 now, but it's dirty business though. If 
 those people who practise it only knew the 
 temptations they stir up and the sad and 
 bitter memories they quicken in those poor 
 fellows they would keep away or approach 
 the problem in a more serious frame of 
 mind.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 JUST BEFORE I TURNED! 
 
 "I FOUND a wholly new kind of work 
 on the Bowery the lowest down and 
 dirtiest occupation it is possible to under- 
 take. It just suited me and the low-tide 
 condition of manhood I was in. A thief 
 or a 'yegg* couldn't be bought to do it. 
 Most 'bums' would turn up their noses at 
 it and yet it was good pay. It was strike 
 breaking scab stuff and the conditions 
 under which it was done and the way we 
 were handled would sicken a pig. But it 
 didn't sicken me. I liked it! Nobody 
 with any sense would ask a real man to 
 do it they looked up fellows like myself, 
 
 and we were not a few. It didn't require 
 no
 
 JUST BEFORE I TURNED! Ill 
 
 much urging to make me join the Pinker- 
 tons and go out strike breaking. My first 
 job was at the big strike in Philadelphia. 
 
 The drunker we got the less we cared 
 how dangerous was the situation and the 
 better our bosses liked it. So they gave 
 us all the stuff we wanted. We had quan- 
 tities of it in the car barns and on the cars 
 themselves. Any time at all, anywhere, 
 we were ready to fight to a finish with- 
 out the slightest urging. That was part 
 of the game and was what we were 
 brought down to do, and so long as there 
 was any strike left there was plenty of 
 booze left. 
 
 "After things had quieted down suffi- 
 ciently we would be paid, and well too, 
 and then escorted to the railroad in a 
 bunch and sent back to New York. It 
 would never do for Philadelphia to have 
 us turned loose there and it would go
 
 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 badly with each one of us individually if 
 we stayed. 
 
 "I always got back from a trip like that 
 with a good-sized roll and so long as it 
 lasted I was busy day and night drinking 
 and gambling a never-ending succession. 
 
 "McGuirk's Suicide Hall, The Alliga- 
 tor, and Nick Solomon's, beside a dozen 
 others, became my hangouts. They were 
 the hardest and lowest down dives in the 
 city and I was probably the hardest and 
 lowest down man in the city again like 
 met like! 
 
 "It was dangerous business for a 
 stranger to show a bill in any one of those 
 dumps. I've 'rolled' men for as little as a 
 dollar. .When a man's been 'rolled' he's 
 been cleaned out of everything convertible 
 quickly into booze and then thrown out the 
 side door into the gutter, probably to be 
 picked up by a cop and arrested for in- 
 toxication.
 
 JUST BEFORE I TURNED! 113 
 
 "I wonder how much the public knows 
 about those dives. Very, very little I fear. 
 At the time of which I speak the authori- 
 ties knew all about them. After a big 
 haul the thieves would return to these 
 dumps and then divide up with the repre- 
 sentatives of the law who had been tipped 
 off and who had shut their eyes and closed 
 their mouths ! 
 
 "I wonder if you realise how they chase 
 a man's coin? I wonder if you know what 
 little chance a man has of coming out of 
 one of those places with so much as a 
 nickel left ? After one o'clock in the morn- 
 ing they used to let us sleep all night in 
 the back room if we had the price of a 
 drink left. And the stuff came then, two 
 hookers to the nickel. You hadn't a 
 chance in the world of holding back a dime 
 for a 'pad/ Many and many a man is 
 forced to 'carry the banner,' that is, walk 
 the streets all night. They can't hold back
 
 114. THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 the price of a 'pad,' or even a nickel for 
 two of those early morning drinks, with 
 the privilege of sleeping in the back room. 
 
 "When it wasn't too cold it was much 
 more desirable to 'carry the banner' than 
 to sleep on a 'pad' in those rotten, foul- 
 smelling ten-cent lodging houses which 
 line the Bowery for blocks. They are 
 breeding places of crime, vermin and dis- 
 ease. They are everything they should 
 not be and not one single thing they 
 should be. 
 
 "There's big money in it the way 
 those houses are run. Why doesn't some 
 wealthy man or group of men equip a ten- 
 cent lodging house with room say for five 
 hundred men? Keep it clean and restrict 
 it rigidly to men not drunk. Provide 
 showers with hot and cold water. I'd 
 guarantee to keep it full all the time with 
 honest, sober, deserving men, men who 
 would make good if they could find a place
 
 JUST BEFORE I TURNED! 115 
 
 where they could sleep clean, and where 
 they would be out of drink's temptation. 
 I know of many cases where men who are 
 'off the stuff' and putting up a good fight 
 have been awakened by some one in a 
 nearby bunk inviting them to have a drink 
 from an outstretched bottle. What chance 
 has a fellow of quitting the stuff when 
 he is reduced to living in joints of that 
 calibre? 
 
 "The right kind of a house could be run 
 for ten cents per 'pad' and no one would 
 lose a penny they might even make a 
 little! There certainly must be men, ten 
 of them, who would be willing to form a 
 company and subscribe, say twenty-five 
 thousand dollars each, for a purpose like 
 that! It's the biggest need the Bowery 
 has to back up and make more effective 
 the rescue work now going on there. 
 
 "Where are these men? Who are they? 
 Tell me!
 
 116 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 "How many of your friends or the gen- 
 eral public realise that there are fully 
 thirty thousand men in New York City 
 who, though honest and willing to work, 
 can't earn more than seventy-five cents a 
 day? Most of these men are down town 
 and the problem they present is a difficult 
 one to solve.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 IN WHICH I FIRST VISIT THE BOWEEY 
 MISSION 
 
 "AFTER one of these strike-breaking 
 jobs which had netted me a considerable 
 sum of money, I returned to New York 
 and began to spend it. It proved to be 
 my most fearful debauch. It lasted for 
 many days during all of which time I was 
 a 'good fellow/ If you've got a dollar to 
 spend you're a good fellow down there 
 but when you've got a 'roll to blow' you 
 meet scores of 'friends' you've never seen 
 before. They come and go with the 'roll' 
 like wolves with the stray sheep. I came 
 to my senses finally, alone and penniless, 
 in a back alley- way. I had a hazy feeling 
 
 117
 
 118 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 that I hadn't spent or gambled all the 
 money I'd started in with the night before. 
 I was sick, too, which added to my suspi- 
 cions that my 'roll' had been lifted.' Some 
 one had reached me! 
 
 "A man in the condition I was in that 
 morning needs, if ever he needs it, a good 
 stiff drink. It quiets him and if he can't 
 get it he is liable to go clean crazy. Men 
 like that are given a drink and at longer 
 and longer intervals other drinks. Other- 
 wise they would injure themselves or 
 others. Somebody gave me a 'hooker.' It 
 pulled me together a bit. And then a 
 bartender where I had dropped a 'bunch' 
 a few nights earlier gave me another. 
 
 "Suddenly I thought of my wife and 
 then I remembered that I hadn't paid her 
 a visit in a long time. Probably she had 
 a few dollars saved. I needed money 
 badly. What was my wife for, if not to 
 take care of me? So I looked her up.
 
 I VISIT THE BOWERY MISSION 119 
 
 She was in desperate straits. Ill from 
 worry and lack of proper food and days 
 and days of fruitless searching for work 
 for any sort of work that would bring 
 the price of a loaf of bread and a bottle of 
 milk. 
 
 "Did my heart melt? Did I get down 
 on my knees and ask forgiveness? 
 
 "In a moment of madness, after learn- 
 ing that she had no money to give me, I 
 left her without so much as a good-bye! 
 
 "How I got back to the Bowery I don't 
 know. I was blind with rage and the 
 effects of booze sore clear through with 
 anger and hate. I hated myself. I hated 
 my wife. I hated the world. I must have 
 money! I must have money! This kept 
 ringing in my ears! 
 
 "And then I lay down and slept. It 
 was a long time before I awoke and when 
 I did I found myself in an empty wagon 
 in an alley.
 
 120 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 "I was sober now sober but sick. Not 
 too sick, however, to begin new plans for 
 money money for drink, money for gam- 
 bling. If I could pick one winner I could 
 get a start and with a start, even if it was 
 only a small one, I could beat the book- 
 makers. I knew it! I was surer of it 
 then than ever before. 
 
 "I thought and planned with wits born 
 of desperation, for somehow or other I felt 
 this was pretty near my last fling. But I 
 couldn't arrive anywhere. I couldn't see 
 a start. I thought and thought but only 
 in circles! I couldn't do anything alone. 
 Alone? Why need I try alone? Hadn't 
 I a wife? What was a wife for if not to 
 help me and care for me? Hadn't she 
 always done it? Wouldn't she continue 
 to do it? I knew her well enough to know 
 she would! 
 
 "I don't know what put the idea of 
 writing to her in my mind. But that's
 
 I VISIT THE BOWERY MISSION 121 
 
 what I decided to do. I hadn't done it, 
 mind you, in years. I had no writing ma- 
 terials nor a stamp. It was early in the 
 morning and I could borrow what I 
 needed, maybe, from a bartender, so off I 
 went. On the way I met an acquaintance 
 and told him what I wanted. He couldn't 
 help me himself but he told me that if I 
 would go up to the Bowery Mission, up 
 near Rivington Street, and tell them I 
 wanted to write to my wife that I 
 wanted to go home and be good to her 
 again they would give me the materials 
 and a place at which to write. 
 
 "I turned in my tracks and headed for 
 the Bowery Mission. 
 
 "I want you to get clearly in mind the 
 mental state I was in and the purpose of 
 my errand. I was on my way again to 
 make my poor wife 'produce.' Remem- 
 ber my physical condition it had been 
 wrecked by booze and wrong living. I
 
 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 was a scoffer and a jeerer at everything 
 that savoured of religion. I didn't be- 
 lieve there was a square man in the world. 
 I would have thought no more of killing a 
 man than of laughing at one. In reform 
 schools and prisons I had been told of 
 brotherly love one hour a week by a paid 
 chaplain, while I was being beaten on my 
 bare back, strung up by my thumbs, or 
 confined in a dark, damp dungeon during 
 the rest of the week by other paid state 
 officials. Why should I have believed that 
 this one state employe the chaplain 
 should be on the level any more than the 
 others? 
 
 "To me a man with religion was a 'bug/ 
 a 'nut,' or a 'molly coddle.' I could stand 
 for anything but that! But if I could get 
 what I wanted at this Mission I'd be a 
 fool not to go. 
 
 "I stood outside looking at the joint 
 and laughing to myself. A bunch of
 
 I VISIT THE BOWERY MISSION 
 
 suckers, I called them. They were Mis- 
 sion Stiffs, I thought. Somebody was 
 putting up the dough some cracked old 
 nut and those fellows down here were 
 getting away with it good and soft. I'd 
 put one over on them. 
 
 "I went upstairs along with other men. 
 It was very clean, much cleaner than any- 
 thing I'd seen in a long time. At the top 
 of the stairs was a large room with a lot 
 of poor fellows sitting around. A young 
 lad came out of an office and said: 
 
 ' 'Good morning, what can I do for 
 you?' I told him, and he pointed to a 
 chair which he told me to take and he'd 
 talk with me in a few minutes. Things 
 were going all right I thought. I hadn't 
 met as easy a bunch to work in a long time. 
 It was like taking candy from a child. 
 The warmth of the coal stove felt good 
 too. It was a cinch ! 
 
 "But the young fellow who was coming
 
 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 right back didn't come and I began to get 
 leery and then I got sore ! I was about to 
 start something to show them I was wise 
 when I felt a hand on my shoulder. 
 
 "They'd pulled a trick on me! I was 
 pinched. I knew all the time these fellows 
 with religion were crooked! I wanted to 
 make a break and beat it when I heard a 
 voice behind me, a soft, kindly voice : 
 
 ' 'Do you want a job?' 
 
 "I looked up and there stood a little old 
 fellow with ruddy cheeks, dressed in a neat 
 business suit, and I knew he must be one 
 of those in authority. 
 
 "I looked about the room again. There 
 were certainly twenty other men there do- 
 ing as I was doing waiting. .Why had I 
 been asked that question ahead of all the 
 others? What was this fellow trying to 
 hand me something 'queer'? I didn't 
 owe him anything why should he want 
 to do anything for me? He'd never seen
 
 I VISIT THE BOWERY MISSION 125 
 
 me before and after I'd gotten what I 
 came for he'd never see me again. I could 
 have promised him that. What did he 
 think I was? I looked at him again and 
 he smiled as he repeated the question. 
 ' 'Do you want a day's work?' 
 "Before I realised what I was doing I'd 
 said 'Yes.' It slipped out before I knew 
 it. I didn't even say 'Sir' or 'Thank you.' 
 Work! What did I want with work? 
 How much honest work had I ever done? 
 And then an idea flashed across my mind. 
 I'd look the ground over; maybe I'd find 
 a chance to get next to something. Maybe 
 this job might help me to the coin I was 
 after. 
 
 "They asked me my name and a few 
 other questions and entered the informa- 
 tion in a book of register. A card was 
 given me introducing me to the firm to 
 whom I was being sent, together with five 
 cents for carfare.
 
 126 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 "I was on my way to work I I went 
 down stairs in a stupor. I remember how 
 I laughed at myself for having been in a 
 Mission and how I had fooled them. I've 
 seen lots of other men since who thought 
 they'd fooled the Mission when in reality 
 they were the ones who were fooled, only 
 they didn't know it at the time any more 
 than I did.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 HARD MANUAL LABOUR A NEW 
 SENSATION 
 
 "THE address on the card read Seventh 
 Avenue near Seventeenth Street. They 
 had wanted help of a temporary sort, to 
 carry lumber, and so they had telephoned 
 the Free Labour Bureau of the Bowery 
 Mission. And because I was a big-framed 
 and strong-looking man, Charley Thomp- 
 son ( I learned his name on my way down 
 stairs) had asked me if I wanted work. 
 
 "Here I was at the place and here was 
 the lumber a big pile of it. It was noon- 
 time and it certainly didn't look like the 
 picking was going to be good for only 
 labouring men were to be seen. Surely 
 
 127
 
 128 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 carrying that lumber all day was going to 
 be no picnic. I was looking for something 
 soft. All this makes it very difficult for 
 me to understand why I took off my coat 
 and with rolled-up sleeves went to work. 
 It proved even harder than I thought it 
 would but I kept on and was glad when 
 the whistle blew at quitting time. The 
 nickel for carfare I'd saved, for I knew it 
 would buy me two early morning drinks 
 and get me a place of shelter. That morn- 
 ing before I'd left the Mission I'd prom- 
 ised Charley Thompson that I'd come in 
 to the service that night. I kept thinking 
 about it all day. I'd made that promise 
 like I'd made hundreds of similar ones 
 to my wife with not the slightest idea of 
 ever making good. Every promise I'd 
 ever made her I'd forgotten at once. But 
 I kept thinking all day of my promise to 
 that Mission Stiff! 
 
 "You know I was about as wise as they
 
 A NEW SENSATION 129 
 
 came, or I thought I was. Nobody could 
 ever teach me anything. I had to be 
 shown and that about a dozen times. I 
 was 'from Missouri* if ever a man was. 
 I was suspicious of everything and every- 
 body. A thing I couldn't understand was 
 'phoney' and a good thing to keep away 
 from. I loathed everything churchy and 
 all connected therewith were crooked. I 
 tell you all this in repetition because you 
 meet so many 'cons.' I wish every con- 
 vict in the country could know my story. 
 I believe it would make their 'come back 
 path' look brighter and easier to travel. 
 
 "When I quit work at 5:15 I was 
 almost done up. My back ached and my 
 arms ached. Ached like they'd never 
 ached before. I was hungry as a bear. I 
 could hardly wait to reach a meal. Sev- 
 enty-five cents they had paid me and they 
 told me that I could have another day's 
 work if I wanted it. Yes, I wanted it, and
 
 130 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 told them I'd show up. Work started at 
 seven-thirty. I laughed at myself when I 
 thought of it. Me at work at 7:30 carry- 
 ing lumber. 
 
 "A heavy meal for fifteen cents made 
 me feel a lot better. When before had I 
 gone practically a whole day without a 
 drink? It seemed like a year when I 
 thought of it. My throat was cracking 
 open for one. The price was in my pocket. 
 It was there before my dinner and yet I'd 
 gone by three saloons before I reached the 
 restaurant. How do you account for it? 
 I hadn't done a thing like that in years. 
 
 "On my way from dinner to the Bowery 
 were at least fifty saloons. I entered only 
 one and ordered and drank only two slugs 
 whiskeys. Mind you, I wasn't trying 
 to quit the stuff, yet the fact remains that 
 I only had two drinks. The previous 
 night I'd 'a' stayed till the eighty cents
 
 A NEW SENSATION 131 
 
 was gone. Then, however, I spent just 
 ten cents. 
 
 "Tell me, if you can, what took me to 
 the service at the Mission that night? 
 What made me keep my promise to 
 Charley Thompson? I'd made my wife a 
 thousand promises which were no sooner 
 made than forgotten. Why did I keep 
 my first promise to a stranger? At any 
 rate, when the doors opened at seven, 
 there I was, well up in the line. It was 
 just the time when usually I was getting 
 'tanked up' down the street. I thought 
 of that but decided to stay and see what 
 kind of a show they ran. And it was some 
 show, believe me ! I don't remember ever 
 being so interested and amused in my life. 
 But I simply couldn't understand it. I 
 thought the men were plum crazy as one 
 after another they stood up and gave their 
 testimony. One had been a thief, he said, 
 and later a down-and-out, but had lost all
 
 132 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 of it since he'd given his heart to God. I 
 thought some one had tipped him off 
 about me and he was taking a chance on 
 ringing me in as one of that bunch of old 
 women! I was sure every man who spoke 
 was paid for doing it. Surely no man in 
 his right senses would get up and do it 
 for nothing. They all, every one of them, 
 talked about the same thing Brotherly 
 Love ! Brotherly Love be hanged ! How 
 far would that stuff take me? What did 
 I want with love? Love was meant for 
 women not men. Whiskey was good 
 enough for me! 
 
 "At any rate I stuck the meeting out 
 although I was disgusted long before it 
 was over. Along with all the rest, some 
 three hundred, I filed down stairs where 
 we all got a hand-out coffee and a big 
 fresh roll. Again and again I asked my- 
 self what it all meant. It cost money 
 300 rolls and 300 cups of coffee, 365 times
 
 A NEW SENSATION 133 
 
 a year. I spoke to a lad near me about it, 
 and he said that from Thanksgiving to 
 Easter, at one o'clock in the morning, the 
 Mission ran a bread line where they fed 
 upwards of a thousand men. That cost a 
 lot more! And then I remembered the 
 Labour Bureau away up stairs. That cost 
 more money! They didn't charge me a 
 cent for the job they got for me. You 
 know I didn't know anything about the 
 Settlement in the Bronx or the Mother 
 Bird Memorial Farm up in the Croton 
 Lake watershed. 
 
 "As I went up out of the breakfast room 
 to the street I decided I'd come in again 
 the next night and see the show all over 
 again. I told Thompson I would. They 
 certainly were a soft-shelled bunch. I 
 ought to be able to make it worth my 
 while. 
 
 "Sleep came quickly when I got to bed. 
 The day's work had exhausted me. I
 
 134 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 went straight to my 'pad' without a drink. 
 I felt no wish for a drink or I would have 
 had one, you may be sure of that. It was 
 probably due to the fact that I'd been 
 drinking very heavily the previous few 
 days and after a hard drink a fellow's 
 system sometimes rebels at booze. But if 
 that's what kept me going that day and 
 night with only two drinks it was the first 
 time it had ever happened. 
 
 "I don't say what did it. I'm simply 
 telling you facts. 
 
 "The following day, my second at the 
 lumber pile, was twice as long as the first, 
 twice as hard, and twice as profitable 
 profitable to the tune of $1.50. And most 
 of the previous day's pay remained in my 
 pocket. Not a drink all day! Not one 
 desire to steal! Another new sensation, 
 that I thought about a lot and couldn't 
 understand. All day I asked myself if 
 I'd go to the Mission that night. Al-
 
 A NEW SENSATION 135 
 
 though I'd promised Thompson I would, 
 about quitting time I decided not to. An- 
 other fifteen-cent meal and a good stiff 
 hooker of whiskey and I felt good. I 
 wanted it and I bought it. I wanted an- 
 other and I bought that too. If I'd wanted 
 more, like I had for years, I'd 'a' bought 
 them too. But I didn't. Two whole days 
 and not a drink, two nights and two 
 drinks each. I was getting too good. I 
 remember it made me feel like an old wom- 
 an. I laughed at myself. 
 
 "But it made me think. And the more 
 I thought the more puzzled I became. As 
 I walked downtown I lost myself com- 
 pletely, so wrapped up was I in my own 
 thoughts. After a while I woke up. I 
 had stopped in my tracks and was directly 
 in front of the wide-open doors of the 
 Bowery Mission, the place where I didn't 
 want to go. Curiosity got the better of me 
 again. I'd go in and see the show. It was
 
 136 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 the middle of October, chilly, and I had 
 no coat. Inside the Mission it was warm 
 and there would be hot coffee and rolls. 
 In I went! 
 
 "But I was wise and by the time the 
 service was over I'd doped the whole thing 
 out. Those men were bluffers. There 
 was no other answer. Certainly no sane 
 man would get up in a crowded public 
 place and tell the bunch how many jobs 
 he'd pulled off and how religion had saved 
 him. That wasn't in the cards they were 
 fakers ! I knew human nature and I knew 
 that kind of stuff didn't go along with it. 
 All this was side-show stuff. And I knew 
 it paid well too. Oh! I knew it all in 
 those days. 
 
 "There was another day's work for me 
 at the lumber pile. I was tired. I needed 
 the next day's pay, and if I wasn't on the 
 job early and able to work with the rest 
 of the crew I'd lose out. So another night
 
 A NEW SENSATION 137 
 
 I went to bed sober, this time without 
 even one drink. 
 
 "Charley Thompson had told me to be 
 sure and be on hand the next night for the 
 Superintendent of the Mission, Dr. Halli- 
 mond, would be there and he wanted me to 
 meet him. I said I would come and this 
 time I meant it good and proper. If there 
 was any easy money to be had out of the 
 joint the man to get it from was the Boss. 
 I'd make Dr. Hallimond fall for me all 
 right.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 I JOIN THE BROTHERHOOD AND MEET DR. 
 HALLIMOND 
 
 "I WAS dead set on meeting that Super- 
 intendent and I figured the best and easi- 
 est way to do it was to take a card and join 
 the Brotherhood. After a fellow does that 
 he meets the whole bunch and gets a 
 chance to mix it up with them a bit. And 
 so I decided to take a card that night. 
 
 "At the end of the meeting a couple of 
 fellows came down the aisle, just like we 
 do now, handing out the blank member- 
 ship cards to all who would take one. I 
 waswondering how manyof the down-and- 
 outs in the nearby seats would see me and 
 laugh at me. I lost my nerve completely 
 
 138
 
 I MEET DR. HALLIMOND 139 
 
 when the man reached me, and made no 
 effort to get a card. But he stopped 
 squarely at my side, stuck a card in my 
 hands and said: 
 
 'Take it any way! It can't do you 
 any harm.' I grabbed it eagerly. Here 
 at last was a direct way to reach a man 
 who had money to hand out to the likes of 
 me and I was the boy to get it. But I got 
 fooled that night good and proper! Like 
 now, they made you hold the card over 
 night, ponder over it, and turn it in the 
 second night. That meant I'd have to 
 come in again. All right, the game was 
 worth it. 
 
 "I was wise enough to know that it 
 wouldn't do to have a 'stew' on or a 'hang- 
 over' on when I met Dr. Hallimond, and 
 as I was tired out I again went straight to 
 bed, the third consecutive night, dead 
 sober. I had almost three dollars in my 
 pocket too.
 
 140 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 "For a long time I lay awake think- 
 ing, and if you guessed till doomsday you 
 wouldn't hit on what I was thinking about 
 that third night at the Mission. There 
 had been a mail on the platform who told 
 us all what a raw run for her money he'd 
 given his wife! He told us how he had 
 mistreated her, and dishonoured her. But 
 say, he was a piker alongside of me and 
 the deal I'd given my wife. I couldn't 
 help comparing the two of us as he spoke. 
 And then he told us that it all had changed 
 since he had come to the Mission I He told 
 us that Love had done it. He told us how 
 faithful his wife had been to him all the 
 time he had been unfaithful to her. He 
 talked like that for half an hour. 
 
 "For a long time I lay awake, as I say, 
 thinking of that man and his story. I 
 knew his wife couldn't have been treated 
 worse than mine had been or for a 
 longer time, and I knew too that she
 
 I MEET DR. HALLIMOND 
 
 hadn't or couldn't have been more loyal 
 than Jane had been. 
 
 "Suddenly something happened in my 
 head. Then and there, in that dirty, filthy 
 bed on the Bowery, I felt for the first time 
 a feeling of remorse and shame. That's 
 the truth. It was the first time in my life 
 that I'd ever regretted anything I'd ever 
 done. 
 
 "That man and his wife and his story 
 kept ringing in my ears and flashing be- 
 fore my eyes ! At last the crust of sin or 
 rust or mildew, or whatever it was in which 
 my conscience had been buried for years 
 and years, was pricked. A tiny, tiny bit 
 of light got in. And I cried. 
 
 "Sleep of a fitful sort at last overtook 
 me but not before I'd realised that per- 
 haps during all those years of her faithful- 
 ness I had unconsciously allowed to grow 
 up within me something akin to love for 
 that brave little woman. And now that
 
 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 something was trying to dig its way out, 
 to find expression. And then, just as 
 sleep was carrying me off, I made up my 
 mind by all that was good and holy to do 
 better by her and to start next day.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 OUT OF WOBK 
 
 "I FINISHED that pile of lumber the fol- 
 lowing day there was to be no more work 
 at the factory. Why didn't it last and last 
 and last forever? Why did that break 
 come just then? Why was I put to the 
 test so soon? Why couldn't it have come 
 later when I was more nearly on my feet? 
 
 "Not a drink all day nor one at supper! 
 I took a seat at the Mission, as far up 
 front as I could get, and I held my card, 
 already signed, in my hand. 
 
 "A fellow sitting beside me told me to 
 turn it in because it was good for a bed 
 that night. I nodded to him to let him 
 know I was wise, but I didn't speak. I 
 
 143
 
 144 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 was thinking of Jane and the great wrong 
 I had done her. The words of the man 
 who had spoken of his wife the night be- 
 fore kept ringing through my head. 
 
 "The meeting was over. Charley 
 Balevre stepped up and greeted me 
 kindly. Shook hands with me just like he 
 meant it. As we walked upstairs to the 
 Brotherhood Room he talked to me in a 
 kindly, interested way about my work, 
 and all the time he had hold of my arm. 
 It was a little thing to do but it made a 
 deep impression on me and so long as I 
 live I'll never forget it. You see, even 
 though I didn't know it, something was 
 going on within me, something good was 
 going on. The tiny little bit of light of 
 the night before was holding its own was 
 still aglow. 
 
 "The room upstairs held a couple of 
 dozen fellows seated here and there in a 
 free and easy manner. Their ease was at
 
 OUT OF WORK 145 
 
 once apparent to me. They were listen- 
 ing to a big, broad-shouldered, hearty- 
 faced Englishman. It was Dr. Halli- 
 mond, the man I wanted to meet and beat. 
 He had the kindliest and most sympa- 
 thetic look I'd ever seen. At once I felt 
 here was a man who was different! He 
 came right over to me ( I was a newcomer) 
 and shook my hand in a hearty, genuine 
 way that made my blood tingle. He said 
 he was glad to see me. And he was! 
 He's always glad to meet any one in 
 need. He's been glad for thirty-five 
 years, doing that same thing all the time! 
 "Then Charley Balevre gave me my 
 card of membership in the Brotherhood 
 and he gave me also a pocket edition of 
 the New Testament. It was with a 
 sneaky, low-down feeling that I put it in 
 my pocket. I didn't open it for fear I'd 
 expose my ignorance of it and my con- 
 tempt for it. Pretty soon we had a quiet
 
 146 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 off-to-one-side chat. Dr. Hallimond 
 asked me a great many questions about 
 myself and what I was doing and had been 
 doing. He didn't ask me one embarrass- 
 ing question. He branched off when he 
 found he was on that track. He didn't 
 scold me or lecture me, despite the fact 
 that I told him some pretty straight stuff. 
 
 "All the time he was talking to me I 
 kept thinking of my purpose in meeting 
 him, and the more I thought of it the more 
 I thought what a good fellow he wasl 
 Try as I would though, I couldn't under- 
 stand him or why he treated me as he did, 
 and no doubt all the others who came to 
 him. As he rose to indicate to me that he 
 had other things to do he put his hand on 
 my shoulder and asked me if there was 
 anything he could do for me. 
 
 "Here then was what I was looking for 
 an opportunity to get next to do him 
 to put one over on him. The chance had
 
 OUT OF WORK 147 
 
 come without the least effort on my part. 
 He had broached the subject of his own 
 accord. And on the tip of my tongue was 
 a story waiting for him. The same kind 
 of a story that had made many, many 
 people come across whenever I'd sprung 
 it. It was to be an easy victory. 
 
 "But the story remained on the tip of 
 my tongue. It's there now! It's never 
 been told! It's dead there! It died that 
 night as I looked him in the face and re- 
 plied that there was nothing I wanted of 
 him. 
 
 "For the life of me I couldn't hand him 
 the stuff he was too kind too good a 
 fellow. I recognised it as kindness. It all 
 dawned on me in a heap at that moment. 
 For the first time in my life I felt I'd met 
 up with an honest man a man who was 
 exactly what he professed to be. 
 
 "I went to bed that night without a 
 drink, nor did I have the least desire for
 
 148 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 it. Not a drink all day, not one at night. 
 I awoke early in the morning feeling 
 strong and well and eager for work for 
 honest work of which there was none -I 
 could go to. Eager for work me the 
 man I had been. That sounds strange I 
 guess, but it's the truth. The factory was 
 closed to me. The pile of lumber had 
 gone. I'd carried it away. I'd been 
 working four days and hadn't been drunk. 
 In my pocket were a few hard and hon- 
 estly earned dollars. In my heart was the 
 first good thought that had ever been 
 there. My wife's face with those drawn, 
 pinched lines of hardship and sorrow ap- 
 peared and reappeared to me all morning 
 as I searched unsuccessfully up and down, 
 here and there, for work. My new found 
 hope and courage held all day but it was a 
 fight. I didn't eat all day. With no work 
 in sight there wasn't enough coin to spare 
 for food. I was dreadfully tired from
 
 OUT OF WORK 149 
 
 walking and my strength hadn't been 
 helped any by fasting. The seats in the 
 Mission, hard as they were, rested me, and 
 the service, to a certain extent, had given 
 me new courage. The only food I ate in 
 those twenty-four hours was the Mission 
 roll and cup of coffee at ten that night.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 IN WHICH I FALL 
 
 "THE next day and the next and the 
 next brought me no work. Everywhere 
 I went I was turned down cold. I didn't 
 know how to apply for a job. Allowing 
 for bed money and one meal a day my 
 funds were good only for two days more. 
 
 "I kept out of my old haunts. I knew 
 the necessity of that. Consequently I was 
 very much surprised on meeting one of 
 my former pals way off his usual beat 
 up above Cooper Square! He hailed me 
 and put me wise to a 'busting' job. The 
 employes of the American Locomotive 
 Works at Schenectady, New York, were 
 out on strike and the Pinkertons had the 
 
 150
 
 IN WHICH I FALL 151 
 
 work. I grabbed the tip eagerly and went 
 after the job. I knew it would be an in- 
 side one and there would be no booze. In 
 a 'busting' job like that they take the scab 
 help, put them in the plant, and lock the 
 doors. That's done to keep the scabs in- 
 side all the time and the strikers outside 
 all the time. We slept on cots the firm 
 provided. I got the job easily and the pay 
 was four dollars a day a fortune. There 
 was nothing to spend for board or lodg- 
 ing. I saw visions of a little home. I'd 
 get a little place somewhere in a neigh- 
 bourhood where I was unknown. I'd take 
 Jane there : we'd begin all over again and 
 I'd be a good, kind husband to her. I be- 
 lieve I was happy on that job. 
 
 "It was then that I first took from my 
 pocket the New Testament I carried. I 
 read it, portions of it carefully, but I 
 couldn't understand it, couldn't even make 
 heads or tails out of it. It failed to make
 
 152 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 the slightest impression on me and yet I 
 read and read again certain portions. If 
 it hadn't been for my size and apparent 
 strength the bunch would have had a lot 
 of fun over it and over me, for they were 
 a hard lot. They didn't like the way my 
 sails wre cut, so they kept quiet. One 
 fellow, though, with whom I became quite 
 friendly, told me he always thought he'd 
 seen everything there was to see until he 
 saw my Bible on a 'busting' job. It was 
 a new one to him and I admitted it was to 
 me as well. 
 
 "At the end of my first week I went to 
 the boss and drew fifteen dollars against 
 my pay. If you guessed for a week you'd 
 fail on hitting on my object. I sent it to 
 Jane! -And as that money order left 
 Schenectady for Brooklyn I experienced 
 the most glorious sensation of my whole 
 rotten life. I'd never felt so good before. 
 Unconsciously I pushed out my chest,
 
 IN WHICH I FALL 153 
 
 lifted up my head and looked my fellows 
 in the eyes. Pride filled my heart and 
 tears filled my eyes as I thought how 
 proud and happy it would make Jane. 
 
 "That tiny little bit of light was still 
 aglow within me. It had succeeded in 
 breaking out. It had manifested itself 
 to the world. 
 
 "The job lasted four weeks, and at the 
 end of that time I received my money less 
 the fifteen. It was a good sized roll for 
 me and I felt rich. Some years before it 
 wouldn't have been a consequence. How- 
 ever I bid the plant good-bye reluctantly 
 and, together with about a dozen more of 
 the 'busters,' began the trip down the 
 Hudson by boat on the Night Line. No 
 sooner were we aboard than the gang be- 
 gan to loosen up. Every one of us had 
 plenty of 'money and the boat carried 
 plenty to drink of every description. I 
 knew trouble was brewing and I decided
 
 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 to quit the gang. I remember I thought 
 I'd walk uptown. Then I woke up. I 
 was on a boat and couldn't get away. I'd 
 have to stay right there and fight it out 
 on the spot. I went out on deck and 
 walked away, firm in my determination 
 to let the stuff alone, come what might. 
 Around and around the deck I went. 
 Each time I passed the entrance to the 
 bar. Each time I passed it I felt stronger 
 and better able to hold tight to my reso- 
 lution. Each time I passed it I could 
 look in at the door and see my friends 
 crowded in front of the bar. At last I was 
 beating rum. But all the same the fight 
 was a bitter one. Several times I was on 
 the verge of going in to have 'just one.' 
 For two hours the game went on like that 
 and then just as I passed the bar entrance 
 out lurched one of the gang drunk as a 
 lord and smelling like a distillery. He 
 flopped right into my arms and invited me
 
 IN WHICH I FALL 155 
 
 to come in and "ave a smile.' That invita- 
 tion in itself didn't faze me a particle, but 
 the smell of the fellow's breath was too 
 much. It was like a red flag in front of a 
 bull. My blood turned cold and then hot. 
 My system was on fire. I could have won 
 that fight, I'm sure, if it hadn't been for 
 the smell of the booze. 
 
 "I joined the gang and got beastly 
 drunk. The stuff made me crazy and I 
 didn't draw a sober breath until all of my 
 'roll' had been 'blowed' about two weeks 
 later. And before I had time to get thor- 
 oughly sober there was a strike in the 
 Street Cleaning Department. Wadell 
 and Mahon had the job and I got a slice 
 of it. Another long booze ended only 
 when the coin ended. 
 
 "It's a curious thing that from my last 
 day at the lumber pile, which you will re- 
 member was a month or more earlier, I 
 hadn't once been tempted to do any steal-
 
 156 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 ing, and not having been tempted I didn't 
 steal. I can't account for it, but it's a 
 fact. However, the desire came back 
 strong after that big drunk following the 
 Street Cleaning strike. When the time 
 came that I had sobered up, a feeling of 
 utter hopelessness came over me and I 
 gave up the fight. I figured I could never 
 get back with my wife. For the first time 
 in my life I admitted to myself that I was 
 a failure. My feeling of shame and re- 
 morse and sorrow was so bitter I gave up 
 the fight I quit 'cold.' I'd get a new 
 'roll' I'd find a sucker and then I'd beat 
 it for good and all. 
 
 "I was in the back room of a saloon 
 when I reached this decision. I planned a 
 Western trip. Things were easier out 
 there. Just then a strange thing hap- 
 pened. Like the day they'd taken me, 
 hand-cuffed to Sing Sing, the big events 
 in my life passed in review before my
 
 IN WHICH I FALL 157 
 
 eyes. One by one I saw them. One by 
 one they failed to move me until last 
 like the first time came the picture of 
 my wife. This time, though, I first saw 
 her as she had been when I married her, 
 young, full of health and happy, and then 
 I saw her as she looked the last time I'd 
 seen her. Instantly my blood became 
 afire it boiled in anger and resentment 
 against myself. I was all on edge and 
 there in that back room I cursed myself 
 over and over again. 
 
 "And then I quieted down. A new pic- 
 ture was before my eyes. I couldn't be- 
 lieve it, but there it was flashing ever 
 brighter before me. It showed me stand- 
 ing in a room with a lot of men men like 
 myself failures. A big man with a 
 kindly face had his hand on my shoulder 
 and was asking me if he could do any- 
 thing for me ! 
 
 "With a start that shook me to the very
 
 158 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 foundation I realised that I needed that 
 man right then. I knew it! At once I 
 left the gin mill and went uptown. En- 
 tering the Bowery Mission, I asked for 
 Dr. Hallimond. 
 
 "He was confined to his home slightly 
 ill. 
 
 "I felt all in heart-broken ready to 
 give up again. I wished I might die. 
 As I was about to go downstairs and out 
 on the street Charley Balevre spied me 
 and remembered me, not as John Goode, 
 but as a man who had some time earlier 
 taken a card, and then had dropped out 
 of sight. He came right over to me with 
 out-stretched hand. He urged me to stay 
 for the service and to come in regularly. 
 He told me to come every day to the 
 Labour Bureau and he would try and fix 
 me up with enough work to keep me go- 
 ing until something permanent came 
 along.
 
 IN WHICH I FALL 159 
 
 "God is good! He spoke to me that 
 night if ever he spoke to any one. I see 
 it clearly as I look back on it now. My 
 disgust with myself and my regret at 
 failing to see Dr. Hallimond were suffi- 
 cient to have driven me to anything. 
 Charley Balevre saved the day: he said 
 just what I needed to hear and he did it 
 just as Dr. Hallimond would have done 
 it. 
 
 "I went downstairs meekly and broken 
 in spirit. I sang the hymns as I'd never 
 sung them before and received great com- 
 fort and easement of mind from the serv- 
 ice! They gave me a bed ticket and I was 
 glad to take it for I wanted to be alone 
 where I could think! 
 
 "Each day I went to the Labour Bu- 
 reau and each day met the same kind 
 treatment. This business of being kind 
 to others began to soak in and the deeper 
 it went the more ashamed of myself I be-
 
 came. You see I didn't associate my emo- 
 tions with any phase of religion; if I had 
 I'd probably 'a' quit all I had in mind 
 was Jane and a square deal for her. 
 What these men did for me touched me 
 deeply, but I couldn't figure it out. Here 
 they were, total strangers to me, falling 
 over one another to do me kindnesses. 
 What had ever I done to deserve it? How 
 had I treated those with whom I'd been 
 thrown in contact? Finally I got to the 
 point where I admitted to myself that 
 there must be something real and tangible 
 back of it all. When I arrived at that 
 point I'd taken my second big step for- 
 ward out of darkness into light. I 
 realised then that this constant kindness 
 to every one stood for something definite. 
 The men on the platform all said it stood 
 for God! 
 
 "My third big stride ahead came next. 
 If that was what God stood for kindness
 
 IN WHICH I FALL 161 
 
 then I wanted God and I'd get God. 
 From that moment on I was as serious as 
 I could be, about that God business. I 
 didn't understand it but I wanted to, and 
 so I tried to do as they all did and I tried 
 to pray. I was imitating instead of be- 
 lieving, so there was nothing doing.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 IN WHICH I SUFFER AS NEVER BEFORE 
 
 "THE next day an impulse overtook me 
 which I tried hard to shake off. I wanted 
 to go and see Jane. And yet I didn't 
 want to go. I thought I ought to wait a 
 little until I was surer of myself. But the 
 idea wouldn't down and over I went. 
 
 "She was living then at her brother's 
 home in Brooklyn. He had little use for 
 me justly and I had as little use for 
 him just as justly. I found Jane with 
 strength and courage gone. Her sister 
 had just passed beyond into 'the other 
 room' after a long and trying illness, dur- 
 ing all of which time Jane in her already 
 enfeebled condition had nursed her ten- 
 
 162
 
 I SUFFER AS NEVER BEFORE 163 
 
 derly day and night. Poor little woman, 
 she was indeed in a sorry plight. I never 
 wanted to do anything so badly as I 
 wanted to tell her about the Bowery Mis- 
 sion and what it was doing for me. Yes! 
 and about what it had done for me. But 
 I didn't. I thought it best to wait. I'd 
 disappointed her so bitterly so many times 
 that I preferred to wait and not run any 
 chances of doing it again. But, oh! how 
 my heart ached for her as I sat by her bed- 
 side! How I longed to do for her! I 
 stood it as long as I could and, taking her 
 in my arms, embraced her as I should 
 have done seventeen years before but had 
 failed to do. And then I left her. 
 
 "As I passed out of the house into the 
 street a great surging impulse stirred me : 
 moved me like I'd never been moved be- 
 fore. I stood still in my tracks, closed 
 my eyes and offered up to Heaven this 
 silent prayer :
 
 164 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 " 'Oh ! God, if you're what they say you 
 are over there in the Mission, give me the 
 help I need make me a good husband to 
 my wifel' 
 
 "It was the first prayer I'd ever said. 
 It was offered with all my heart and it 
 brought me instant relief. I felt soothed 
 and comforted and I walked with a lighter 
 step and a braver heart. In that prayer I 
 asked for all I thought I needed. But I 
 needed lots else to make me a man. 
 
 "Without having had a mouthful of 
 food all day I went to the Mission that 
 evening. I'd walked to and from Brook- 
 lyn besides tramping around looking for 
 work. I was exhausted. The music 
 cheered me and I listened attentively to 
 the men who testified to what good the 
 Mission did them and to all God had done 
 for them and was doing each day they 
 continued to serve Him. I didn't laugh 
 once that night! I tried as hard as I
 
 I SUFFER AS NEVER BEFORE 165 
 
 could to make it all seem real to me like 
 it did to the speakers. And when they 
 asked for requests for prayer I stood up 
 and asked them to pray for me ! 
 
 "Surely, surely I was making headway, 
 and as soon as I sat down I realised it. I 
 didn't feel ashamed simply strange. 
 And I left the service greatly strength- 
 ened physically by the coffee and rolls. 
 
 "Then began the period of most in- 
 tense mental and physical suffering I ever 
 went through. I'd had a hard life and 
 had suffered all sorts of hardships but 
 they were child's play alongside of my 
 experiences until the following May a 
 period of about six months. 
 
 "I'd been one of twenty-five selected by 
 Charley Balevre to form a Bible Class to 
 meet with Dr. Hallimond on Wednesday 
 nights for an hour prior to the big service 
 in the Mission. I was very proud of the 
 chance, although it didn't mean very much
 
 166 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 to me, but I made up my mind to fight 
 my battle to a finish. 
 
 "It was January and a bitter cold one 
 at that. I don't think I possessed as much 
 as seven pounds of clothing including my 
 shoes. Both of them were nearly gone 
 and I had no overcoat. I had neither 
 work nor money. I went over the whole 
 situation carefully and made up my mind 
 that unless it was absolutely necessary 
 I'd accept no favours from any one at 
 the Mission except, of course, work. And 
 I was the same man who only a little 
 while before had gone there to do them 
 up 1 Such is the power of the religion of 
 Jesus Christ that's what they were tam- 
 ing me with. 
 
 "For days and days from ten till four I 
 sat in the Labour Bureau sharing with 
 my comrades the scanty calls for work 
 that came in over the phone and by mail. 
 I grabbed a ten-cent errand like I used to
 
 I SUFFER AS NEVER BEFORE 167 
 
 grab a thousand dollar roll. I tackled 
 everything they offered me. There were 
 days and days during which I didn't get 
 a mouthful to eat except the roll and cof- 
 fee at the Mission about ten o'clock, then 
 one on the Bread Line at one o'clock. 
 Night after night in almost zero weather 
 I 'carried the banner' without an over- 
 coat and with the poorest kind of broken 
 shoes. Cold? Cold? Say, man, all you 
 know about cold is how it's spelled! I've 
 been so cold on some of those nights I 
 didn't know where I was walking or even 
 that I was walking. I got so cold I didn't 
 know it was cold! And then how I suf- 
 fered after sun-up on a warm grating over 
 a bakery where I drank in the savoury 
 odour of freshly baked bread! You've 
 walked a mile maybe in zero weather, on a 
 good big breakfast and before a hearty 
 meat dinner while you were warmly clad. 
 Well I know what it means to walk in
 
 168 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 that weather all night for seven consecu- 
 tive nights, scantily clad and not tasting 
 one morsel of meat or fat in all that time. 
 And what I got at the Mission taught me 
 how to do that little stunt without com- 
 plaining and without making a touch! 
 Don't you call that a result? Do you 
 think I did it for fun? I did it because I 
 wanted God and I couldn't get God un- 
 less I was on the level. Not once in that 
 six months did I enter a saloon or touch a 
 drop of beer or liquor or wine I Not once 
 in that six months was I profane ! 
 
 "One day while sitting in the Labour 
 Bureau half starved, helpless, almost 
 hopeless and despairing of ever making 
 good, I wondered whether it was worth 
 while to go on. There were about eighty 
 of us sitting about, and there wouldn't 
 be eighty or forty or thirty jobs come 
 in that day. There wasn't a chance in 
 the world of my making so much as ten
 
 I SUFFER AS NEVER BEFORE 169 
 
 cents. Another night must I walk and 
 walk and walk those icy, friendless streets 
 till daylight. You couldn't stop or you'd 
 die of exposure. I was on the verge of 
 throwing up the sponge. God above 
 knows how I was tempted, but I didn't 
 yield. I sat still and grit my teeth. And 
 then in the midst of my despair and dis- 
 couragement in walked Charley Balevre. 
 He must have read my face, for over he 
 came and asked how things were going. 
 Before I had time to answer he slipped a 
 dollar bill into my hand and left me stand- 
 ing there. It was a gracious act and it 
 came at a time when something unusual 
 was needed to save the day. Never before 
 or since has anything so strengthened me 
 and put heart in me. A single, simple 
 act! He had seen my desperate need. 
 My soul cried to Heaven in thanks! I 
 could sleep on a 'pad* again ! I could have 
 a piece of meat again! I could take off
 
 170 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 my clothes that night and hare a warm 
 bath. Do you wonder such thoughts 
 made me feel good? 
 
 "On my way to a lodging house that 
 night to rent a 'pad' I was told that the 
 Holy Name Mission was to remain open 
 all night because of the cold! In I went 
 and also the four following nights five 
 nights of delightful, refreshing sleep, 
 even though it came on a hard, wooden 
 bench with my clothes on! 
 
 "Does God help a man 'come back' 
 while the man is on the level ? Let's see! I 
 was fighting hard. That January was the 
 toughest of my life but I kept on right up 
 to the verge of the breaking point. Then 
 came that dollar bill! Then five nights 
 of warm, restful sleep! And then the 
 Mission gave me a job with board and a 
 place to sleep in the Memorial House a 
 place they maintained where some of their 
 converts lived! I was to tend door and
 
 I SUFFER AS NEVER BEFORE 171 
 
 the salary was one dollar a week. Every 
 man in the house was living right and 
 thinking right. I was thrown into inti- 
 mate relation with these fellows and I got 
 a lot of strength and courage to help me 
 keep on struggling for a better manhood 
 and for God ! 
 
 "I attended the Mission services regu- 
 larly and the Wednesday night Bible 
 Class. My ultimate victory although I 
 fell down again miserably before I 
 reached it I lay to that six months' Bible 
 study with Dr. Hallimond. When I got 
 through the Bible meant something to me 
 or rather a very small part of it did. 
 
 "We began our study at a happy Chap- 
 ter. I doubt if any other would have 'got' 
 me the way that one did. Perhaps the 
 Doctor had more of my kind among the 
 twenty-five. At any rate he chose well, 
 for all of us, without exception, developed 
 splendidly in our new life. We started
 
 172 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 and finished one chapter in those six 
 months the 13th Chapter of First Corin- 
 thians. Its undreamed of treasures were 
 food to my starved soul. As the meaning 
 of it of love dawned slowly on my 
 mind I could see the beautiful way it had 
 been applied to me and I realised at last 
 that religion did have a 'kick' in it and 
 that the brand I'd run up against, down 
 there on the Bowery, was the real stuff. 
 I understood then why they fed fellows 
 and got them work as well as talked to 
 them about God and his love. It was a 
 different sort of brotherly love than I'd 
 heard about in prisons and reform schools. 
 "Love Brotherly Love The love of 
 God His love for us all these things 
 became real to me then. I wanted to be 
 on God's side but only for Janef I 
 hadn't yet caught the true meaning. 
 What I wanted God for was because of 
 Jane.
 
 I SUFFER AS NEVER BEFORE 173 
 
 "I thought she needed it in me. I 
 didn't dream I needed it first. I didn't 
 know then that I couldn't go safely keep 
 right until I got God for myself. But I 
 learned that like I learned all I know by 
 personal experience, the best teacher in 
 the world. 
 
 "From my dollar a week job in the 
 Memorial House they transferred me to a 
 job at a dollar and fifty cents a week in 
 the industrial department at the Mission 
 itself. I ate and slept there. My duties 
 consisted of going out on call to collect 
 old chairs that were to be re-caned and 
 furniture that needed re-upholstering or 
 repairing. This work was done in the 
 Mission by men who were going through 
 the same process I was going through. 
 When the work was completed I delivered 
 it and collected the money. They trusted 
 me implicitly, of course, although they 
 knew my past just as you do. I turned in
 
 174 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 every cent I collected and sometimes I 
 carried a goodly amount of money. I 
 did it all without an error and without 
 even a single thought of being dishonest. 
 You know what love and responsibility 
 will do. . Love is the most powerful force 
 in the world and there is no power on 
 earth can stop it once it gets into a fel- 
 low's skin. That's Mr. Osborne's belief 
 and the results he's had at Auburn and 
 Sing Sing are only natural and common- 
 place. He's awakening in the hearts of 
 those men something they didn't know 
 they possessed. 
 
 "As I called each week on Jane I could 
 see plainly she was getting no better, in 
 fact I saw she was failing. How my heart 
 ached! And as I noticed this change for 
 the worse in her she noticed the change 
 for the better in me. Frequently she said 
 to me, the tears streaming down her 
 cheeks, 'John's a good man now !'
 
 I SUFFER AS NEVER BEFORE 175 
 
 "While my salary had been a dollar a 
 week I'd given her half of it, but now that 
 I earned $1.50 I could spare her a dollar, 
 which she got regularly. Those were 
 proud and happy days for both of us! 
 Each day that passed gave me greater 
 confidence in my strength and my ability 
 to beat the things that for years had 
 beaten me. 
 
 "The month of May rolled round as I 
 began to get impatient at the progress I 
 was making. I wasn't earning enough. 
 I wanted a home where I could take Jane. 
 One dollar and a half wouldn't give it to 
 me. And so I looked around for new em- 
 ployment. All my friends advised me to 
 remain at or near the Mission, to stay 
 where its influence could help me until I 
 was stronger in my new life. 
 
 "But no, I must have more money. I 
 must have a home for my failing wife. I
 
 176 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 feared she would die. I dreaded to think 
 of that before I had in a small way made 
 up to her for all those years of agony and 
 heartache.
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 IN WHICH IS HELL 
 
 "AND so with the best and truest inten- 
 tions in the world, with the positive belief 
 that I was safe, I left the Mission. Many 
 a man with position, ability and education 
 makes moves as disastrous as this one of 
 mine. But in all such cases they are 
 thought of merely as 'mistaken judg- 
 ment.' In my case and in cases of others 
 of my kind the verdict is 'wilful backslid- 
 ing.' 
 
 "I got a job in the Oceanic Hotel at 
 Coney Island, about the worst place in the 
 whole world for me to go. I see it now 
 and I saw it then, just after it was too 
 late. About all I saw was drink. About 
 
 177
 
 178 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 all I heard was 'the ponies.' I was a por- 
 ter and general utility man. The pay was 
 a dollar and a half a day and my bed. 
 The season was just starting. The sport- 
 ing, drinking and gambling part of the 
 public had been shut in the city all winter. 
 They hailed the opening of the beaches 
 and the tracks with delight. For a month 
 I stood my ground solidly. I felt justi- 
 fied in the move I'd made. Jane was de- 
 lighted at my will power and strength. I 
 didn't waver a bit had not the slightest 
 desire for drink or poolroom. Things went 
 smoothly and well. If I had been aware 
 of any temptation I'd 'a' beat it away. I 
 feel sure of this as I look back at it now. 
 
 "But things couldn't go like that long. 
 The environment was wrong and the good 
 influence of the Mission and the men there 
 was lacking. I was relying on my own 
 strength and I hadn't enough to hold me. 
 
 "I fell; that's all. I didn't do it delib-
 
 IN WHICH IS HELL 179 
 
 erately. The first thing I knew I'd been 
 in Paddy Shea's poolroom placed a bet 
 lost and had a drink. The old life 
 had me. It was all over. My system was 
 on fire and I couldn't put it out. I went 
 to the bottom way, way down into the 
 slime and filth of sin and shame. While 
 it lasted I gloried in it. That must have 
 been so else I'd never gone so far. 
 
 "You know what Jane suffered and 
 what it cost her. 
 
 "I stole all she had saved of the money 
 I'd sent her. I hocked her insurance 
 papers and all else she had on which 
 'Uncle' would advance anything. It all 
 went every single pawnable thing! I'd 
 go up there drunk, with a flask in my 
 pocket and go to bed where I'd stay till 
 the flask was empty. 
 
 "I'd been fired from my job at the 
 Oceanic and had gotten one as a dish- 
 washer at the English Kitchen on the
 
 180 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 Brighton Pike at a dollar a day. Each 
 night I drew fifty cents against my wage. 
 That gave me a quarter for my bed and a 
 quarter for booze. 
 
 "Day after day this went on and Au- 
 gust came around. It was about the 
 tenth of the month, I think, that I went 
 up to see Jane. I was beastly drunk and 
 wild from the effects of an unusually hard 
 debauch. I staggered up the street and 
 into the house. I went up to her room. 
 There she lay! 
 
 "Her teeth were chattering. Her arms 
 lay helpless at her sides. She didn't know 
 me. She was trying to speak but couldn't. 
 The neighbours were about. All was ex- 
 citement. For a wonder I came partially 
 to my senses. I telephoned and finally an 
 ambulance came from Seney Hospital 
 and the brave little woman was taken 
 away desperately ill from a stroke. 
 
 "As soon as she was gone the drunken
 
 IN WHICH IS HELL 181 
 
 rage returned and I broke loose more vio- 
 lently than ever before in my life. I ran- 
 sacked the place, smashing things to bits. 
 I found five dollars I'd missed before 
 and stole that. As I was about to leave 
 an insane impulse seized me and I lifted 
 her trunk in my arms, hurled it through 
 the door and down a flight of stairs. 
 
 "Off I went to Coney Island and began 
 all over again. In a few days I sobered 
 up sufficiently to remember Jane and went 
 up to the Hospital to see her. She was 
 somewhat better enough so that she 
 could speak. She saw me coming through 
 the ward. Throwing her arms about my 
 neck, she cried in agony and despair: 
 
 "'Oh, God, what will become of me 
 now?' 
 
 "That scene and that cry and the look 
 on her face struck terror to my heart. At 
 once I was dead sober as sober as I am 
 now. I was a thinking man again. Man
 
 182 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 enough to have swallowed the poison I 
 couldn't swallow before, if it hadn't been 
 for the woman in front of me ! And then 
 my head swam. Perspiration stood out in 
 beads on my forehead. My wife was go- 
 ing to die! No! No! it couldn't be! It 
 mustn't be! There must be something I 
 could do. And then it flashed across my 
 mind The Mission! there I could get 
 help! I'd ask them. I'd write Dr. Halli- 
 mond. 
 
 "All the way back to Coney Island I 
 thought of what I'd done. I cried to God 
 for wisdom, for help for the life of my 
 dear wife. For the first time I felt that 
 I had offended God that God cared what 
 I did. That feeling was very strong in 
 me as I sat down and wrote to Dr. Halli- 
 mond. 
 
 "In the letter I made a full, frank 
 statement. I told him of the dastardly 
 things I'd done. I asked him for help
 
 IN WHICH IS HELL 183 
 
 for something anything for my wife. 
 'For God's sake do for her save her 
 life.' For myself I asked nothing save 
 forgiveness. I did ask that I asked him 
 to pray for me. 
 
 "For several days I awaited a reply 
 from him. None came. What could have 
 happened? Surely he was not throwing 
 me over. No, I knew better. My anxiety 
 was making me ill when a letter came 
 postmarked Brooklyn. Who in Brooklyn 
 would write me? Hastily I tore open the 
 envelope and read the signature. The let- 
 ter came from one of the members of the 
 Wednesday Night Bible Class and his 
 wife Mr. and Mrs. Putnam. So long 
 as God gives me the power to remember, 
 this sentence from that letter will stay 
 with me: 'If you don't come up to our 
 house, and that right away, we'll have to 
 come down there to you.' 
 
 "There indeed was Friendship and Love
 
 184 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 and Kindness. Dr. Hallimond, when my 
 letter reached him, was laid up tempora- 
 rily. At once he wrote to Mr. Putnam to 
 get on the job and he hadn't lost a mo- 
 ment in doing so. Instinctively I knew 
 that whatever there was to do for Jane 
 had already been done. My relief was 
 overpowering. I went all to pieces. I 
 couldn't answer that letter; it broke me 
 up when I tried to. Then another one 
 came much like the first and I went up to 
 their home up Flatbush way somewhere. 
 
 "On bended knees we prayed long and 
 earnestly. 
 
 "When I reached Coney Island a great 
 load had been lifted from my mind. With 
 Mrs. Putnam on the job I knew how Jane 
 would fare. And until the day Jane 
 passed away Mrs. Putnam was the good 
 angel. Countless kindnesses and loving 
 attentions she showered on my wife and 
 became closer to her than any woman
 
 IN WHICH IS HELL 185 
 
 friend she ever had. Such is the power 
 and love in the religion of Jesus Christ! 
 
 "With a set jaw I returned to my dish- 
 washing and behaved myself. I finished 
 the season at it and I finished without 
 once side-stepping in any way. Jane re- 
 covered shortly, sufficiently to be moved 
 to her brother's house and I again began 
 sending her what money I could spare 
 from my seven dollars a week. 
 
 "For some time before the end of the 
 season I had longed for the Mission and 
 its good friends for the influence it ex- 
 erted, but I wanted to get on my feet 
 without their aid. At the close of the 
 Mardi Gras I was glad to get away from 
 the Island. The call of the Mission was 
 strong upon me and I wanted more 
 money. Jane was stronger and I wanted 
 her to have her own home. That desire 
 was stronger than it ever had been be- 
 fore.
 
 TOGETHER AT LAST 
 
 "BACK in New York never to leave it 
 again! Back at the Mission! Back 
 among my Christian friends! Back at 
 the Labour Bureau! My strength and 
 hope and courage returned to me many 
 fold and thoroughly did I realise what it 
 had cost my leaving there that spring. 
 
 "Jobs didn't come in very fast and my 
 money was almost gone when a wonder- 
 ful thing happened. Wonderful because 
 I was nearly broke and because I chanced 
 to be around when it happened. 
 
 "The firm for whom I first went to 
 work piling lumber needed an extra 
 man, and as before telephoned the Labour 
 Bureau. 
 
 186
 
 TOGETHER AT LAST 187 
 
 * 'Had the Mission a man to send 
 over?' 
 
 'Yes, the same man they sent before. 
 Would he do?' 
 
 'Yes, he had done well. Send him 
 over right away.' 
 
 "And I went. They were busy and for 
 about three weeks the work was steady. 
 Nearly all my money went to Jane, of 
 which she saved considerable. This time 
 the work was a little more interesting and 
 I became well liked by some of the men. 
 
 "Each day I prayed for strength to 
 stand for God and for regular employ- 
 ment. And then came a day when the 
 end of the work was in sight. I got talk- 
 ing with Bill Quarterly about my need of 
 steady work because of a sick wife, and he 
 asked me why I didn't make a bid for a 
 steady job there. I told him I didn't 
 know why. 
 
 " 'If you don't I'll do it for you/ was
 
 188 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 his reply, and he did. Then and there I 
 was added to the regular payroll. 
 
 "Without the slightest warning that it 
 was at hand my greatest wish had come 
 to pass. I couldn't believe it. It didn't 
 seem real. I didn't deserve it. Ten dol- 
 lars a week five hundred and twenty 
 dollars a year with overtime amounting 
 to possibly seventy-five dollars more. 
 And all with a reliable house doing a big, 
 yearly business. 
 
 "A home at last! 
 
 "I didn't deserve it but Jane did and 
 she would have it! And then then 
 would I stick? With God's help I would. 
 I knew that. At night I prayed to Him 
 as I'd never prayed before that I might 
 remain steadfast and true to Him. If I 
 did that I'd remain steadfast and true to 
 her. I had it right this time. I wanted 
 to aid my wife through God. 
 
 "And God answered my prayer. He
 
 TOGETHER AT LAST 189 
 
 has kept me safe ever since. He left Jane 
 with me for a little longer. He let me 
 make up to her one hundred millionth 
 part of what I owed her. He let me see 
 her supremely happy. He let me help 
 her make others happy. Yes, God i 
 good! 
 
 "I told Dr. Hallimond about my good 
 fortune about answered prayer. I told 
 him what I wanted to do, and the look 
 that came into his kindly face told me to 
 'Go ahead.' And ahead I went. I took a 
 dingy little room in the basement of a 
 rooming house at 210 West 14th St., quite 
 near my work. 
 
 "And then we had our honeymoon I 
 My wife, myself and God! 
 
 "There have been many honeymoons in 
 this old world of ours, but there never 
 was a happier one than that. The void 
 that for seventeen years had filled her 
 heart with anguish and sorrow disap-
 
 190 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 peared. God is good! Yes, indeed, He 
 is ! He brought us together but He spared 
 each of us the knowledge that her illness 
 was incurable, and that slowly but surely 
 she must fail until it was time for her to 
 go. He let our remaining nineteen 
 months together be months of fuller joys 
 than most men know. I can never thank 
 Him enough for His goodness and mercy 
 to me. 
 
 "The one room we called home I fur- 
 nished with odds and ends from here and 
 there and we began our housekeeping. 
 At first Jane was well enough to walk the 
 necessary three or four blocks to do the 
 marketing. She was a careful buyer, for 
 well had she learned the value of a dollar. 
 In her hands my ten dollars went twice as 
 far as I could have made them go. Our 
 industrial insurance was always paid well 
 in advance ! The work at the factory went
 
 TOGETHER AT LAST 191 
 
 smoothly along and our happiness was 
 complete. 
 
 "It was then immediately after our re- 
 union that religion became most real to 
 me. It became a living tangible thing, a 
 force, a power that I could clothe myself 
 with and make good use of each day I 
 lived. My home, humble though it was, 
 acted like a tonic on my tired, weary sys- 
 tem. There was silver in my wife's hair 
 and music in her laughter. I'd put the 
 silver there and the music there. I 
 couldn't take the silver away but I could 
 prevent the musical laughter from ever 
 going away. That was my job and an 
 easier one no man ever had. 
 
 ' 'John, you're a good man now!' 
 
 "Over and over again she said that as 
 she sat at her mending while I read. 
 
 "The Mission by now entranced me like 
 the race tracks had done such a short while
 
 192 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 before. I became an assistant leader and 
 then a leader. 
 
 "I stood on the platform and told my 
 story to the crowd of men in front of me 
 firm in the knowledge that somewhere in 
 that crowd was a man I could touch like 
 I'd been touched firm in the belief that 
 each time I told of the power of the re- 
 ligion of Jesus Christ I strengthened my 
 own faith and foundation and strength- 
 ened the faith of each man who heard me. 
 
 "As time went on and I began to meet 
 more right thinking people I became con- 
 vinced that the reason men fall away from? 
 God is because they stop thinking. And 
 so I planned what I had to say along lines 
 calculated to make men see in themselves 
 something I had formerly possessed. 
 After a while I began to hear little things 
 and see little things that made me feel 
 that I too was spreading the story of love 
 of hope that Jesus told that I was
 
 TOGETHER AT LAST 193 
 
 helping others to something better. It 
 made me wonderfully happy and gave me 
 more courage and faith and strength. I 
 went among the fellows in the meetings 
 and learned to know them personally. 
 And then after I'd go home Jane and I 
 would talk over the men I'd met and 
 wanted to help. Thus it was that God 
 became so real to me. I saw Him at work 
 and I worked with Him. I knew what 
 He'd done for me. I could see it. My 
 wife could see it. My friends could see 
 it. It was real. My home and my new 
 self were powerful testimonies to His 
 realness. No argument could get away 
 from those things. And I knew, too, that 
 nowhere in the world could a man be 
 found with a more unpromising outlook 
 for success than I had had. 
 
 "The wonderfully beautiful part of life 
 in that little basement room of ours were 
 the Christian friends I'd made at the Mis-
 
 194 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 sion. They all knew my story and they 
 came regularly and gladly with delicacies 
 and good cheer for Jane. 
 
 "There were rough times, too, when 
 we'd close for a day or two at the factory. 
 There were other times when calls on the 
 cash were heavy for medicine. There 
 were times when men we were interested 
 in needed money more than we did. Many 
 times there wasn't all we'd liked to have 
 had, but always there was something else 
 that all the money in the world wouldn't 
 buy the 'peace that passeth all under- 
 standing' and the knowledge that God is 
 all-powerful. 
 
 "But like all happy times an end had 
 to come. Jane grew more feeble. She 
 could do less and less of the housework. 
 This I did at night. Finally she could 
 do no more than crawl about from chair 
 to chair and watch longingly between the
 
 TOGETHER AT LAST 195 
 
 gratings in our only window for my re- 
 turn. 
 
 "I left home early after getting break- 
 fast and washing the dishes and didn't re- 
 turn till twelve-thirty for lunch. One day 
 on coming home the shutters were closed 
 and I was startled. And then inside, 
 downstairs, our door was locked from 
 within. In a second I'd walked right 
 through it frame and all. 
 
 "There on the floor in a great, wide 
 pool of her own blood lay Jane with a 
 two-inch hole in her skull from falling in 
 a faint. And we sent her away to a hos- 
 pital with a second stroke. 
 
 "More feeble than ever, she returned! 
 Gracious and happy and contented she 
 was! Not once had she ever scolded me 
 or chided me or crossed me in any way. 
 And here she was dying and I was help- 
 less to save her. All I could do was to 
 care for her in my primitive way. My
 
 196 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 friends would have sent her to a private 
 room in a hospital, but she wouldn't leave 
 her home or her John ! They would have, 
 sent in a nurse, but she would allow no 
 one to care for her but 'John.' Even 
 after she was unable to recognise them 
 they came and came and came these 
 friends of ours these friends so full of 
 brotherly love. 
 
 On the advice of at least three doctors 
 I kept her alive on whiskey for the last 
 few months. My wife was dying under 
 my very eyes. I'd had to give up the 
 little home where we'd lived and loved. I 
 was powerless to help her. But I bought 
 her whiskey and I fed her whiskey for 
 weeks and weeks and weeks and not a 
 drop of it ever touched my lips. Oh, God 
 is good! Think what He saved that 
 woman from as she lay there dying! God 
 is good ! 
 
 At last she required more care than I
 
 TOGETHER AT LAST 197 
 
 could give her you know the rest how 
 we sent her to Bellevue and how she died. 
 You were there! 
 
 John Goode's huge frame shook convul- 
 sively while unchecked tears rolled down 
 his cheeks. They were tears of sadness 
 and shame, of joy and victory all in one. 
 The floodgates of an intense nature had 
 broken open. Such tears are difficult to 
 check even when there is a will, but there 
 was no will now to check them. There 
 are times when naught save tears will 
 bring relief, and this was such a time. 
 
 Instinctively my mind went back to that 
 clear, cold October day when Jane lay so 
 sick in Bellevue Hospital! 
 
 Was it the guiding hand of Providence 
 that had forced this man and his desper- 
 ately sick wife into my mind as I worked 
 at my desk that day? Was it the guiding 
 hand of Providence that had kept me un-
 
 198 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 easy all day until at half-past four I could 
 stand it no longer? I put on my hat and 
 walked over to the factory where he 
 worked and together we went around the 
 corner to their dingy basement room 
 where they had been so wondrously 
 happy for over nineteen months. We 
 went to that room which had been a re- 
 treat from storm and temptation for so 
 many, many human derelicts to that 
 room which had shared its all with any 
 who asked by day or by night, to that 
 room which had seen so much of physical 
 pain to that room which was to be his 
 home no longer! 
 
 Graciously and hospitably he prepared 
 a frugal meal. The dishes we left un- 
 washed. We hurried to the street. 
 
 Vividly I remember, remember as 
 though it were but yesterday, how from a 
 flower vender at Sixth Avenue and Four- 
 teenth Street he purchased ten cents worth
 
 TOGETHER AT LAST 199 
 
 of perfumed sprayed roses for the frail, 
 sick little wife lying in her bed of pain in 
 that ward at Bellevue. 
 
 And again we had hurried on. Neither 
 of us spoke. 
 
 We entered the ward. Her bed was 
 empty and had been freshly made up. 
 My heart almost stopped. He did not 
 seem to realise the significance of that 
 empty bed. 
 
 A nurse tiptoed up and beckoned us to 
 follow. Jane had failed rapidly late that 
 afternoon and they had telegraphed for 
 him to come at once. But the telegram 
 had miscarried. 
 
 Beyond the shadow of a doubt it had 
 been an act of Providence that had com- 
 pelled me to act, as that telegram failed to 
 reach him. 
 
 They had moved the almost worn out 
 little frame to a private room. The bed 
 lay close to a partly opened window.
 
 200 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 Preceded by the nurse, we entered at pre- 
 cisely the moment that nature gave way 
 and the poor, tired, worn out little heart 
 ceased its beating forever. 
 
 Those flowers he could not hand them 
 to her now he laid gently on her breast. 
 
 What a night that was 1 How brave he 
 had been! How manly how totally un- 
 like the man he formerly had been how 
 much like the man so many of us ought 
 to be. 
 
 We walked the streets, going nowhere, 
 but always walking, walking, walking till 
 long after daylight. It was bitter cold, 
 but he felt it not. He was fighting 
 fighting the biggest battle of his life. 
 Fighting to resist the old call the call of 
 drink, of excitement, of anything to 
 deaden the pain at his heart. 
 
 And he won his fight! 
 
 His tears ceased and our eyes met. 
 We read each other's thoughts. Why
 
 TOGETHER AT LAST 201 
 
 shouldn't we? Fate had served me as she 
 had him. He had been to me under simi- 
 lar circumstances what I had been to him. 
 Together each time we had passed through 
 two never, never-to-be-forgotten events. 
 
 "You know how we took her little body 
 to the Mission that the men there might 
 see the lesson in her life you know the 
 memories that service awakened in the 
 hearts of many men long since separated 
 from their dear ones as I had been. God 
 alone knows how much good that service 
 did. 
 
 "You remember how we cleared the 
 room out, destroyed what I didn't want 
 and gave the rest away? It was all over 
 then. And when the excitement had 
 passed off and the old, old wanderlust 
 again crept into my being I packed up my 
 belongings, for I was afraid. 
 
 "With my bundle in my hand, and with
 
 202 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 the fear in my heart that I'd fall, I went 
 back where my real, true self came from 
 I went back to live again at the Bowery 
 Mission."
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 JOHN GOODE is by no means an imag- 
 inary person. The foregoing story is not, 
 as some might suppose, either romance or 
 fiction. The graphic recital of this man's 
 uplifting from the lowest depths of de- 
 pravity to the pure, clean heights of a 
 thoroughly regenerated manhood, is not 
 open even to the charge of exaggeration. 
 Speaking under the mighty stress of an 
 exaltation and rapture unknown and un- 
 knowable except to those who have been 
 delivered from the thrall of gross ma- 
 terialism, and have become "new creatures 
 in Christ Jesus," extreme language, with 
 an occasional trip across the border into 
 the purely imaginary, might almost have 
 been pardonable. 
 
 203
 
 204 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 But nothing but hard, cold, and some- 
 times cruel fact has fallen from this man's 
 lips. 
 
 The temptation to the author, Mr. 
 Scandlin, must also have been a very great 
 one. The friendship between these two 
 men has been one of the most pathetic 
 things I have ever known. Utterly dis- 
 similar in disposition, training, and tem- 
 perament, the one a young business man, 
 the other a hardened ex-convict, they were 
 brought together in the Bowery Mission, 
 learned together at the feet of the Great 
 Teacher the same lesson of L6ve f and 
 formed for each other an affection and 
 respect never surpassed since the days of 
 David and Jonathan. 
 
 Notwithstanding this, Mr. Scandlin 
 has conducted the recital of this touching 
 story without permitting a hair's-breadth 
 deviation from the line of absolute fact. 
 
 The story could very well be extended,
 
 EPILOGUE 205 
 
 and something said of John Goode's life 
 of abundant usefulness during the last 
 few years. He is one of our most active 
 workers, the leader of our Wednesday 
 night meetings, and the assistant leader of 
 the Sunday evening meetings. He is never 
 absent from his post. He puts an amaz- 
 ing amount of enthusiasm into everything 
 he says and does, in connection with the 
 meetings. When he speaks, he never re- 
 mains on the platform, but walks down 
 into the midst of the crowd, where he has 
 his audience at close grips. His talks and 
 testimonies are always delivered with tre- 
 mendous force, and many a brand has he 
 plucked from the burning. 
 
 His activities, however, are not confined 
 to the meetings. If there is any poor out- 
 cast, who has fallen so often that even the 
 warm-hearted workers in our meetings 
 have lost faith in him, it is John Goode 
 that goes after him. If the news comes to
 
 206 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 the Mission that some man has fallen by 
 the way, been overcome with temptation, 
 and is in the backroom of some saloon, or 
 has been taken to the Tombs prison, or 
 the alcoholic ward of Bellevue Hospital, 
 it is John Goode that always flies to the 
 rescue. His own deliverance has been so 
 wonderful, and his faith in God and man, 
 therefore, so great that he despairs of no 
 one. He is a man of great mental ability, 
 he has a passionate love of reading works 
 of philosophy, poetry, and artistic litera- 
 ture. He has two favourites amongst the 
 preachers of New York City, whom he 
 never fails to hear when he has the chance, 
 Dr. Jowett and Dr. Hugh Black. Read- 
 ers of this little story, bearing in mind his 
 early training, and his progress through 
 the dark by-ways of vice and crime, may 
 be surprised to know that the two princi- 
 pal features of his character are, his love
 
 EPILOGUE 207 
 
 of the beautiful and his love of little chil- 
 dren. 
 
 There, perhaps, never was such a serv- 
 ice in the Bowery Mission as the Memorial 
 Service to his wife. He insisted upon 
 having her body brought and placed in 
 the middle aisle of our auditorium, and 
 as he stood there, his huge frame shaking 
 with emotion, his hand resting lovingly 
 upon the casket, he pleaded with the men, 
 especially those separated from their 
 wives and children, to accept the same 
 wonderful salvation that had come to him. 
 I have been many years in this work 
 amongst the lowly of the Bowery, and 
 have witnessed many pathetic scenes, but 
 amongst the most impressive are those of 
 that faithful wife in her humble home in 
 her later days, rejoicing over the answer 
 to her prayers, and the transformation of 
 her husband. Over and over again, with a 
 smile of ineffable beauty resting upon her
 
 208 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 
 
 poor, worn features, would she repeat the 
 words, "John is such a good man." 
 
 We are praying that John Goode's life 
 may be spared to us for many years to 
 come, for a stouter, braver life has never 
 breasted the waves in behalf of his fellow- 
 men. 
 
 J. G. HALLIMOND, 
 
 Superintendent of the 
 
 Bowery Mission.
 
 A' ' III 
 000 036 671