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The pitiful dole with which the discharged prisoner had been unloaded upon a world which had no welcome for him had been soon spent; even the hideous prison-made clothes had been pawned, and some rags, which were yet the rags of a free man, which had been preserved through the long period of separation by his wife, gave him a poor shelter from the winter's cold.
It had been closed when the cab first entered the prison, a few hours before, but now its top was thrown back, and they could see that it held the two women, who sat facing each other on the farther side, and on the side nearer them, stretching from the forward seat to the top of the back, was a plain board coffin, prison-made and painted black.
Guessing rather than judging my way, I stumbled steadily forward until I reached what I imagined must be about the centre of the wood. By this time I was wet through to the skin. The thin parti-coloured "slop" that I was wearing was quite useless for keeping out the rain, a remark that applied with almost equal force to my prison-made breeches and gaiters.
And with the thought came the fear that if I was once more permitted to mingle as a free man, away from the immediate pressure of danger, with the busy throng of life, I would forget my prison-made vows, and thus lose my claim to a world of never-fading light.
I happened to be in the front office at the moment when J. was signing receipts and receiving his property preparatory to leaving. He was dressed in a neat business suit of his own not a prison-made monstrosity. He was clean and smooth and bright, and tremulous with excitement.
He arrived during the age of Board Sidewalks, Congress Gaiters, and Pie for Breakfast. The Paper Collar, unmindful of the approaching Celluloid, was still affected by the more tony Dressers. Prison-made Bow Ties, with the handy elastic Fastener, were then considered right Natty.
That is the usual way; but it is the exception, sometimes, that counts. Let us return to our average convict, just out, and with the world before him, where to choose to display his prison-made garments and to spend his five dollars. It not seldom happens, to begin with, that he is not so much out as he had imagined. Our present method with convicts has peculiarities. Here is a common example.
At a signal from his bent forefinger a negro trusty came forward and took the pardoned man away and helped him put his shrunken limbs into a suit of the prison-made slops, of cheap, black shoddy, with the taint of a jail thick and heavy on it. A deputy warden thrust into Dugmore's hands a railroad ticket and the five dollars that the law requires shall be given to a freed felon.
His eyes wandered over her thin, childish figure as she sat there beside him, still intent upon the movements of the glittering dragonfly, and he shuddered. Those horrible, shapeless shoes might very well have been prison-made, and the striped dress was exactly like those he had seen in some pictures of female convicts.
On the contrary, these years witnessed the first sustained legislative campaign that was ever conducted by a labor organization, namely the campaign by the New York Trades' Union for the suppression of the competition from prison-made goods.
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