A TALK IN GAOL

Evening Star, Issue 19760, 10 January 1928, Page 1

A TALK IN GAOL

EMOTIONS IN TALKING TO FOUR HUNDRED PRISONERS The other night, fulfilling aa invitation from the Governor, Mr AValien gave an address in Armley Gaol. In these notes ho gives his impressions of a strange, new experience. And he touches upon the problem of the discharged prisoner.— ‘Yorkshire Evening News.’ “ Sound of dangling, clanging, clanking kevsl Gleam of shining keys, steel bright! A 'door opens at the top of a turret stair. ‘Enter!’ says the Governor. In front of mo, to the right and left of me, 400 inmates of Armley Gaol! These are my audience to-night,”' writes Mr Sydney AVallon, in the ‘ Yorkshire Evening News.’

“ They sit in semi-circles, tier upon tier. From floor to floor they range. They are all men; men under the shadows. fam shy, hesitant, nervous. Swift as lightningflash, a thought darts through the mind. Behind these brows, within these 400 bosoms, what strange life stories must lie hidden! Not Charles Dickens himself, not Victor Hugo, not Alexandre Dumas, can provide pages more curious than these unwritten human documents.

‘‘Four hundred of them; youth and age and the middle years. And the mixture of temperaments, you can read it from their faces; the phlegmatic and the choleric, the rash and the crafty, the slowwitted, and the cpiick-witted! All are there with every shade and degree between. Half (he audience is in drab prison garb; half in blue. Each man, quickly I say to myself, represents a crisis in somebody’s home, a crisis of sorrow and sobbing. . . . “ The Governor speaks. With genial phrase he introduces me, the lecturer. No table at which to stand; no tangible sup.port to strengthen me; no place for notes so industriously made ready yesternight. To the winds with written nolesl They retard and hinder. Direct touch is best; awi to man, without any fluttering manuscripts between, “ In moments of nerve-tension, at the threshold of a new experience, little incidents impress the mind. I am conscious how cleanly the chapel is, how well lighted. In a moment, that moment of beginning when your own voice affrights you, I catch sight of a group of faces tense with earnest heeding. That group is my assurance, irj inspiration. The shy lecturer is bolder now. His ship of speed) takas the .seas. Its white sails are tauter, tinner. ‘‘These men shall have my best. If it's in me io «a> grave and winsome word, said it shall be. Beneath and behind the thinking wliicll shaped the speech upon the lips was that thought strengthening the spirit. And this thought also; that in the beauty of words dwells someth’.ig richly, almost regally, powerful over tbs souls of men. ‘Give me a word,’ says Joseph Conrad, ‘ and 1 will rule the world.' Rapidly 1 recall to myself a scene in Bit mingham. A class ol rough lads—an ad dress on Wordsworth! Could there bo sharper antithesis? But the spall upon those boys at the reading of the great poems! The music of speech makes a miracle in the mind.

‘‘ My subject is a poem-portrait, a picture sketched by George Eliot. A concert hall; a master-player on the violin; the, ecstasy of applause; the crowd, hushed and awed, passing out into the dark street! And‘the authoress musing: ‘Yes, wonderful playing; but something is due to the instrument. Who made it?’ And she tells about ‘ the plain white-aproned man ’ who made the violins and made them of the best. For fame and reward only this: ‘When any master holds ’twixt chin and hand a violin of mine, he will be that Stradivari lived.’ And he’s proud of an eye ‘ that winces at false work and loves the true.’ The part of ‘the plain white-aproned man ’ in English history, in human experience—there’s the theme. A big one, too, in all goodness. N' praise, no laurels, no glowing epitaphs; but it’s ‘the average man,’ as lan Hay says, who is the light and salt of life.

“ Ended the address. Never have I had a more attentive, more wistful audience. No applause till the close, and then the rafters ring, not that the lecture had much merit, but the hearers were generous. Governor Roberts, I envy him. He knows how to. speak to his audience, Ha gives emphasis where, . perhaps, 1 had missed the emphasis. ‘ Would anybody like to second this expression of thanks?’ he asks. A. convict rises. Cultured his voice, chaste his words. . .