"I Wear the Red"

1900

A convict in the Elmira, New York, Reformatory lay dying. In spite of every inducement offered by the humane regulations of the place, he had remained in the lowest grade, among the uncaring and incorrigible.

Kind attentions were given him in his sickness, but he showed no appreciation of them. Faithful hospital service, religious ministrations, even the occasional gift of a flower from tender-hearted visitors, elicited no sign of gratitude. To the last he continued unresponsive and taciturn, as if surrounded by enemies instead of friends.

Like many other men arrested for evil-doing, he had concealed his early history, and the name with which he had labelled himself gave no clue to his family connections. To the gentle questioning of a clergyman who had been specially requested to talk with him, he only replied, as he had replied to the chaplain:

"No one knows my name, and no one ever will know."

If desire to protect a mother or any living kindred from the pain of his disgrace was the motive of his secrecy, it was his one sign of right feeling. He expressed no contrition, asked for no sympathy. He would die where he had drifted — a shipwrecked soul.

His one miserable response answered every hopeful invitation, "I wear the red!" "I wear the red!" It was the burden of the man's last thoughts, and will be remembered as his last words: "I belong to the red! I wear the red!"

In the Elmira Reformatory an honor system appeals to the inmates, and tests their self-respect. All new arrivals are encouraged to earn by good conduct their release from their first suit — a suit of red. If they respond to this encouragement, they are promoted to a suit of blue. If they win still higher praise, they are allowed to wear citizens' clothes.

The words of the dying convict meant that he was hopelessly stranded among the worst. He wore sin's conventional color; and it was a color that clung. It always clings. But the despair of that unhappy young man could have found its antidote — where all the human race can find it — in humble appeal to him who said, "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." — Youth's Companion.