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TTEARST'S SUNDAY AMERICAN. ATLANTA, GA.. SUNDAY. DECEMBER
3 E
Within the Gates Where Men Are Numbered
• •
By Julian Hawthorne
Noted Author Telk of His Arrival as a Pris
oner at the Atlanta Penitentiary and How
‘the Fear of God’ Was Put Into His Heart.
{l UT the fear of God in his heart!” This
phrase, impious and ironic, is used by
officials in prisons, and 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 him to remember his Crea
tor, but by instilling into him dread of the club,
the dungeon, and the bullet. He must learn to
fear not God, but the warden, the captain and
the guard. He is to be hustled about, cuffed,
shoved, kicked, put in the hole, punished for
not comprehending surly and half inarticulate
orders, or for not understanding gestures with
out words; all of which encouragements to
obedience are, indeed, specifically forbidden in
Federal and State prisons by the rules which
were formulated In Washington and State capi
tals and disseminated for the information of
the investigation committees and of the pub
lic, but which are disregarded nevertheless by
many prison authorities from the highest to the
lowest For they risk nothing by disregarding
them; there is no one except prisoners to com
plain of‘Illegal treatment, and there Is no one
for them to complain to except the very per
sons who are guilty of the illegalities; and the
warden at Atlanta, at any rate, has repeatedly
stated that he would not accept the oaths of
any number of prisoners against the unsup
ported denial of a Blngle guard. To do other
wise would be to "destroy discipline."
But may not the prisoners complain to the
committees or inspectors, appointed precisely
in Inquire into and relieve abuses of this sort?
I shall have a good deal to say about these
agents of humanity presently. I will only say
here that no prisoner who cares whether he
lives or dies, or who possesses common sense
or the smallest smattering of experience of
prison affairs, ever is so reckless as to impart
any facts to the persons in question. If he
• accuses any guard or other official of cruelty,
the entire force of prison keepers can and has
been at need marshaled 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 revolt, and deemed
his own life In peril. If this evidence be In
sufficient, it Is a pathetic truth that some pris
oners can always be found so debased by terror
and abject as to perjure themselves against
their comrades.
Accordingly, complaints of brutal treatment
at Atlanta and elsewhere are not frequent,
either to the officials or to Investigators; other
wise, I need not tax your imagination to pic
ture what happens to the complainants after
the investigators have departed. Order and
discipline—as appertaining to prisoners, not
to officials—must be preserved, 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 whatever In
justice or outrage unrestrained despots of the
ranges have the whim to inflict upon them.
We were now on the verge of having the
"fear of God” put In our hearts. Sdme twenty-
six hours before, my friend and I, just out of
the Tombs, and in charge of two Federal mar
shals, had taken the road to oblivion at the
Pennsylvania Station, in New York city. A
few minutes since, three miles or more beyond
the city of Atlanta, we had advanced to the
entrance of an expanse of ornamental grounds,
with a cement pathway leading up to an ex
tensive fortified structure—a wall thirty feet
high sweeping to right and left from the tall
steel gateway, with the summits of stone tow
ers emerging beyond.
I stepped out briskly, In advance of the oth
ers; I noticed some hrlght-hued flowers in a
bed on the right. In a few moments I was
ascending a wide flight of steps; as 1 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 just inside the prison gates. That
difference between just inside and just outside
is important; for nine convicted men out of
ten, it would be punishment for their misdeeds
more than sufficient to be taken no farther on
the way to retribution than that. W hatever
humiliation and disgrace they are capable of
feeling or have cause to feel Is at that first
moment at its height; it strikes upon them
unaccustomed and defenseless—never so acute
ly sensitive as then. Afterward, familiarity
with misery and shame renders them progres
sively more and more callous, without adding
one jot to the public odium of their position.
They can never forget that first clang of the
closing gates in their ears; the whole signifi
cance of penal imprisonment is in that. Many
a man, the moment after that experience, might
turn round and go forth a free man, yet with
a soul charged with all the mortal burden that
man-devised penalties can inflict upon him.
Moreover, not having been unmanned and
his nature violated by physical insults and out
rages, he might find strength and spirit to be
gin and pursue a better life thereafter. The
“lesson'’ (a word which shallow and officious
moralists roll so sweetly under their 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 jail destroy
any possibility of future usefulness in most
men; they have been hammered into some
thing helpless, dazed, or monstrous; and even
if they have courage to attempt to take hold
of life again, they are defeated by the unre
mitting pursuit of the spy system, which de
pends for the main part of Its livelihood upon
getting ex-convicts back to jail—whether on
sound or on perjured evidence Is all one on
many of the spies. So most prison sentences
are life sentences, to a|l practical Intents. To
the manhood of the man, prison means death
My friend and I looked at our new masters
with curiosity; they looked at us with what
might be termed arch amusement. With such
a look do small boys regard the beetles, kittens,
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 had gone home
It was left to subordinates to begin the task
of putting the fear of God in our hearts.
We were hurried through the handsome cor
ridor, and down a flight of iron steps to a less
presentable region. There was no aggressive
brutality, only a peremptory curtness entirely
proper in the circumstances. Our only defense
against physical severity was a bearing of
cheerful hut not overdone courtesy, and we
gave that what play we might. I could not fore
tell how I might behave under a dubbing, 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 func
tion it was to fit us with prison suits. They
consisted of a sack coat and 'trousers of gray
blue cloth—rather heavy goods, few the warm
season had not yet begun—and this was ob
viously far from being their first appearance
on a convict; suits are handed down from one
generation of prisoners to another until they
are entirely worn out; my own was of an an
cient vintage and a good deal defaced, but 1
had no ambition to be a glass of fashion In jail
Of course I could only conjecture what diseases
previous wearers of it might have suffered
from; but I hoped for the best.
Every new arrival at the penitentiary is pre
sumed to he dirty until he is proved clean, and
the only way for him to prove his bodily purity
is to submit lo a bath. The regulation is com
mendable, and was welcome to us after our
day and night in the train; but a comrade of
mine from the mountain wilderness of South
Carolina, where bathing Is still regarded as
a degrading innovation, described to me long
afterward what a sturdy battle he had put up
against the disgrace, and being a lusty youth,
it had taken the best efforts of several guards
to hold him under the spout long enough to
wet him—and themselves into the bargain.
Though this was the first time since infancy
that I had bathed under compulsion, I complied
very readily, and even said to my friend, “This
isn’t so bad!" It is not permitted, under the
law, to give out any news about prisoners to
the world without, after they have once passed
the portals; nevertheless, this memorable re
mark of mine was was printed next day by the
New York newspapers, together with the scar
let hue of my necktie, and some other details
—my registered prison number among them,
my own first knowledge of which was derived
from the published paragraph. It was my first
intimation of a fact which afterward exercised
no small influence on my destiny in the prison
—that I was a “distinguished,” or at least a
notorious prisoner. This influence had its good
as well as its bad aspect, In the long run, but
the latter was 1n the beginning the more con
spicuous.
From the bath to the bed-chamber. Up the
darksome stairs into the stately corridor;
through an inner gateway, and Into a wide hall
which communicated to right and left, through
small steel doors, with the west and east
ranges (dormitories). The west door was un
locked, and we were pushed into a huge room,
about two hundred feet by a hundred and twen
ty. with tall barred windows along each side
Inside this space had been constructed a sort
of inner house of steel, seven or eight stories
in height, with zig-zag stairways at either end.
leading to narrow platforms that opened on
the individual cell doors. These doors were
barred, and were locked by throwing a switch
at the near end of the ranges; but any par
ticular door could also be opened by a key.
The cell doors of the inner structure were
at a distance of some twenty feet from the
walls and windows of the outer shell, and got
what light and air they had from these—none
too much of course Also, the guard on duty
In the range, if the weather be chilly, will close
the windows, against the regulations, too; but
most of the guards are thin-blooded Southerners,
and diseased into the bargain, and do not like
cold air. The consequence Is that the four
hundred pairs of lungs in each range soon
vitiate the atmosphere; the prisoners turn and
toss in their cots, have bad dreams, and rlBe
in the morning with a headache.
We mounted three or four flights of 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 side, 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 the cell, but in this, at a man s
height from the floor, was a round hole an
inch in diameter. That was a part of the spy
system; for between the two rowB of cells is
a narrow passage. In which the guard can
walk, and, himself unseen and unheard, spy
upon the prisoners and listen to their conver
sation.
All prisoners are at all times of the day and
night under observation. This seems a slight
thing; but the cumulative effect of it upon
men’s’ minds is disintegrating. At no moment
of iheir lives can they command the slightest
privacy And what right to privacy, you ask.
Julian Ilawlhorne, before and after his prison experience; convicts at the Atlanta ,n his rapid, distinct tones. All that he said
penitentiary assembled in the yard before a ball game, and the tier of cells where Mr. abundantly confirmed later.
. Hawthorne was confined. Finally—"Good night—sleep well—they’ll put
you on some Job In a few days. It’s the first
days that go hardest with most men, but you’ll
get used to It. You might get out on parole,
too—but don’t count on It; of all the frauds
in this prison parole is the worst!”
He laughed in the prison way—silently, In
his throat—and went away, after warning us
that it was near f* 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, what
has a man in jail to do with time? Our prison
masters desire their charges to exist so far
as practicable in a dead, unmeasured monotony,
where a minute may seem to prolong Itself to
the dimensions of an hour; to feel themselves
utterly severed from the world they have an
noyed or Injured. That Is the penitentiary
ideal; but It has of iate become impossible
fully to realize it. A prison will always be a
prison; but at any rate, light shall be let In
on it
Meanwhile, our cell light went out; and we
waited for the dawn.
I lay In the upper bunk. It was a six-foot
drop to the cement floor below. The mattresfe.
though irregularly dented and bulged, was upon
the whole convex, and not over two feet wide.
A vertical fence or bastion, six or eight inches
high, along the outer brink of this precipice
would have averted the danger of rolling off
In the night; but nothing of the sort had been
provided. One must remember not to roll,
even In the nightmare. Convicts educate the
subliminal self to a surprising degree, and
do not fall victims to this trap as often as one
w'ould expect; but occasionally one of them
forgets, and down he comes, sometimes getting
has a prisoner? Would he not use it to cut
his way through the chilled steel walls with
smuggled-in drill and saw, or to plot revolt
with his cell-mate? Possibly; but even a beast
seeks privacy at certain junctures; and to deny
all privacy tends to besttalize human beings.
It is a part of the "put-the-fear-of-God-in-his-
heart” principle—which breaks, humiliates, de
grades the npan, and renders him unfit for
human association.
There had been issued to us sheets, a pil
low-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
hilloeked and hollowed by the uneasy struggles
with Insomnia of countless former users. There
was a campstool whose luxuries we might
share. We had, each, a prison toothbrush, and
a comb. In the ceiling of the cell was an elec
tric bulb which would be darkened at i)
o’clock. But all this was welcome; 1 bud often
roughed it in conditions quite as severe; ray
spirits could not be dashed by mere hardships
or inconveniences.
We put our domestic menage in order cheer
fully, glad that we had been celled together,
instead of doubling up with strangers. Nor
would it have discouraged us to know that the
west range was the one occupied by negroes
and dangerous characters. The place was si
lent; none of the demoniac chanttngs and hyena
.laughter of the Tombs. We had our little jests
and chuckllngs as we made our arrangements;
Courage, Comrade! the period of suspense and
anticipation is passed; we are at grips with
reality now.
Moreover—"Every prisoner, on Installation In
his cell, is supplied with rolls and hot coffee,
and with pipe and tobacco!” Thus would the
statement run in the report to the Department.
What if the bread Is uneatabe, the coffee un
drinkable, and the tobacco unsmokable. The
mere idea of such things is something; be
sides, prisoners do contrive, being hard put to
it, to consume them. We ourselves at least
tried all three; if It proved easier to be ab
stinent than self-indulgent, that was our own
affair.
Meanwhile, our mental appetites were ap
peased by a little gray pamphlet, containing
the rules governing the conduct of convicts In
the penitentiary. There were a great many
of them, and not a few required thought to
penetrate their significance. Why, for instance,
should special emphasis be laid upon the in
junction to rest one’s shoes against the bars
of the door upon retiring? We were never in
formed. Another rule was italicised—“Do not
try to escape—you might get hurt!”
In the midst of our perusal, we were Inter
rupted by the arrival of a visitor. He was a
slight-built, slope-shouldered young fellow, in
prison garb, with a meager visage heavily fur
rowed with sickness and suffering—he hud tu
berculosis, chronic bronchitis, and the indiges
tion with which all prisoners who eat the reg
ular prison fare are afflicted. Not that Ned
(as I will call him, since it was not his name)
mentioned his condition; it was determined
long afterward by the diagnosis of my friend.
Ned’s object In visiting us was not to air
his own troubles, but to assuage, so far as he
might, the gloom and uneasiness of the new
arrivals. In his haggard face shone a pair of
very intelligent and kindly gray eyes, and
above them rose a compact, well-filled fore
head. I was fortunate enough to keep in touch
with this young man during my stay, and I
found no more lovable nature In the peniten
tiary. He made no secret of the fact that he
had been guilty of a Federal offense, and he
never expressed- contrition for it; ”1 made a
mistake in taking another man In wiyi me,”
he remarked; "you are never safe unless you
go it alone."
He had not been systematically educated, but
he had read wisely and judiciously, talked cor
rectly though with occasional colloquial Idioms
thrown in, and he was a concentrated and
original thinker. His courage was undemon
strative, but Indomitable; he never complained
of his own condition and experiences, but was
instant in his sympathy with the misfortunes
of others. No more welcome and valuable
counselor than he could have come to us in
those first hours of our durance.
That he was able to visit us was due to his
being a "runner," as those prisoners are termed
who are assigned to carry messages’ and doing
odd jobs In the ranges. He leaned against the
bars and spoke manfully and pungently, with
touches of gay humor now and then; advised
us as to onr conduct—what to do and what to
avoid; and when he noticed the little gray
pamphlet, said scornfully.
“Don’t muss up your ideas with that! There’s
a hundred rules there, and every one of ’em Is
broken every day. Those rules are for show;
what happens to you depends on 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 get hauled up if you turn
your head sideways.
“The screw” (guard) “on this range is de
cent; he won’t crowd you too much. Keep
quiet, and do what they tell you, and the odds
are you’ll get by all right. Of course, If some
fellow gets a grudge against you, he’s liable
to hammer you like hell; there are some pris
oners here that get on the wrong side of a
screw, and—well, It goes hard with ’em I But
If you’re a little careful, I guess you'll get
through all right.”
Ned imparted his information by fits and
starts; ever and anon he would break off ab
ruptly and walk off down the range, to give the
guard the idea that, he was about, hi ordinary
business; then he would return, squat down
on his hams beside the door, and murmur along
bruised only, but generally with a broken bone
or so. I do not have nightmares, and I lay
prone, gripping the sides of the mattress with
my knees, as if it were a bucking broncho. So
I journeyed, Mazeppa-Iike, through the abysses
of that night, and was not unhorsed.
Eight glimmered obscurely through the bars
of the cell from the night-burner below. Odd
sounds broke out at intervals. Half suppressed
coughs, sudden, brief cries. Irregular wheezings
and gurglings, duo to defective plumbing, occa
sionally a few muttered words; then a man
in an upper tier began to moan and groan dis
mally—a negro with a colic, perhaps. Ixrag.
dead silences would be Interrupted by inex
plicable noises.
In the dead vast and middle of the night the
prisoner in the cell over mine began to pace
up and down his floor, eighteen inches above
my head. Four paces one way, four back,
over and over Intolerably; that forging to and
fro, like a tormented pendulum with a soul in
it, gave a stifling impression, as of one tortured
for air and space. How many years must he
endure—how many centuries? Was his wife
dying, his children abandoned?
Up and down he padded: had he committed
some ugly crime, for which he longed to atone—
but prison is not atonement! Had his convic
tion been unjust, and was he raging lmpotently
against injustice? Eet him not rage too loudly,
for there was a guard yonder, Indifferent to
tortured souls, but licensed to stop noises. A
prison is a prison, not a sanitarium for dis
eased crooks. But if the world could hear
those footballs, and Interpret their significance,
how long would prisons last? A jail at night
Is a strange place—eight hundred men packed
In together, each terrifyingly alone!
Some of the earlier workers had been roused
at 0 or , r . o’clock or earlier; hut for the
majority the (1:80 bell was the reveille.
It screeched violently and was silent. The
watching devils or the guardian angels of the
night vanished, and up got the eight hundred
members of the Gentlemen’s Country Club, to
live as best they might through one day more;
roughing, hawking, spitting, murmuring—but.
all with a sense of repression in It, the life
sapping drug of fear In its origin, but long
since become a mechanical habit with most
of them. Eight hundred criminals, herded be
neath one roof to be cured of their crimes by
indifferent or threatening and hostile task-mas
ters and irresponsible discipline-mongers, and
by association with one another—a regiment of
hell to extirpate deviltry! The twentieth cen
tury solution of the problem of evil, unaltered
m principle after thousands of years!
Civilization has progressed wonderfully, but
always with this death-house on Its back. And
the death-house gets bigger and more populous
every year. Keformers, exhorters, Christian
Endeavorers, humanitarians, Salvation Armies,
social reformers, penalogists, scientific experi
mentalists with surgical apparatus, together
with parole laws, Indeterminate sentences,
commutations, pardons, not to speak of a good
warden Here and there and a kind guard—all
tolling and tinkering to make prisons better,
to sweep them, to air them, to instill religion
and education, to supply work and exercise
and to pay wages—and all the while the tide
of criminals gets larger and the accommoda
tions for them less adequate. What can be the
matter? Are we to end by discovering that
everybody Is a criminal, and ripe for jail? or
shall we be driven to the realization that the
fundamental Idea Itself of Imprisonment for
crime is itself the most monstrous of crimes—
and try something else? What else is there
to he tried? Are we to leave criminals to their
liberty among the community?
There will he time enough to discuss these
riddles. It Is time now to get Into your prison
suit, with Its "U. 8. P.” on the back of the coat,
and your number; its “U. S. I’.’’ on the hack
of the shirts with your number; its “U. S. P."
on the front of your trouser-legs, and your
number: your canvas shoes and your visored
rap. But beware of putting on the cap within
prison walls, lest the guard report you to the
captain, the captain to the deputy, the deputy,
If necessary, to the warden, and ye he cast Into
the Inner darkness. Then shall there he thin
slices of bread and water, and gnashing of
teeth.
With a guard acting as convict compeller,
we shuffled in a continuous line down the Iron
stairways and across the hall into the dining
room, a cement-floored, barred-window desert
sown with tables In rows, seating eight, men
each; guards with clubs standing at coigns of
vantage or pacing up and down the aisles, and
In one window, commanding the whole room,
a guard with a loaded rifle, licensed to shoot
down any misbehavior. At no time and in no
part of this model Jail are 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 to labor.
I will postpone to a future article the sub
ject of the dining room and what Is done there.
As we filed out, I noticed "MERRY CHRIST
MAS” and “HAPPY NEW YEAR" emblazoned
In green above the door. It was to remind us,
perhaps, of what we lost by being criminals.
As we debouched into the Inner hall, separated
from the corridor leading to the warden's of
fice, and to freedom, by a steel-harred gate,
we saw a guard seated in a chair with a rifle
across his knees. Rats In a steel trap might
have mutinied with as much hope of success
as we at that Juncture; but the convicts must
not be allowed to forget that they are In prison.
We were rounded into our cells and locked up
for half an hour, during which we might smoke
the tobacco supplied to the prison by contract;
or we might read, or comb our hair, or do cal
isthenics, or Invoke the Divine blessing upon
the labors of the coming day. The interval Is
really provided as a measure of security; many
of the prisoners do their work outside the main
buildings; but it is deemed unsafe to unlock
the outer gates while the whole body of pris
oners is on the move.
At the expiration of the half hour, we laid
aside our pipes, or our prayer books, and were
ready for the activities of the day. The others
were detailed to their regular work; but my
friend and f bad our final rites of initiation
still to undergo. A young official, whose coun
tenance readily If not habitually assumed a
sullen and menacing expression, beckoned to
us with his club, and we !|illowpd him down
stairs to an elevator, In which he ascended to
the upper floor, while we pursued him upward
by way of the staircase. The cap of Mr. Ivy—
such was his poetic given name—was worn
on the extreme rear projection of hls head,
and he used his club in place of speech; not
that he actually piimmeled us with It. but by
wavtngs and pointings he made it indicate his
will, and kept us mindful how easily we might
afford him a pretext for putting It to more nor
mal use.
Mr. Ivy conducted us to a bench occupied
by three or four half naked convicts, white and
black. We gathered from his gestures of head
and club that we were to remove our upper
garments and ‘our phoes and stockings, and
place them on the floor in front of us. It was
a cold morning, and the floor was of limestone.
We obeyed instructions, and for the next, twen
ty minutes sat there, objects of pardonable
curiosity or amusement to our fellow benchers
and to passersby in the hall, and with nothing
to keep us warm hut the genial influences of
the occasion.
Finally, each In hls turn, we wore passed
through the door Into a sort of office, with
clerks and Dr. Weaver, the prison physician,
at $1,500 a year—-a tall, young medical school
graduate. He and an assistant put us through
a physical examination, and took a series of
measurements, all of which were entered hv
the clerks in ledgers. Our photographs were
then taken, and afterward (It was the next day,
but may as well he told here) we were further
Identified by taking the Impressions of our
finger prints, and by a second photograph with
out our moustaches—these having been re
moved in the meantime. We were now con
victs full-fledged and published, and our pic
tures disseminated to every prison and peniten
tiary in the country, to bo enshined In the
rogues' gallery and studied by all police of
ficials.
M.v friend and I. our ordeal completed, were
returned to our cells to think It over. The
walls and celling of .the cells are painted a
light gray color; It is against the roles, except
by special indulgence, to affix pictures or other
objects to them. The "coddling of criminals,”
so widely advertised, does not Inrlude permis
sion to give a homelike look to their perennial
quarters; it is more conducive to moral reform
that they should contemplate a painted steel.
There was one camp stool In our cell; later,
cells were supplied with two wooden chairs,
the seats sloping at such an angle with the,
backs as rendered sitting a penance. I remem
ber seeing similar contrivances in old English
Cathedrals, relics of a day when monka •:'*
to be kept from falling asleep during the
lous rites. We might also sit upon the ii/w <*r
bunk, bent forward in such an attitude as
would avert bumping our heads against the
upper one.
Each convict, early In hls sojourn, has a re
ligious Interview with the chaplain, who pre
sents him with a copy of the New Testament—
not also of the Old. One may get other books
of a secular kind from the library, upon writ
ten application; and prisoners of the first grade
may subscribe for newspapers that contain no
objectionable matter. But only a small propor
tion of the Inmates Is addicted to reading, and
the opportunities for doing so are limited. And
as months and years go by, the desolation and
sterility of the place weigh heavier upon the
spirit, the mind reduces Its radius and grows
inert, and stimulants stronger than current fic
tion are needed to rouse it.
Prison, prison, prison; steel walls and grat
ings; two predestinate screechings and clang-
lngs of whistles and gongs; the endless filings
to and fro, In and out; the stealthy insolence
of guards; or their treacherous good-fellowship;
the abstracted or menacing gaze of higher of
ficials; the dreariness, aimlessness, and some
times the severity of the dally labor; the sullen
threat of the loaded rifles; tht? hollow, echoing
spaces that shut out hope; the thought of the
stifling stench of the dungeons beneath the
pavements, hidden from all save the victims,
whose very existence Is officially denied; the
closing of all personal communication with the
outer world, except such as commends Itself
to the whims of the official censors; this
morgue of human beings still alive—the im
penetrable stupidity and futility of it all—
slowly or not so slowly unbalance the mind and
corrupt the nature.
Another Installment of this remarkable nar
rative will appear in The Sunday American at
an early date.
(Copyright. 1913, by the Wheeler Syndi
cate, Inc.)