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Show I Mil MlOj IMiSHBy MUM MWTMM1E II WITHIN THE GRIM GATES: I The Interior of the Structure Wherein Men Lose Their Identity and Become Mere Numbers in the Scheme of Lite. II WHAT THIS IS V theme here is a description of a prison, of the prisoners' ItJL life there, and an exposition of prison thoughts and feeling, as seen from within by one into whose soul, as the phrase is the iron has entered. For severj I reasons, this particular thing has not till now been successful!- done in this country. But it ought to be done, and the obligation to doit happens to fall on me. Circumstances I have put me forward as spokesman and interpreter for this 1 j H subterranean and si!ent brotherhood of which I was one, and I from which I have come forth. ! Civilized society is responsible for its prisons, and for the treatment of prisoners, as well as for the conditions that, brought the latter under the punitive power of the law. But society has no accurate or vital knowledge of what penal imprisonment, im-prisonment, is, of its effect upan the men subjected to it, and upon those appointed to administer it. Society now has an opportunity op-portunity to learn something of these matters, and may there- II upon decide with some intelligence what, if anything, it be-hooves be-hooves it to do in the premises. I have allowed a thread of persona! narrative to run j through the story, on which are strung reflections and sugges- tions arising from the facts presented. I have done this with no wish to exploit my private affairs, but in order to give the j composition a naturnf human form, and to instill into it the life which abstract propositions lack. The reader is requested to construe the personal pronoun as meaning not. myself in particular, but the prisoner in his cell. Whatever further explanations are necessary may be found in the story itself. I JULIAN HAWTHORNE. I -vUT the fear of rod in his 1 heart!'7 This phrase, impious and ironic, is used by officials in prisons, a nil repeated by prisoners. It has no religious import. To "put the fear of God in a man's heart." means to break his spirit, to cow him, make him, from a man, a servile, sneak; and this is effected not by encouraging aim to remember bis creator, but by instilling into him dread of the club, the dungeon aud the bullet. He must learn to fear not God. but the warden, ihe Oaptatp and the guard. He is to be hustled about, cuffed, shored, lucked, put in the hoJe, punished tor not comprehending surly and halt inarticulate orders, or for uot understanding gestures without worus. all ol which encouragements to obedi erne are, indeed, specifically forbidden 111 federal ami state prisons by the role width were formulated in Washington Wash-ington and state capitals und disseminated dissemi-nated for the information of the iu- t'estigatifm committees and oi the pub-Uu, pub-Uu, out which arc disregarded nevertheless neverthe-less uy many prison authorities from tne highest to die lowest, i-or they mm: i.utiiiiig by disregarding them; (Hers is no out: except prisoners to con.;, lam of illegal treatment, and Chore is no one lor them to complain to except the very pemoac who are guilty 01 the illegalities; and the warden war-den at Atlanta, at any rate, has repeatedly repeat-edly utatc'l Unit he Would -not accept ttie oaths of an number of prisoners against the unsupported denial of a siugie guard. To do otherwise would be u destroy discipline.'' kJut may tot the prisoners complain to the committees or Inspectors, appointed ap-pointed precisely to inquire into aud relieve abuses of this sortf I shall have a good deal to say about these agents of humanity presently. pres-ently. 1 will only say here that no pris oner who cares whether he live- 01 dies, or who possesses common senile or the smallest rmatiering of experience H of prison an airs, ever is so reckless as MB to impart any fact to the persons in question. If he accuses any guard or oiiier official of cruelty, the entire force of prison heeperi can and has M been at need marshalled to deny point blank that any such thing occurred, or. if any did, it was because the accused official was at the time quelling a dangerous dan-gerous revolt, and deemed his own life in peril. If this evidence be insufficient, insuffi-cient, it is a pathetic truth that some prison en an always be found so debased de-based by error ami abject as to perjure themselves against their comrades. Accordingly, complaints of brutal treatment at Atlanta and elsewhere are not frequent, either to the officials r to investigators; otherwise, T need not tax your imagination to picture what happens to the complainants after aft-er the investigators have departed. Order Or-der and discipline as appertaining to prisoners, not to officials must be pre- tCrved, if we are to have any prisons at all. And since there is no way for the prisoners to compel guards to keep within the license accorded to them, we must compel the prisoners to accept ac-cept whatever injustice or outrage, unrestrained un-restrained despots of the ranges have the whim to inflict upon them. Poignant First Moment. We are now on the verge of having :i:e --fear of God'' put iii our hearts. Some twenty-Six hour- before, my friend Ml and I, just out of the Tombs, and in charge of t wo federal marshals, have tal en the road to oblivion at the Pennsylvania Penn-sylvania station in New York City. A few DlinutOS since, three miles or more beyond the city of Atlanta, we had advanced ad-vanced to the entrance of an expanse of ornamental grounds, with a cement pathway leading up to on extensive fortified for-tified tructur'- a wall thirty feet high -weeping to right and left from the tall dee) gateway, with the summits of stone towers emerging beyond. I stepped out briskly, in advance of the others; T noticed some bright-hued flowers in a bed on the right. Tn a few H moments I was ascending a wide flight of steps; as T did so the gateway of the United States penitentiary yawned, and two men in uniform stepped out. There was a transient halt, a few words were exchanged; we went forward and the gate closed behind us. We waited juet inside the prison gates. That difference between juet. inside and just, outside is important : for nine convicted con-victed men out 01 ten it would be punishment pun-ishment for their misdeeds more than sufficient to be taken no further on thi Way to retribut ion than that. hatevoi I humiliation and disgrace they are c.apa ble of feeling or have cause to feel i: at that first mom Cut at its height; it strikes upon thom unaccustomed am defenseless never so acutely sensitive as then. Afterward, famiharitj with misery and shame, renders them pro gross ively more and .more callous, With out adding one jot to the public odiui: of their position. Then can never forge, that first clang of the closing gates in their ears; the whole significance tri penal imprisonment is in that. Man. man, the moment after that BXpOrianci might turn round and go fortu a free man, yet. with a soul charged with all the mortal burden that man-deyised penalties Ban inflict upon him. Moreover, rot having been unmannc and his nature violated by physical insults in-sults and outrages, he' might find strength aud Spirit to begin and pursue :. better life thereafter. The "lesson'' (word -which shallow and officious mor-alists mor-alists roll so sweetly under theii tongues) -would have been taught him to the last tittle, and withal enough of the man remain to profit by it. Whereas, under the existing conditions no more than four or five years in jai' destroy any possibility of future useful DOSS in most men; they h?.ve boon hammered ham-mered into something helpless, dazed or monstrous; and even if thev havi courage to attempt to take hold of life again, they are defeated by the unre mitting pursuit of the spy system, whirl depends for the main part" of its livelihood live-lihood upon getting ex-convicts back to tail whether on sound or on perjured evidence, is all one to many of the spies. So most prison sentences arc life sentences to all practical intents To the manhood of the man priso: means death. A rrison Suit and a Bath. My friend and I looked at our new-masters new-masters with curiosity; they looked at us with what might be termed arch amusement. With Mich a look do Bmal! boys regard the beetles, kitteus or other animals whom power to torment has been given them. It was after prison hours the men had been already locked in their cells, and the warden and deputy dep-uty had gone home. It was left to subordinates sub-ordinates to begin the task of putting the fear of God in our hearts. We were hurried through the haud some corridor, and down a flight of iron steps to a less presentable region. There was no aggressive brutality, only a peremptory per-emptory curtuess entirely proper in the circumstances. Our only defense against physical Severity was a bearing of cheerful but not overdone courtesv, and we gave that what play wo might. I could not foretell how I might behave under a clubbing, and would not bring the thing to a test if I could decently avoid it. In a long, low, shabby, ill-lighted room -we were lined up against a counter, on the other side of which were two or three of our fellow prisoners the first we had seen whose function it was to fit us with prison suits. Tbey consisted of a sack coat and trousers of grav bine cloth rather heavy goods, for the warm seaBon had uot yet begun and this was obviously far from being their first appearance on a convict; suits are handed down from one generation of prisoners to another until thoy aro entirely worn out; my own was of nn ancient vintage and a good deal defaced, de-faced, but. T had no ambition to be a gla-s of fashion in jail. Of course I could only conjecture what diseases previous wearers of it might have suffered suf-fered from; but T hoped for the best. Every new arrival at the penitentlarv is presumed to be dirtv until ho fs proved clean, and the only way for him to prove his bodily purity is to submit to a bath. The regulation is commen-duble, commen-duble, and was welcome to us after our dav and night in the train; but a com rade of mine from the mountain wilderness wilder-ness of South Carolina, where bathing is still regarded as a degrading inno. vation, described to me long nfterward what a sturdy battle he had put up against the disgrace, and being a lusty youth, it had taken, tlio husl efforts of 1 T IFE BEHIND THE PRISON WALLS. 1-J.l ian Hawtnorne before Le wai sent to prisoa. 2 Atlanta prisom lamateaB "H assembled in tke prison yard tm witness a game of baseball between two convict teams. 3 Christmas dinner m tbe federal! 1 penitentiary at Atlanta. 4 Tke new cell house in tbe federal prison at Atlanta being built by coavict. 3 An interior view f I a cell bouse at tbe Atlanta penitentiary showing tke arrangement of cells. Anotber row of cells backs up on this- but between the two is a narrow passage, witk a peep kole into eack cell, tkus giving tke guards opportunity to spy on tke convicts contmnally.S t.: ...... ... ".. .... ,.,.........,,..,..,..,...,..,.. t- several guards to hold him under the pout long enough to wet nlni and themselves into the bargain. Though this was the first time since infancy tnat I had bathed uuder compulsion, com-pulsion, I complied very readily, and even said to my friend," " This Isn't so oad! " It is not permitted, under the law, to give out any news about prisoners prison-ers to the world "without, after they have once passed the portals; nevertheless, neverthe-less, this memorable remark of mine was printed next day by the New York newspapers, together with tbo scarlet hue of my necktie, and some other ae-tails ae-tails my registered prison number among them, my own first knowledge of which was derived from the published pub-lished paragraph. It was my first intimation in-timation of a fact which afterward ex creised no small influence on my destiny des-tiny in the prison that I was a "distinguished,' "dis-tinguished,' or nt least a notorious prisoner. This influence had its good as well as its bad aspect, in the long run, but the latter was in the beginning the more conspicuous. Chilled Steel Bed Chamber. From the bath to the bod chamber. Up the darksome stairs into the stately corridor; through an inner gateway, and into a wide hall which communicated communi-cated to right and left, through small steel doors, with tho west and east ranges (dormitories). The west door was unlocked, and we were pushed into in-to a huge room, about 200 by 120, with tall barred windows along each side. Inside this space had been constructed a sort of inner house of steel, seven or eight stories iu height, with zig zag stairways at either end, leading to narrow platforms that opened on the individual cell doors. These doors wero barred, and were locked by throwing a switch at the near end of the ranges; but any particular door could also do opened by a key. The cell doors of the inner btructure wore at a dibtance of some twenty feet from the walls and windows of toe outer shell, and got what light and air they had from these none too much, of course. Also, tho guard ou duty in the range, If the weather be chilly, will close the windows, against tho protests of tho prisoners and agalust the regulations, regula-tions, too; but most of the guards are thin-blooded southerners, and diseased into the bargain, and do not like cold air. Tbe consequence is that the four hundred pairs of lungs in each range soon vitiate the atmosphere; the prisoners pris-oners tur.u, .and. toss in their cots, have bad dreamB, and rise in the morning with a headache. W.e mounted three or four flights oi iron steps, and were introduced into a cell near the corner. It. was, like all the others, a steel box about eight feet long by five wide, and eight or nine high. On one sido two cots two feet wide were hinged against the wall, one above another; they reduced the living space to a breadth of three feet. The wall opposite was made of plain plates of steel, and so was the inner end of tho cell, but in this, at a man's height from the floor, was a round hole an inch in diameter. That was part of tho spy system; for between tho two rows of cells is a narraw passage, in .which tho guard can walk, and, himseli unseen and unheard, spy upon the prisoners pris-oners and listen to their conversation. All prisoners are at all times of the da' and night under observation. This 1 seems a slight thing, but the cumula five effect of it upon men 's minds is disintegrating. At no moment of their lives can they command tho slightest privacy. Ana what right to privacy, you ask, has a prisoner! Would he not use it to out his way through the chilled Bteel walls with smuggled in drill and saw, or to plot revolt with his cellmate? Possibly; but even a beast seeks privacy at certain junctures; and to deuy all privacy tends to bestializo human beings. It is a part of tho " put-the-fcar-of -God-in his heart" principle prin-ciple which breaks, humiliates, degrades de-grades the man and renders him unfit for human association. A Book of Rules. There had been issued to us sheets, a pillow case and a gray blanket of the army sort; our first duty was to make our beds. Mattress and pillow were stuffed with what felt like wood chips, and was probably straw and corn husks; the pillow was cylindrical; the mattress was hlllockod and hollowed by the uneasy struggles with insomnia of countless former users. There was a camp stool whoso luxuries we might share. We had, each, a prison toothbrush tooth-brush and a comb. In the ceiling of the cell was an electric bulb which would be dnrkoned at 9 o'clock. But all this was welcome. I had often roughed it in conditions quite as severe; se-vere; my spirits could not be dashed by mero hardships or inconveniences. Wo put our domestic menage in order or-der cheerfully, glad that wo had been celled together. Instead of doubling up with strangers. Nor would it havo dis couraged us to know that the west range was the oue occupied by negroes and daugerous characters. The place was silent; none of the demoniac chantiugb and hyena Jauirhtor of the Tombs, and we had our little jests and chueklings as We made our arrangements. arrange-ments. Courage, comrade! the period of suspense and anticipation is passed, we are at grips with reality now. Moreover ''Evert prisoner, on installation in-stallation in his cell, is supplied with rolls and hot coifoe, aud with pipe aud tobacco!" Thus would the statement run in the report to the department, What if tlic bread is uneatable, tho coffee cof-fee undrinkable, and the tobacco un-smokable? un-smokable? The mere idea of such things is something; besides prisoners do contrive, being hard nut to it, to cousume them. We ourselves at least tried all three; if it proved easier to be abstinent and self-indulgent that was our own affair. Meanwhile our mental appetites were appeased by a little gra" pamphlet, con tai llill OT tile rllie5 MWAPniTIO (tin rnn- duct of convicts in the penitentiary. There were a great many of them, and not a few required thought to penetrate their significance. Why, for lnr.tance, should special emphasis be laid upon the injunction to rest one's shoes against the bars of the door upon retiring? We were never informed. Another rule was italicised "Do not try to escape you might get. hurt!" An Unexpected Visitor. In the midst of our perusal we were interrupted by the arrival of a visitor. He was a slight-built, slope-shouldered young fellow, in prison garb, with a meager visage heavily furrowed with sickness and suffering ho had tuberculosis, tuber-culosis, chronic bronchitis and the indigestion in-digestion with which all prisoners who eat the regular prison fare are afflicted. Not that Ned (as I will call him, since it was not his name) mentioned his conditiou; it was determined long afterward after-ward by the diagnosis of my friend. Ned's object iu visiting us was not to air his own troubles, but to assuage, so far as he might, the gloom, aud un easinoss of tho new arrivals. In his haggard face shone a pair of very intelligent in-telligent and kindly gra' eyes, and above them rose a compact, well-filled forehead. I was fortunate enough to keep in touch with this young man during dur-ing my stay, aud I found no more lov-ablo lov-ablo nature in tho penitentiary. He made no secret of tho fact that he had been guilty of a federal offense, and he never expressed contrition for it; "I made a mistake in taking another man in with me," ho remarked: "you are never safe unless you go it alone " He had not been systematically educated, edu-cated, but he had read' wisely and "judiciously, "ju-diciously, talked correctly, though with occasional colloquial idioms thrown In, and he was a concentrated and original thinker. His courage was undemonstrative., undemon-strative., but. indomitable; ho never complained of his own condition and experiences, but was instant in his sympathy sym-pathy with the misfortunes of others. No more welcome and valuable counselor coun-selor than he could have come to us in those, first hours of our durance. That ho was ablo to visit us was due to his being a ''runner," as those prisoners pris-oners aro termed who are assigned to carry messages and doing odd jobs in the ranges. Ho leaned against the bar? l'ho-o:;r;t..l;h -..(., r;-..i i , , ! , I, ! ; : : r.--. p and spoke manfully and puugentl. with touches of gay humor now aud theu; advised us as to our conduct what to do and what to avoid; and when he noticed the little gray pamphlet, pam-phlet, said scornfully: "Don't muss up your ideas with that! There's a hundred rules there, und every one of 'em is broken every day. Those rules are for snow: wbu'r happens to 3 ou depends ou who the guard is, and how he happens to be feeling. You can go as far as you like sometimes, and other times you'll got hauled up if you turn your head sideways. "The screw" (guard) "on this range is decent; ho won't crowd you too much Keep quiet, and do what they tell you, and the odds are von '11 get by all right. Of course, if "some fellow fel-low gets a grudge against you, ho's liable to hammer you like hell. There are some prisoners here that get on the wrong side of a screw, and well, it goes hard with 'em! But if you're a fittle careful, I guess you'll get through all right." "Good Night Sleep Well!" Ned imparted his information by fits and starts; ever and anon he would break off abruptly and walk off down the range, to give tho guard the idea that ho was about his ordinary business; busi-ness; then he would return, squat dosvn on his hams besido the door( and murmur mur-mur along in his rapid, distinct tones. All that lie said was abundnnt.lv confirmed con-firmed later. Finally "Good night sleep well they'll put you on some job in a few-days. few-days. IV a the first days that, go hardest hard-est with most men, but vou'll get used to it. You might got out on parole, too but don't count ou it; of all the frauds in this prison parole is the worst! ' ' He laughed in the prison way silently, si-lently, in his throat arid went away, after warning us that it was near 9 o'clock. Our watches had been taken away from us; no doubt, a prisoner might bribe a guard with it to bring him cigarette papers, or "dope." Besides, Be-sides, what has a man in jail to do with timet Our prison masters desire their charges to exist so far as practicable in a dead, unmeasured monotony, where a miuute may seem to prolong 'itself to the dimensions of an hour; to feel themselves utterly severed from the WQ rid .they have'anuoved or injured. Fhat is the penitentiary ideal; but it has of late become impossible fully to realize it. A prison will alwavs be a prison; but at any rate, light shall be lot in on it. Meanwhile, our cell light went out; and we waited for the dawn. I lay in tho upper bunk. It was a six-foot six-foot drop to tho cement floor below. Tho mattress, though irregularly denBj aud bulged, was upon the whole com vex, and not over two feet wide. vertical fence or bastion, six or oiHT inches high, along the outer brink this precipice would nave averted tB danger of rolling off in tho night; T, nothing of the sort had been piovnjH One must remember not to roll, eBL in the nightmare Convicts eduCB' the subliminal self lo a surprising dipt gree, and do not fall victims to trap as often as one would expect; b5 occasionally oue of them forgets, 8JJ t dowu he comes, sometimes gettB bruised only, but generally with a ken bone or so 1 do lot have nSKi mares, aud I lav prone, gripping jBF sides of the mattri:? with my &nflflj as if it were a bucking broncho. SjH. journeyed, Mazeppa-like, through abysses of that night, and was not vAjt Light glimmered obscurely thronAnle the bars of the cell from the VflBt burner belcr. Odd sounds broke outMJ intervals Half suppressed comjBJCf sudden, brief cries, irregular wheszBL and gurglings, due to defective plunjB" ing, occasionally a few muttered worimljg then a man in" an upper tier began moan and groan dismally ;a negro WMjf lfll a colic, perhaps. Lonir, dead silyBjW would be interrupted by inexplioflBJ" In the dead vast and middle of jB night tho prisoner in tbe cell over Bjt. began to pace up and down his smjn eighteen inches above my head. -fj. paces one way, four back, over J over intolerablv ; Hint forging to.,?fljlti fro, like a tormented pendulum witaMj soul in it, gave a stilling impressioniWtDH of one tortured for air and space. -M many .'-'cars must he endure now npT1 centuries? Was his wife dying, IPij children abandoned1? 9k Ud and down he padded; m I committed Borne ugly crime, fr wMMjj ho longed to a 1 cue--but prison is JJIl , atonement! Had hii conviction W1 unjust, and wns ho raging impote9lfr against injustice? Let him not nH ' too loudlv,' for there was n guard jJi dor, indifferent to tortured souls, BBK licensed to stop noises - prison prison. a sanitarium for diMMHpnt crooks. But if the world could, those footfalls, and interpret their JJq uificance, how long would prisons 'HBjfr fj, A ail at nigh I is a strange PwT 800 men packed in together, eaoft 0 rifyingly nlone! 'Jd The Call to Another Day. Some of the earlier workers had roused at 0 or ' o'clock or efrlJ but for the rnajontv the 6.30 ball the reveille. Tt screeched v iolently m was silent The watching deyl the guardian angels of the night VP (Continued on Following Patf-) M Behind the Prison Walls (Continued from Preceding Pago.) ished, and up got the S00 members of tho Gentlemen 'a Country club, to live as best they might through one day more; coughing, hawking, spitting, murmuring but all with a sense of repression re-pression in it, the lifo-sapping drug of -fear in its origin, but long since bo-come bo-come a mechanical habit with most of them. Eight hundred criminals, herded beneath ono roof to be cured of their crimes by indifferont or threatening and hostile task-masters and irresponsible irresponsi-ble discipline-mongers, and by association associa-tion with one another a regiment of hell to extirpate deviltry! Tho twentieth twen-tieth contury solution of the problem of fivil, unaltered in principle after thousands of years! Civilization haB progressed wonderfully, wonder-fully, but always with this death house on its back. And the death houso gets bigger and more populous every j'eur. Reformers, exhortors, Christian Endoav-orcrs, Endoav-orcrs, humanitarians, Salvation Armies, social reformers, penalogists, scientific experimentalists with surgical apparatus, appara-tus, together with parole laws, indeterminate indeter-minate sentences, commutations, pardons, par-dons, not to speak of a good warden here and there and a kind guard all toiling and tinkering to mako prisons better, to sweep them, to air them, to instill religion and education, to supply sup-ply work and exorcise and to pay wages and all the while tho tide of criminals gets larger and tho accommodations accommo-dations for thotn less adequate. What can be the matter? Are we to ond by discovering that everybody is a criminal, crim-inal, and ripe for jail? or shall we be driven to tho realization that tho fundamental fun-damental idea itself of imprisonment for crime is itsolf the most monstrous of crimes and try something else? What else is there to be tried? Are we to leave criminal to their liberty among the community T The Sauce for Prison Meals. There will be time enough to discuss these riddlos. It is time now to get into in-to your prison suit, with the "U. S. P." on the back of the coat, and your number; it's "U. S. P." on tho back of tho shirt, with your number it's "U. S. P." on tho front of your trou3-er trou3-er logs, and your number; your canvas can-vas shoes and your visorcd cap. 'But bewaro of putting on the cap within prison walls, lest the guard report you to tho captain, the captain to tho deputy, dep-uty, tho deputy, if necessary, to the warden, and ye bo cast into the innor darkness. There shall thero be thin slices of bread, and water, and gnashing gnash-ing of teeth. With a gunrd acting R3 convict coin-peller, coin-peller, we shuffled in a continuous lino down the iron stairways and across the hall into tho (iinjng-room, a cement-floored, cement-floored, barred-window desert sown with tables in rows, seating eight mou each; guards with clubs standing at coignes of vantage or pacing up and down the aisles, and in one window, commanding tho whole room, a guard with a loaded riflo, licensed to shoot down any mis-behavor. mis-behavor. At no timo and in no part of this model jail aro you out of range of a loaded rifle, in the hands of men quick and skillful in their use. They are the sauce for meals and the encouragement en-couragement to labor. I will postpono to a future article the subject of tho dining-room and what is dono there. As we iiled out I noticed "MERRY CHRISTMAS" and "HAPPY NEW YEAR" emblazoned in green above tho door. It was to remind re-mind us, perhapB, of what wo lost by being criminals. As wo debouched into tho inner hall, separated, from the corridor cor-ridor leading to the warden's oflico, and to freedom, by a steel-barred gate, wo saw a guard seated in a chair with a riflo across his knees. Rats in a steel trap might have mutinied with as much hope of success as we at that juncture; but tho convicts must not be allowed to forgot that they aro in prison. We wore rounded into" our colls and locked ifor half an hour, during which we might smoko tho tobacco supplied to the prison by contract; or wo might read, or comb our hair, or do cal-Isthonics, cal-Isthonics, or invoke the divine blessing upon tho labors of tho coming day. The interval is really providod as a measure of security; many of the prisoners do their work outsido tho main buildings; but it 5b deemed unsafe to unlock the outer gates while the whole body of prisoners is on the move. Our Final Rites of Initiation. At the expiration of tho half hour wo laid aside our pipes, or our prayer books, and were ready for the activities of the day. Tho others were detailed to thoir regular workj but my friend and I had our final rites of initiation still to undergo. A young official, whose countenance readily if not habitually assumed a sullen and menacing menac-ing expression, beckoned to us with his club, and wo followed him downstairs down-stairs to au elevator, in which ho ascended to the upper floor, while we pursued him upward by way of the staircase. The cap of Mr. tvy such was his poetic given name was worn on the extronie rear projection of his head, and he used his club in place of speech j not that he actually pummelled us with it, but by wavings and paintings ho niado it indicate his will, and kept us mindful how easilj' wo might afford him a pretext for putting it to more normal uho. Mr. Tvy conducted us to a bench out- sido a closed door, already partly ocu- 9 pied by three or four ha'lf naked eon- Si victP, tthile and black. We gathered B f i om his gestures of head aud club that WfI wo cio to remove our upper garments fmO and our nhoe and stocking?, and placo 'iKlS them on the floor in front of us. it was 'SjEt a coJil morning, and the floor was of jE limestone. We obeyed instructions, and wIM for the next twenty minutes sat there, KM objects of pardonable ruriosity or mm amuscmenl to our fellow benchers and Warn tb passerby in the hall, and with noth- WM iiifi Ut keep ub warm but th genial in- 1 fliieiu'cs of tho occasion. I'M Finally, each in his turn, we were in J passed through the door into a sort of jiBf office, with clerks and Dr. Weaver, tho jU prison physician, at $1500 a your a jWm tall, young medical school graduate, llo IWM and an assistant put us through a jJtfH physical examination, and took a scries mm or measurements," nil of which were en- fflm tercd by the clerks in ledgers. Our mm photographs were then taken, and aft- JlnM envard fit was the next day, but may lW at wclj be told here) wo wero further 'Jft!jfi identified by laking the impressions of SM our finger prints, and by a second pho- MM tograph without our moustaches Nicso . mm having been removed in the meantime. jB9S We were now convicts fullllcdged and published, aud our pictures were dis- mM scminated to every prison and penitcn- jffin tiary in I ho country, to be enshined in till tho rogues' gallery and Btudied bv all Mm police olficials. imm The Weight That Breaks. My friend aud I, our ordeal com- ?1JK pletcd, wero returned to our cells to ffjl think it over. The walls and ceiling of 11 jy the cells are painted a light gray color; wj it is against the rules, excejit "by spe- jtfiW cial indulgence, to affix pictures or jjUH other objects to them. The "coddling of criminals," bo widely advertised, W does not' include permission to give u lj 5 homelike look to their perennial quar- 4Jm ler6; it is moro conducive to moral re- ISJ form that they should contemplate a mil painted steel. till There was ono camp stool in our cell; later, cells wero supplied with two I jm wooden chairs, tho backs sloping at ! IS such an angle with tho backs as render- m od sitting a penance. I remombcr see- ( 9 ing similar contrivances in old J'lnglish j W cathedrals, relics of a day when monks i M had to bo kont.r.frpm lalling asleep 5 'M during tho religirJUH rites. Wc might I m also sit upon the1ower bunk, b'ent lor- urn ward in such an attitudo as would S m avert bumping pur heads against the 5 Ij upper one. I 'Ml Each convict, early in lm sojourn, InU hns a roligious interview with the I M chaplain, who presents him with a copy j of the 2s"cw Testament not alBO of tho I m Old. Ono may get othor books of a ! ju secular kind from the library, upon 3 written application; and priso'uers of jfi IS the first grade may subscribe for news- w jfl papers that contain no objectionable jj matter. But only u small proportion of tho inmatos is addicted to reading, and tho opportunities for doing so aro lim- is iff itcd. And as months and years go by, mm the. desolation and sterility of tho placo mm, weigh heavier upon the spirit, the mind Una reduces its radius and grows inert, and Uttl stimulants stronger than current fic- tion are noeded to rouse it. jllfl Prison, prison, prison; steel walls mjm and gratings; two predestinate screech- mm ings and clnngings of whistles and Jam gongB; the endless filings to and fro, in mui and out; tho stealthy insolenco. of mim guards; or thoir treacherous good-iol- jujl lowship; the abstracted or menacing aim gaze of higher officials; tho dreariness, ffljjK aimlcssness, and sometimes the severity BJ of the daily labor; tho sullen threat of JflXi tho loaded" rifles; the hollow, echoing H U spaces that shut out hope; the thought; SB of the stifling stonch of th'o dungeons fl beneath the pavements, hidden from all Mil save the victims, whose very existence M u is officially denied; the closing of all jfjEii personal communication with the outer lvj world, except such as commends itself IlLR to the whims of tho official censors; UB this morgue, of human beings still alivo Mil tno lmpenoirnDio siupiuiiy ana juui- mm ity of it all slowty or not bo slowly jt:i unbalance the mind and corrupt the Mil nature. Wll (Copyright, 3013. by the Wheeler 8yn- Bj dicatc, Inc.) JIfI |
