Then the pleasant voice of Number Two breaks in again. "Well, if they don't let you out to-night, you're good till Monday, because they never let us out of here on Sunday."

I shall not attempt to reproduce all the conversation of this memorable night. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon when I entered the dark cell. During the next three hours, as I sat on the floor close to the door of my iron cage, our talk covered a wide range of topics from grave to gay. We touched upon almost every subject, from prison fare and the ethics of the jail to the comparative merits of various trans-Atlantic liners. We discussed politics--New York City, state and national; Prison Reform, from various angles; the character and conduct of celebrities we had seen or known--both in and out of prison; and other things too numerous to mention. I must confess that, on the whole, more intelligent, instructive, and entertaining conversation it has seldom been my lot to enjoy. I soon came to the conclusion that under favorable conditions the jail was decidedly the most sociable place in prison.

The brunt of the talk fell upon Number Four, Number Two and myself; with occasional remarks from Number Five. Number Three was not in condition to speak, as will be seen later, and he and Number Eight contributed only one remark apiece during the entire night. The leader of the party was Number Four, and I hate to think what we should have done without him.

So much for the lighter side of the matter. But all the time our conversation was going on, more and more the influence of the place kept closing in upon me; more and more I found myself getting into a state of helpless anger against the Prison System, the men who have been responsible for its continuance, and the stupid indifference of society at large in permitting it. The handkerchief performance seemed a fair example of the unreasoning, futile, incredible imbecility of the whole theory and practice.

The mention of the handkerchief reminds me of one of Number Four's early remarks.

"Hey, Tom, did you know a fellow committed suicide in your cell once?"

"No, did he?" I reply, feigning ignorance and yawning. "Well, I hope his ghost won't come around to-night! There isn't room for two in this cell."

At which frivolous remark they laugh. But in spite of my answer I do not feel in the least like laughing myself. The thought that I am locked into the very cell which was the scene of the tragedy of that poor human soul, whom a little decent treatment and kindly sympathy might perhaps have saved, only adds fuel to the flame of my wrath.

Before proceeding it may be well to give a brief account of my fellow-sufferers, as I became acquainted with them through the night or learned about them afterward. And let me begin by saying that I had fully expected that now at last I was to meet the worst that humanity has to show. While I had come to prison strongly inclined to disbelieve in the existence of a criminal class, as distinct from the rest of mankind, yet I had come with an open mind, ready to receive the facts as I found them, and duly readjust my previous opinions. I was entirely prepared to encounter many depraved and hardened men, but so far I had met none whom I thought hopelessly bad--quite the contrary. I had been put to work with the "toughest bunch of fellows in the prison"; and I had found myself side by side with Harley Stuhlmiller, and Jack Bell, and Blackie Laflam, and Patsy Mooney--the genial "baseball shark," and the "dime-novel Kid," who wanted to give me his grapes; to say nothing of that best of partners--Jack Murphy.

But surely in the jail, so I reasoned, I shall meet the "confirmed criminal." In this prison are fourteen hundred convicts--men who, under the law, have been found guilty of robbery, arson, forgery, murder--all kinds of crime; men condemned to live apart from the rest of mankind, to be caged within walls. And now in the jail--in this place of punishment of last resort--here where the refuse of the System is gathered, I must certainly come in contact with the vilest and most hopeless. Men who will submit to no law, no control--men without faith in God or man--men who even in prison will still pursue their violent and evil ways; now I shall get to know what such creatures are like.

And this is what I find.

Farthest away, at the other end of the row of iron cells, is Number Eight.

He is a big, good-natured, husky chap from the enamel-shop; sent down to this place of supreme punishment because he had talked back to one of the citizen instructors. For what reason he is placed in Cell Eight, which has no wooden floor, so that its occupant has to lie on the bare iron plates covered with rivets, I am unable to state. Formerly none of these cells had wooden floors, and everyone slept on the rivets, rolling over and over through the night as each position in turn became unbearable.

Cells Seven and Six are empty.

In Cell Four is my sociable friend, whose name I learn is Joe; and in Cell Five is the man he referred to as his partner, with whom Joe was having a friendly little scrap when they were interrupted and sent down here. The two fellows are, apparently, on perfectly good terms, but Number Five thought Joe had done something, which Joe hadn't; so he punched Joe, and Joe punched him back. It was nothing more than a slight breach of discipline, for which a minimum punishment should have been inflicted--if anything more than a separation and a word of caution were necessary.

In Cell Three is the fellow with a bad cold. He is being punished for hitting another inmate over the head with a crowbar. This sounds rather serious, but the other fellow had called him an ugly name--a name which any man considers himself justified in resenting; and one effect of confinement being to make tempers highly inflammable, Number Three had resented the epithet with the nearest weapon handy.

In such cases there is no proper examination made to see if there are extenuating circumstances; little or no opportunity is given the prisoner to state his side of the case; no belief when he is allowed to state it.

The convict is reported by an officer. That is enough; down he comes immediately.

Called upon in the course of the night by Joe to give an account of himself, Number Three makes his one remark. "You fellows'll hev to excuze be; I god such a cold id by 'ead I cad't talk. Besides I shouted so las'

dight that I cudd't talk butch eddy how!"

I find myself wondering how Number Three manages to do without a handkerchief--having so bad a cold in the head. Blows his nose on his shirt, I suppose. Quite pleasant and cleanly for the next fellow who is to wear the shirt, and for whom it will not be washed by order of the Warden.

Again I am thankful for that particular special privilege.

Now I come to Number Two, and, my feelings on this subject being rather strong, I shall not trust myself to do more than state coldly the plain facts. This boy, for he is only twenty-one years of age, on Tuesday of this week after being two weeks in the hospital, had an operation on his ear, being already deaf in that ear from an injury received before he came to prison. The operation was on Tuesday; on Thursday afternoon, two days later, he was discharged from the hospital as being able to work, although the wound in his ear had not yet healed. Being a slight, lightly-built youth, and just out of the hospital after an operation, he was put to work at--shoveling coal! But the next morning, Friday, before he had fairly started on his job, he was ordered to the jail office. There he found that a report had come down from the hospital to the effect that while there he had been somewhat troublesome and had talked with another patient.

For this offense the sick lad was sent down here to the dark cell on bread and three gills of water a day. No handkerchief to wipe the running wound in his ear. No water to wash his ear or his face. Clad in filthy clothes.

And when I arrived on Saturday afternoon he had been down here nearly thirty-six hours. And was due to stay at least thirty-six more, for "they never let us out of here on Sunday."

Nor is that all. This inhuman treatment--I hope I am not guilty of too much rhetoric in the use of the adjective--this punishment of being sent here to the dark cells, is only one, as I learn from my new friends, of five simultaneous punishments, all for the same offense.

There is First: Your imprisonment in the jail, under such conditions as I am trying to describe.

Second: Your hard-gained earnings are taken away by a fine which is charged against you on the prison books. As an instance, take my own case.

My six days' work in the basket-shop would have entitled me, as a convict, to receive from the state of New York the munificent sum of nine cents.

But my fine for spending one night in the punishment cells was fifty cents. So at the end of my week's work I owed the state of New York forty-one cents. If I had been a regular convict I should have had to work four weeks more before I could have got back even again. But, on the other hand, had I been a regular convict I should have been much more heavily fined, and my punishment would not have ended with a single night.

This is of course the highly humorous aspect of my particular case. To a prisoner who sometimes loses several years' pay for the privilege of spending a few days in these cells, there is precious little humor about it. At the mere whim of a bad-tempered keeper he may lose the acquisition of months of patient toil. And against the keeper there is no practicable appeal whatever, for the P. K. simply registers the action of the officers, on the theory that "discipline must be maintained." Experience has taught the convict that there is no use in kicking--that would only be to get into deeper trouble; so he takes his medicine as the shortest and quickest way out. But we may be quite sure that the convict does not forget his grievance, and ultimately Society pays the penalty.

But let us go on with the other punishments involved in this jail sentence.

Third: The disc upon your sleeve is bulls-eyed--that is, changed to a circle--or taken off altogether, as a mark of disgrace. And you never can regain your disc, no matter how perfect your future conduct. Your sleeve shows to every observer that you have been punished; that you are or have been a disturbing, if not dangerous, character. It is astonishing how much the prisoners get to care about this disc, and how deeply they feel the disgrace implied in the loss of it. But however strange it seems, there can be no doubt as to the fact.

Fourth: If you have been fortunate enough to earn by a year's perfect record a good conduct bar upon your sleeve, that bar is taken away, or whatever credits you have gained toward a bar; and you have to begin your struggle all over again. Here also, however odd it may seem to us, the prisoners treasure greatly these evidences of a good record, and resent their loss.

Fifth: Some portion, if not all, of the commutation time which you may have gained by previous good conduct is also forfeited, so that you may have to serve out your full term.

Of course one can easily comprehend how this avalanche of punishments, all for the same offense, no matter how trivial, is admirably calculated to inspire in the prisoner respect for authority, loyalty to the state, and love for its officials. Its admirable reformatory influence must be apparent upon the slightest consideration.

Such were my companions of the dark cells, and such the nature of their offenses and punishments. These were the voices and personalities which came through the bars of my iron cage, reflected from the opposite wall.

It is a very curious experience--getting suddenly upon an intimate footing with a number of people whom you cannot see, acquainted only with their voices. The vaulted room gives each sound with peculiar distinctness, but I cannot tell where any voice comes from; they all sound equally near--equally far off. It is the same strange effect I noticed in my regular cell in the north wing. And as I think of that cell it seems by contrast rather homelike and pleasant, but very far away. I feel as if I had been in this place a large part of my natural life. At any rate I ought to be getting out before very long. And that reminds me----

"Hello, Number Four!" I call out. "Wasn't there another fellow here, a chap named Lavinsky, who was brought down on Wednesday evening?"

"Sure there was," answers the voice of Number Four. "They took him away about an hour before you came."

"What sort of a fellow was he?"

"Oh, he was a bug, all right. Threw his bread out of his cell and his water all over, and hollered a good deal. I guess they knew you was comin', didn't they? That's the reason they took him out. And, say! What do you think they wanted to do with Abey and me?" he continues. "They took us over to the north wing and wanted to put us in a couple of those screen cells. But nix for us! We refused to go into 'em. Said that Superintendent Riley had ordered those cells stopped, and they wasn't legal. Then Captain Martin sort of laughed and brought us over here. Seems as if they didn't want you to make our acquaintance, don't it?"

And it certainly does seem that way.[15]

On the whole, thanks to my agreeable companions, the time has passed so quickly that I am rather surprised when I hear the farther door unlocked and opened and steps coming along the passage. This must be Grant arriving to set me free. Now I must settle in my mind a question which has been troubling me for the last hour or so. Shall I go back to my cell or shall I spend the night down here?

On the one hand, is my rising anger and horror of the place, the evil influence of which I begin to feel both in body and in mind; on the other hand is the sense that I am nearer the heart of this Prison Problem than I have yet been; nearer, I believe, than any outsider has ever come. I am in the midst of an experience I can never have again, and it is what I came to prison to get. Moreover, if I go now, will there not arise a feeling among the men that at the last moment I failed to make good, that my courage gave out just at the end?

The steps reach the inner door. Which shall it be?

The key grates in the lock, I hear the inner door swing open, the electric light is turned on. Amid complete silence from the other cells my door is unlocked; and there appears before my astonished eyes no less a person than the P. K. himself, attended by another officer.

In an instant my mind is made up about one thing--I will not go with the P. K. anywhere. At the sight of his uniform a fierce anger suddenly blazes up within me and then I turn cold. All my gorge rises. Not at the man, for I certainly have no personal grievance against Captain Patterson, but at the official representative of this hideous, imbecile, soul-destroying System. I am seized by a mild fit of that lunatic obstinacy which I have once or twice seen glaring out of the eyes of men interviewed by the Warden down here; the obstinacy that has often in the course of history caused men to die of hunger and thirst in their cages of stone or iron, rather than gain freedom by submission to injustice or tyranny.

It is all very well to talk of breaking a man's spirit. It can be done; it has been done many times, I fear, in this and similar places of torture.

But after you have thoroughly mastered his manhood by brutality--after you have violated the inner sanctuary of the divine spirit which abides in every man, however degraded--what then? What has become of the man? The poor, crushed and broken wrecks of humanity, shattered by stupid and brutal methods of punishment, which lie stranded in this and other prisons, give the answer.

I fear that in consequence of my somewhat disordered feelings I am lacking in proper respect for lawful authority. Instead of rising to greet the P.

K. I remain seated on the floor in my old soiled and ragged garments, looking up at him without making a motion to shift my position. He is evidently surprised at my attitude, or my lack of attitude. Bending forward into my cell he whispers, "It's seven o'clock."

"Yes; thank you, sir." I am glad to find that I can still utter polite words, although I am seething within and remain doggedly obstinate in my seat on the floor. "But I think I will wait until Mr. Grant comes."

The P. K. seems surprised. With considerable difficulty he bends farther forward and whispers still more forcibly, "But it's seven o'clock, and you were to be let out at seven--it was all arranged."

"Yes, P. K.," I say, "and it's very kind of you to take all this trouble, but I don't quite know yet whether I want to go out. You see there are a lot of other fellows here, and----" I come to a stop, for I despair of being able to make the P. K. understand. And when one comes to think of it, I don't know of any reason why he should be expected to understand. I suppose it's the first time in his experience that a man in his senses has ever deliberately refused to be released from this accursed hole.