CHAPTER XIV.

ABBY HOPPER GIBBONS.

BY LUCIA GILBERT RUNKLE.

"Father Hopper's" Work Among Convicts and Felons- First Sunday Services in a Jail-Abby Hopper's Girlhood-Following in the Footsteps of Her Father-Her Work among the Inmates of the New York Tombs -The "Isaac T. Hopper Home "The School for Street Children The Waifs and Strays of Randall's Island - Charity Children - An Appeal for Dolls-Generous Response - Affecting Incident - The Story of Robert Denyer - Mrs. Gibbons' Work During the War-Nursing Union Soldiers-The Draft Riots in New York-An Exciting Time Attacking Mrs. Gibbons' House - Havoc and Devastation Wrought by the Mob- Work After the War-A Noble Life.

HE "Hapsburgh lip," the "Guelph heaviness," the "Adams temper," are historic. That subtle drop of blood which forever bequeaths its tendencies descends from sire to son through long generations. But not less certainly does excellence derive itself from excellence. Philanthropy in certain races is an inheritance, and the Hopper good-will is as truly a characteristic as the "Hapsburgh lip."

The father of Mrs. Gibbons, Isaac T. Hopper,

of beautiful memory, spent sixty-five years of his allotted fourscore in constant, cheerful, brotherly labors for the outcast, the prisoner, and the fugitive. When he left his home, at the age of sixteen, to begin life for himself, his mother, a woman of lofty and generous character, said to him: "My son, you are now going forth to make your own way in the world. Always remember that you are as good as any other person; but remember, also, that you are no better." This counsel he received as a birthright, and

the Hopper claim to it still holds good. On the one side he had always the courage of his opinions, the self-respect that

"Dares to be

In the right with two or three;"

on the other, he kept the simplest modesty, without self-consciousness. His wife was a woman of great beauty and singular high-mindedness. They belonged to the society of Friends, and believed in the duty of the simplest living, that worldliness might not corrupt or superfluities defraud charity.

Into this plain home many sons and daughters were born, to delight in the beauty and sweetness of their mother, and that resistless charm of their witty, fun-loving, sport-devising, story-telling, dramatic, Quaker father, which, when he was an old man, still drew children to crowd about him, and prefer "Father Hopper" to their young playmates. From babyhood his own boys and girls were familiar with instances of want and misery that might have made them unhappy had there been any morbidness and sentimentalism in the atmosphere of the household. But they were taught, with a simple matter-of-course-ness which precluded harm, that the unfortunate had a human claim upon them. Time and sympathy were not to be wasted in vain pity, but devoted to practical help. Abused apprentices, fugitive slaves, wronged seamen, defrauded workwomen, were familiar figures in their home. On Saturday afternoon they used to take long country rambles with their father, always stopping at the prison to leave whatever comforts they had been able to procure for its inmates. For many years Friend Hopper was an official inspector of prisons, and a tireless Good Samaritan to the most questionable neighbor.

Those were days when it was still a recent discovery that convicts were human beings, capable of reformation, and penetrable to kindness. Near the close of the last century the Rev. Dr. Rogers of Philadelphia, one of the committee of the first society formed in this country "for relieving the miseries of public prisons," proposed to address a religious

exhortation to the prisoners on Sunday. The keeper assured him that his life would be in danger. Solitary confinement was the rule of the jail. If the convicts were allowed to assemble together it was feared that they would overpower the guard and escape, to rob and murder as they went. The sheriff finally granted an order for the performance of religious services. But the warden obeyed it with fear and trembling, actually ordering a loaded cannon to be planted near the clergyman, a gunner beside it with a lighted match, while the motley worshippers were ranged in solid column, directly in front of their grim threatener. This is believed to have been the first attempt ever made in America to hold Sunday services in a jail.

Friend Hopper used to say that there was not a convict in Philadelphia, however desperate, with whom he should fear to trust himself alone at midnight anywhere. He was once warned against a certain violent and revengeful felon who had been heard to threaten the life of a keeper. Thereupon he summoned the man, telling him that he was wanted to pile some lumber in a cellar, and went down with him to hold the light. They remained for more than an hour in that solitary place, the Quaker talking in the friendliest way to his sullen. companion. When they came up again it was plain that the man's dangerous mood was past, for the time, at least. Presently it became the rule, whenever the final resources of prison discipline failed, to send for Friend Hopper, whose shrewd kindness prevailed in the end against the most dogged obstinacy and malevolence.

All the children of this extraordinary man inherited his spirit. But his second daughter, Abby, heard the "inner voice" calling upon her to take up his peculiar work in his peculiar way. Teaching in girlhood, and mothering the younger children, left by their mother's long illness and death to their elder sisters, she still found time to be her father's constant aid and counsellor.

After her marriage and removal to New York cares came upon her in battalions. With no home duty neglected,

and with an ever-demanding spirit of helpfulness, exerted, not in sentiment, but instance by instance, the days were full. Six children were born to the young couple. Money was never plentiful, and the consequent claims upon the time, strength, and ingenuity of the mother and housekeeper were unending. But her wonderful management so systematized affairs as to leave leisure for innumerable good works.

Fashionable ladies keep an "engagement-book," lest, in the whirl of their days, some visit of ceremony, some overdue invitation, some civil message or arbitrary courtesy should be neglected. The punctual Quakeress needed no memorandum of social duties even more numerous and pressing. For fifty years and more, five days of every week have been visiting days" with her.

Every Wednesday found her at the Tombs, that grim Egyptian pile which is the city Bridewell. Only one who has stood within the bounds of a prison can comprehend the gloomy misery of the place, or the self-denial implied in frequent visits to its squalid inmates. The bolts and bars; the multiplied iron doors; the narrow guarded passages; the far grated windows just below the ceiling, through which no ray of sunshine glances; the chill, and silence, and mocking neatness; the stark, strait walls, which, to affrighted fancy, seem ever to be narrowing; the unvarying routine of stagnant hours-these things give one a suffocating sense of living burial, and the human life entombed there is horrible to Men and women, debauched, quarrelsome, drunken, sickening to every sense, and, to the common judgment, conscienceless as the beasts, and incapable of reformation, sulk and complain in the doleful cells, which, after all, are less dreadful places than the dens which fill them. Familiarity with such creatures naturally breeds indifference to them. Official justice naturally confounds unhardened culprits with hopeless offenders.

Armed with discretion in the needed discrimination, the Prison Association, whom Mrs. Gibbons represented, attempted to help those who were willing to help themselves.

These philanthropists saw with what appalling pressure the superincumbent weight of society bore down upon the criminal mass below it. They saw, therefore, the necessity of providing work and a fair chance for convicts, who, having completed their term of sentence, too often found themselves distrusted, isolated, and unable to obtain employment, and finally driven back to their old haunts and their old ways.

Another purpose of the association, never lost sight of, was the improvement of the condition of prisoners, whether awaiting trial, detained as witnesses, or finally convicted.

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When Mrs. Gibbons began her weekly visits to the Tombs she found mere children-arrested for vagrancy or held to give evidence, herded with the most abandoned criminals. She found young girls, accused of trifling offences, exposed to the companionship of the lowest of their sex, and decent men, more unfortunate than vicious, breathing the tainted air of hideous immorality.

Through her instrumentality new rules provided a separate shelter for the children, and made some sort of discrimination between the various grades of crime. She inquired into the previous life and associations of the female prisoners, admonishing the dissolute, and encouraging the remorseful. She lightened the utter cheerlessness of prison life with the hope of better days to come. Felons besought her kindness for their families, and murderers in the condemned cells sent for her to counsel and assist them.

Yet with all her sympathy she had her father's shrewd and sceptical judgment. No sham repentence, no interested piety, no fictitious distresses, imposed upon her for an instant. She had no sentimental counsels for wrong-doers. Hard work, indomitable perseverance, patient endurance of distrust and harsh judgment, she set before them as the hard conditions of readmission to the world of decent living.

A very brief experience among these prisoners convinced her that the women must have some refuge in which they would be safe from temptation on leaving prison. Helped by a few other zealous souls, she established for them the