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16 THE BULLETIN OF THE CATHOLIC LAYMEN’S ASSOCIATION OF GEORGIA entered and extending his hand he said: “Father, I am very glad to see you. Of course, it was my duty to pay the first call, but I have been away and have just returned from Virginia. In fact, I was not aware that a new Pastor had come.” I preserved my gravity, I am glad to say, and said that of course I understood he was unable to pay the first visit, but it was all right. I talked with him for nearly a half hour and found him a charming talker. He had not had many advantages for education when a boy, but he had read much and there were very few topics on which he could not converse. He had a very low voice and as I have said he was the last man you would have picked out as a criminal. He was quite a philosopher in some matters, as I found out during my visit. I asked him if I could do any thing for him, and he said he missed The New York Herald. I made arrangements with a local dealer to supply him with the paper. I may state here, that for the few trifling things I got for him he sent me the money on the occasion of his escape from jail the next year. I felt sure he was a baptized Catholic, and so one day I said: “Frank, are you not a Cath olic?” He replied: “Yes, Father, but not a very good one. I then asked how long it had been since his last confession, and he told me it had been quite a number of years. I said: “Don’t you think you might well employ your time now in making prepara tions for a good confession, since we will soon have the Christmas holidays?” Frank promptly replied: “Father, of course, when I first met you, I thought about this, and I have been examining my conscience, but I can not really find any sins which I have com mitted. Frank, I answered, “you have the reputa tion of being the most adroit and the most successful bank burglar in the United States. It seems to me your profession would afford material for confes sion.” Frank answered me by stating that there were other gentlemen in his profession who had been equal ly successful, but he added that he could really find no matter for confession in his work “I am merely giving back to the plain people the money of which they have been robbed,” he replied. “I have never turned down an appeal for help. When I suggested that charity was an excellent thing when you relieve the needy by giving your own money, but when you took money belonging to some one else to help the poor it could scarcely be called charity, Frank said: You know, Father, there is not an honest man in public life today, from the President down. Every one of the men in public office is a grafter and a thief.” It was during the administration of Grant and the whiskey and other rings we/; flourishing. “Now,” continued Frank, “I am restoring to the poor the money of which they have been robbed. Besides the time has come in our country when there are no honest men, and so the ordinary rules of honesty are no longer recognized.” Many a man has put up a less specious plea to justify his villainy than my friend the bank burglar. My efforts to get Frank to make his peace with God met failure. He was never rude nor impatient, but smiled at my appeal and shook his head. I never asked him any questions with re gard to his adventures. One Monday morning, as I was getting my mail, a woman told me she had been in the jail seeing a sick woman on Sunday and Frank called her to his cell door and asked her to tell me to stop coming to see him. I was surprised, but of course, I did not pay him my usual visit that day. On the next day when I came downtown I found the town in great excitement. Big Frank had again escaped! That morning at 9 o clock a coach drove up to the jail and in a moment Frank walked out of the jail and through the corridor of the sheriff’s house, got into the coach and drove off. As he got into the coach he dropped his hat and something attracted the sheriff, who was sitting in his shirt sleeves in front of his office, in a chair tilted back against the wall. The sheriff called to Frank to stop, but Frank drove off rapidly. By the time the sheriff got his buggy ready Frank was fully a mile away. But the sheriff had a very fast horse and firing his pistol in the air he attracted the attention of the driver, who stopped the horse. The sheriff drove alongside and said: “Well, Frank, I’m sorry, but you will have to drive back with me.” When he opened the coach door, the curtains having been down, Frank was not in the coach. The driver was arrested, but declared that the man got in and told him to drive slowly through the town, but as soon as he struck the cause way to drive as fast as possible as he must catch the 10:10 train to New York. He did as ordered and never saw the man get out. Effort was made to catch Frank, but without success. There seemed some mystery about it. Some four or five months after wards Frank was arrested in New York for a burglary of which I think he was innocent. At any rate he was brought back to N. He had been back a month, but I never called on him, until one day while visiting another prisoner, he called me as I was passing his cell and wanted to know why I did not come to see him. I told him I had received a message not to call. He said he was sure I understood why he sent that message. He did not want me to be suspected of any complicity in his escape. I resumed my visits and on one of them I asked him how he escaped. He said: “If you will not mention it until I leave prison I have no objection to telling you. And this is the story: Every Sunday a number of women visited the jail and held some kind of service in the corridor. They prayed and sang hymns and then talked with the prisoners. One of these women became most in terested in Frank and begged him to lead a better life. Frank told her a story of a wife and destitute children in New York, who, on account of his being in prison, were to be separated, the wife going to some institu tion and the children to be sent to Texas. As a mat ter of fact, Frank was unmarried. He said if he ever got out he would leave New York and take his family and go out West and lead a better life. The woman became much more interetsed in him, and finally Frank asked her if she could provide a place where he could hide if he escaped from the jail. She said she would hide him in her own house if he got out of jail. All the plans were made except the day and Frank told her that on the next Sunday he would arrange for the day and hour. On the next day Frank saw the sheriff passing through the jail and calling him to the door showed him a bar of common washing soap, saying: “Sheriff, just look at the kind of soap you gave me to wash my face and hands. Why, in New York I never paid less than 50 cents for Colgate’s toilet soap, and just look at the stuff. Can 1 send it to my wife to let her see how I have come down?” “Well, Frank,” replied the sheriff, “you don't expect me to pay 50 cents for toilet soap for you when I am only allowed 19 cents a day for your board by the Levy Court?” Frank asked him if he might send the soap on to his wife in New York so she might see what he was using, and when the sheriff consented, he added: But I won t give you any soap in its place for a week.” Frank said, “Well, I will ask her to send it back.” The soap was sent to New York, and Frank, by bribing a trusty, got possession of the key of his cell and the key of the outer door for a few moments and pressing each key deeply into the soap he sent the bar to New York where two keys were made from the mould made in the soap and when the soap came back, Frank was provided with the means of getting out. On the following Sun day his lady visitor came as usual and they arranged the particulars of his stay with her. On Tuesday morning at 9:00, he walked out of his cell, got into the coach and holding the door with his hand, drove down the street. The woman was standing at her door and Frank jumped out and went into her house where he was concealed for a fortnight. It is cer tainly a rather remarkable fact that no one saw him get out of the coach, not even the negro driver.