Dan Lewis was put behind barred windows with eight hundred other young
"foes of society." He was treated as a criminal, and when he resented it,
he was put under a cold shower and beaten with a rattan until he fainted.
Outraged, humiliated, bitterly resentful, his one idea was to escape. At
the end of a month of cruelty and injustice he was developing a hatred
against authority that would ultimately have landed him in the State
prison had not a miraculous interference from without set him free and
returned him to his work in Clarke's Bottle Factory.
It all came about through a letter received by Mrs. Purdy, who was
wintering in Florida--a tear-stained, blotted, misspelled letter that had
been achieved with great difficulty. It ran:
Dear Mis Purdy, me and Dan Lewis is pinched again. But I ain't a
Dellinkent. The jedge says theres a diffrunce. He says he was not puting
me in becose I was bad but becose I was not brot upright. He says for me
to be good and stay here and git a education. He says its my chanct. I
was mad at first, but now I aint. What Im writing you fer is to git Dan
Lewis out. He never done nothink what was wrong and he got sent to the
House of Refuse. Please Mis Purdy you git him off. He aint bad. You know
he aint. You ast everbody at home, and then go tell the Jedge and git him
off. I can't stan fer him to be in that ole hole becose it aint fair.
Please don't stop at nothink til you git him out. So good-by, loveingly,
NANCE.
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