I often wondered if Daniel Foss had been true in his resolve and deposited the carved oar in the Philadelphia Museum.
It is a difficult matter for a prisoner in solitary to communicate with the outside world.
Once, with a guard, and once with a short-timer in solitary, I entrusted, by memorization, a letter of inquiry addressed to the curator of the Museum.
Although under the most solemn pledges, both these men failed me.
It was not until after Ed Morrell, by a strange whirl of fate, was released from solitary and appointed head trusty of the entire prison, that I was able to have the letter sent.
I now give the reply, sent me by the curator of the Philadelphia Museum, and smuggled to me by Ed Morrell: * * * * *
“It is true there is such an oar here as you have described. But few persons can know of it, for it is not on exhibition in the public rooms.
In fact, and I have held this position for eighteen years, I was unaware of its existence myself.
“But upon consulting our old records I found that such an oar had been presented by one Daniel Foss, of Elkton, Maryland, in the year 1821.
Not until after a long search did we find the oar in a disused attic lumber-room of odds and ends.
The notches and the legend are carved on the oar just as you have described.
“We have also on file a pamphlet presented at the same time, written by the said Daniel Foss, and published in Boston by the firm of N.
Coverly, Jr., in the year 1834.
This pamphlet describes eight years of a castaway’s life on a desert island.
It is evident that this mariner, in his old age and in want, hawked this pamphlet about among the charitable.
“I am very curious to learn how you became aware of this oar, of the existence of which we of the museum were ignorant.
Am I correct in assuming that you have read an account in some diary published later by this Daniel Foss?
I shall be glad for any information on the subject, and am proceeding at once to have the oar and the pamphlet put back on exhibition.
“Very truly yours, “HOSEA SALSBURTY.” {1}
CHAPTER XX
The time came when I humbled Warden Atherton to unconditional surrender, making a vain and empty mouthing of his ultimatum, “Dynamite or curtains.”
He gave me up as one who could not be killed in a strait-jacket.
He had had men die after several hours in the jacket.
He had had men die after several days in the jacket, although, invariably, they were unlaced and carted into hospital ere they breathed their last . . . and received a death certificate from the doctor of pneumonia, or Bright’s disease, or valvular disease of the heart.
But me Warden Atherton could never kill.
Never did the urgency arise of carting my maltreated and perishing carcass to the hospital.
Yet I will say that Warden Atherton tried his best and dared his worst.
There was the time when he double-jacketed me.
It is so rich an incident that I must tell it.
It happened that one of the San Francisco newspapers (seeking, as every newspaper and as every commercial enterprise seeks, a market that will enable it to realize a profit) tried to interest the radical portion of the working class in prison reform.
As a result, union labour possessing an important political significance at the time, the time-serving politicians at Sacramento appointed a senatorial committee of investigation of the state prisons.
This State Senate committee investigated (pardon my italicized sneer) San Quentin.
Never was there so model an institution of detention.
The convicts themselves so testified.
Nor can one blame them.
They had experienced similar investigations in the past.
They knew on which side their bread was buttered. They knew that all their sides and most of their ribs would ache very quickly after the taking of their testimony . . . if said testimony were adverse to the prison administration.
Oh, believe me, my reader, it is a very ancient story.
It was ancient in old Babylon, many a thousand years ago, as I well remember of that old time when I rotted in prison while palace intrigues shook the court.
As I have said, every convict testified to the humaneness of Warden Atherton’s administration.
In fact, so touching were their testimonials to the kindness of the Warden, to the good and varied quality of the food and the cooking, to the gentleness of the guards, and to the general decency and ease and comfort of the prison domicile, that the opposition newspapers of San Francisco raised an indignant cry for more rigour in the management of our prisons, in that, otherwise, honest but lazy citizens would be seduced into seeking enrolment as prison guests.
The Senate Committee even invaded solitary, where the three of us had little to lose and nothing to gain.
Jake Oppenheimer spat in its faces and told its members, all and sundry, to go to hell.
Ed Morrell told them what a noisome stews the place was, insulted the Warden to his face, and was recommended by the committee to be given a taste of the antiquated and obsolete punishments that, after all, must have been devised by previous Wardens out of necessity for the right handling of hard characters like him.
I was careful not to insult the Warden.
I testified craftily, and as a scientist, beginning with small beginnings, making an art of my exposition, step by step, by tiny steps, inveigling my senatorial auditors on into willingness and eagerness to listen to the next exposure, the whole fabric so woven that there was no natural halting place at which to drop a period or interpolate a query . . . in this fashion, thus, I got my tale across.
Alas! no whisper of what I divulged ever went outside the prison walls.
The Senate Committee gave a beautiful whitewash to Warden Atherton and San Quentin.
The crusading San Francisco newspaper assured its working-class readers that San Quentin was whiter than snow, and further, that while it was true that the strait-jacket was still a recognized legal method of punishment for the refractory, that, nevertheless, at the present time, under the present humane and spiritually right-minded Warden, the strait-jacket was never, under any circumstance, used.
And while the poor asses of labourers read and believed, while the Senate Committee dined and wined with the Warden at the expense of the state and the tax payer, Ed Morrell, Jake Oppenheimer, and I were lying in our jackets, laced just a trifle more tightly and more vindictively than we had ever been laced before.