471

CHAPTER L.

Niblo Clark--The Mysterious Three R's--His Characteristic Verses--My
Tenth Anniversary at Chatham--All Efforts Fail and
Fifteen Years Gone Forever--Despairing When Good News
Comes--My Sister in England--George Freed--Hope Returns
and Abides--George Gets James G. Blaine, J. Russell and
Others to Intercede--Fresh Failures--Home Secretary Matthews
Won't--George and My Sister Will--Which Will Wear
the Other Out--George and Sister Win--Night and Gloom in
My Cell--These Walls Have Frowned on Me for Twenty Years--Warder's
Tramps on Stone Corridor Arouse Me--Door Opens--"You
Are Free"--First Sight of Stars in Twenty Years--I
Shout, 'Twas Like a Prayer: "God Is Good." 478

NOTE TO THE PUBLIC

The Hon. Lyman J. Gage, Dr. Funk and hundreds of others have said
that my book should be put at a price which would place it within
the reach of every young man, etc.

Hitherto, it has been sold by subscription at $3.50, $5 and $10 per
copy--the five editions printed having been easily sold at those
prices.

Notwithstanding the thousands of friends their circulation has
made, I did not care to have my family name go any further in this
connection than financial needs required in working for the release
of the men still undergoing life sentences in English prisons.

At last, however, certain influence causes me to let it go in the
revised and improved form here presented, and may it prove as
valuable and engrossing to the general public as it has to 20,000
subscribers to former editions. GEORGE BIDWELL.

CHAPTER I.

HAD THERE BEEN WISDOM THERE?

We lived in South Brooklyn, near to old No. 13, the Degraw Street Public
School. To that I was sent, and there got all the education I was ever
fated to have at any school, except the school of life and experience.

I attended for some years, and even now I cannot recall without a smile
the absurd incompetency of every one connected with the institution and
their utter ignorance of the art of imparting knowledge to children.

At home I had picked up that grand art of reading, and went to school to
learn the other two R's, with any trifle that I might come across
floating around promiscuously.

I certainly hope our much-lauded public schools are conducted on better
lines now than then; i