CHAPTER XXXVII.

HENCEFORTH A LIGHT WAS TO STREAM THROUGH THE FLUTED GLASS OF MY WINDOW.

The first day was over, but it seemed to me that something more must

come. That what I had gone through could mean the life of a day must

surely be impossible. Was there nothing before me but isolation so

complete that no whisper from the outside world could reach me, that

world which compared with the death into which I was being absorbed

seemed the only world of the living?

Had I actually nothing to look for but the most repulsive work under the

most repulsive conditions? I said there must be surely some change, that

wheeling mud forever was not the doom of any man and could certainly not

be mine.

I looked about my little cell, the stillness of the grave without, the

utter solitude within. The ration which formed my supper was on the

table, eight ounces of black bread. Try as I might to cheat myself with

hope, I knew that hope for many a long year there was none, that so far

as the most vindictive sentence could compass it, for many a long year

the earth with her bars was about me.

No "De Profundis" cry could ever ascend from the abyss to the bottom of

which I had fallen. What was outside of me had nothing but the hideous.

But although the visible seemed corruption, and the things which my

soul, and body, too, had refused to touch were become my sorrowful meat,

yet I could not but feel that the invisible, that part of me which no

bars could hold and no man deprive me of, was still my own, and that in

it I might and would find sufficient to support what I began to feel

was, after all, the only man.

To face the actualities of the position was the first thing; not to

cheat myself, the second. I had seen the sort of men I was to be with. I

set to work to study and to understand the kind of life we were to live

together.

At early dawn we rose, receiving immediately after the nine ounces of

bread and pint of oatmeal gruel which composed breakfast. At 6.30, to

chapel to hear one of the schoolmasters drone through the morning

prayers of the English Church service, and listen to some hymn shouted

out from throats never accustomed to such accents. Then the morning

hours would drag slowly on in the Summer's sun and Winter's blast until

the noon hour; then there was the long march back from the scene of my

toil to the prison for dinner. Arriving there, each man went to his

cell, closing his door, which snapped to, having a spring lock. Soon

after a dinner is given consisting of sixteen ounces of boiled potatoes

and five ounces of bread, varied on three days of the week with five

ounces of meat additional. At 1 o'clock the doors were unlocked and we

marched out to our work again. At night, returning to the prison, eight

ounces of black bread would be doled out for supper. Then came the hours

between supper and bedtime, when shut in between those narrow walls one

realized what it was to be a prisoner.

In the corner of the cell there was a board let into the stonework.

There was a thin pallet and two blankets rolled up together during the

day in a corner of the cell that served for bedding, but so thin and

hard was the pallet that one might almost as well have slept on the

board. For the first few weeks this bed made my bones ache. Most men

have little patience and small fortitude, and this bed kills many of

the prisoners. I mean breaks their hearts, simply because they have not

the wit to accept the matter philosophically and realize that they can

soon become used to any hardship. It took six months for my bones to

become used to the hard bed, but for the next nineteen years I used to

sleep as sweetly on that oak board as I ever did or now do in a bed of

down, only, like Jean Valjean, in "Les Miserables," I had become so used

to it that upon my liberation I found it impossible for a time to sleep

in a bed.

On a little rusty iron shelf, fixed in the corner, was our tinware.

Although called tinware, it really was zinc, and was susceptible,

through much hard work, of a high polish, but this "polishing tinware"

was a fearful curse to the poor prisoner. It consisted of a jug for

water and a bowl for washing in and a pint dish for gruel. There were

strict and imperative orders, rigidly enforced, that this tinware should

be kept polished, the result being that the men never washed themselves,

and never took water in their jugs, for if they did their tinware would

take a stain--"go off," as it was termed--the result being that if the

poor devil washed and kept himself clean he would be reported and

severely punished for having dirty tinware.

A prisoner is not permitted to receive anything from his friends or

communicate with them in any way, save only once in three months he is

permitted to write and receive a letter, provided he is a good character

and has not been reported for any infraction of the rules for three

months; for if reported for any cause, however trifling, the privilege

of writing is postponed for three months, and, as a matter of fact, more

than half of the men never get a chance to write during their

imprisonment.

A visit of half an hour once in three months is permitted, but this is a

favor that is only granted upon the same condition as the privilege of

letter writing.