The applause subsides and every face turns towards me expectantly. Oh, for the gift of the tongues of men and of angels! What an opportunity lies here before me! And I feel helpless to take advantage of it.
As I stand for a moment looking over the large audience, feeling unable to make a start, my attention is arrested by the face of one of my gray brothers. He is an old man, I do not know him, I am not conscious of ever having seen him before, but the tears are rolling down his cheeks as he sits looking up at me.
Then as if a cloud were lifted from my spirit, I suddenly understand what it all means. These men are not seeing me, they are looking at Tom Brown--the embodied spirit of the world's sympathy. They have felt the sternness of society--the rigor of its law, the iron hand of its discipline. But now at this moment many of these men are realizing for the first time that outside the walls are those who care.
I said to these men last Sunday that I should try to "break down the barriers between my soul and the souls of my brothers." It was necessary so to endeavor in order to understand the conditions I came to study. But what has happened is that these men have broken down their own barriers; they have opened their hearts; they have dignified and ennobled my errand; they have transformed my personal quest for knowledge into a vital message from the great heart of humanity in the outside world--a heart that, in spite of all that is said and done to the contrary, beats in sympathy with all genuine sorrow, with all honest endeavor for righteousness.
Thrilling with this revelation of the true meaning of my own mission, lifted out of apathy and discouragement, I make my speech; but, alas, the words come haltingly and reflect but little of the warmth and exhilaration in my heart.
When the Chaplain spoke to me about saying a few words to you this morning--words of farewell, because here for a time at least we must separate--I did not realize that it was going to be so hard. Probably I am the only man, in all the years since this prison was built, to leave these walls with regret.
It is not necessary to give every word of my utterly inadequate address. I was in no physical or mental condition to speak; my audience was almost too moved to hear. From a mere reading of the words that fell from my lips no one would understand the situation. But the prisoners understood; they listened with emotions which few can appreciate to my words of greeting and farewell and my prophecy of the new day soon to dawn for them.