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Updated: June 12, 2025
They went on in silence into town, and when they did speak, it was on indifferent subjects, not referring to the last. The Doctor's heat, as it usually did, boiled out in spasms on trifles. Once he stumped his toe, and, I am sorry to say, swore roundly about it, just as he would have done in the new Arcadia, if one of the jail-birds comprising that colony had been ungrateful for his advantages.
Gangs of men and boys, composed of railroad employées, workers in machine-shops, and a vast crowd of those who lived by preying upon others, thieves, pimps, professional ruffians, the scum of the city, jail-birds, or those who were running with swift feet to enter the prison-doors, began to gather on the corners, and in streets and alleys where they lived; from thence issuing forth they visited the great establishments on the line of their advance, commanding their instant close and the companionship of the workmen, many of them peaceful and orderly men, on pain of the destruction of one and a murderous assault upon the other, did not their orders meet with instant compliance.
But in Andalusia every one is potentially as criminal, which is the same as saying that these jail-birds were estimable persons whom an unkind fate and a mistaken idea of justice had separated for a little while from their wives and families. I saw two only whose aspect was distinctly vicious.
Mother wants no jail-birds calling on her at the hotel. When I have regained my social footing when she is ready to take my arm and walk up Main street of this city then she shall see me as often as she wishes. It was my own cursed folly that brought me to the gutter, and if mother will pay the price of my freedom, I will alone and unaided make my way back among the highest and proudest."
But wicked backsliders existed, poor slaves of habit, who were in Duxbury fined ten shillings for each offence, and in Portsmouth, not only were fined, but to their shame be it told, set as jail-birds in the Portsmouth cage.
But the most part are of a different order skulking jail-birds; unkempt, barefoot children; big-mouthed, robust women, in a sort of uniform of striped flannel petticoat and short tartan shawl: among these, a few supervising constables and a dismal sprinkling of mutineers and broken men from higher ranks in society, with some mark of better days upon them, like a brand.
"Big talk, small deeds; that's their caliber, Jack. They'll have their sauciness hammered out of them quickly enough when Swope plays his next card." "Aye, but what if Blackie and Boston, or that Cockney, make trouble? They are bossing the stiffs." "Those two jail-birds know what I will do to them if they go beyond talk," said Newman. "As for that Whitechapel beauty, he is quite harmless, I think.
They were joking and laughing together, harmlessly enough, but I must own that they looked a crew of rather sorry jail-birds; though whether any run of humanity clad in misfits of our navy blue and white, and other chance garments, with close-shaven heads, and sometimes bare feet, would have looked much less like jail-birds I am not sure.
The jail-birds among our own countrymen are the most difficult subjects to deal with, and flogging only hardens them; if I had to deal with them I should be far more disposed to look for a cure from the contempt and raillery of their shipmates.
The jailer was further surprised to hear the two prisoners singing actually singing some of their hymns, though they must have been in great discomfort. Away into the night they sang. The other prisoners heard them and marvelled. Surely these new jail-birds had something which they, the old ones, did not possess.
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