قراءة كتاب Within Prison Walls being a narrative during a week of voluntary confinement in the state prison at Auburn, New York
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Within Prison Walls being a narrative during a week of voluntary confinement in the state prison at Auburn, New York
class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[Pg 23]"/> mind right along. If my toothache gets worse, I can wait over another day and have it attended to. Perhaps, on the whole it would be best to wait over another day. On the other hand, I have an idea that the toothache is nothing but plain cowardice.
As we sit down to dinner, I attempt to be jocular with my youngest. “Well, Golfer,” I remark; “this is my last good meal. To-morrow your father goes to prison for a week!”
“Hm!” responds the interesting youth, “it’ll do you good.”
I recover myself with some difficulty. “Now what in thunder do you mean by that?”
“Oh, you won’t be so fat when you come out.”
I’m inclined to think he’s right, but it is evident that I need expect no sentimental sympathy from my own family.
Here I close my journal for to-night. I feel decidedly solemn. I wonder how I shall be feeling at this time to-morrow night.
“To-morrow! Why, to-morrow I may be
Myself with yesterday’s sev’n thousand years.”
CHAPTER III
MONDAY MORNING
Cell 15, second tier, north, north wing, Auburn Prison. September 29. It is noon hour; somewhere about 12:45 I should think.
I am a prisoner, locked, double locked. By no human possibility, by no act of my own, can I throw open the iron grating which shuts me from the world into this small stone vault. I am a voluntary prisoner, it is true; nevertheless even a voluntary prisoner can’t unlock the door of his cell—that must be done by someone from outside. I am perfectly conscious of a horrible feeling of constraint—of confinement. It recalls an agonized moment of my childhood when I accidentally locked myself into a closet.
My cell is exactly four feet wide by seven and a half feet long, measuring by my own feet, and about seven and a half feet high.[2] The iron bed is hooked to the wall and folds up against it; the mattress and blankets hang over it. The entire furniture consists of one stool, a shelf or table which drops down against the wall when not held up by hooks, an iron basin filled with water for washing purposes, a covered iron bucket for other purposes, a tin cup for drinking water which was filled shortly before noon by the convict orderly, and an old broom which stands in the corner. A small wooden locker with three shelves is fastened up in the farther left-hand corner. The pillow hangs in the opposite right-hand corner over the edge of the bed.
This is a cell in one of the oldest parts of the prison. It has a concrete floor and plastered walls and ceiling, and looks clean. From my grated door, being on the second tier, I can see diagonally out of four heavily barred windows in the outer wall, looking across about ten feet, over the open space which drops to the stone corridor below, and rises to the highest galleries. Through the two lower windows I catch glimpses of the ground, through the two upper, of leaves and branches and the sky. The daylight in the cell is enough at the present moment to read and write by, but none too good. Outside it is a very bright, sunny day. If it were a dark day I could not see much without a light. The electric bulb hangs from a hook in the center of the rounded ceiling and my head nearly touches it.
So much for my present surroundings; now let me begin the story of the day.
Upon arising this morning at home, the toothache, although I could still feel it grumbling, had so modified that I became convinced that it was largely imagination. As it has since disappeared it must have been entirely imagination. There seems to be no excuse whatever for not going ahead.
Having noticed yesterday that, although the prisoners are allowed to wear their hair as they please, their faces are all smooth shaven, I begin the day by the sacrifice of my mustache. I shave, dress, and eat as much breakfast as I can—which is not very much.
At nine o’clock I am at the railway station to say good-bye to the Warden, who has been called to Albany on business. After the train leaves at 9:30 I go to my office, where there are some last matters to attend to, bid farewell to the few friends who are about, and at ten o’clock present myself at the prison entrance.
The polite guard at the gate unlocks it, I enter, and the first barrier between me and the world shuts behind me. I mount the steps to the main building, and turn into the Warden’s office. I am dressed in old clothes, appropriate for the occasion, and have no valuables or money about my person.
In the Warden’s office a few last details are arranged with Grant, the Prison Superintendent of Industries, who is acting for the Warden; and my name and certain details of my family history and career of crime are taken down by the Warden’s clerk on a slip of paper, which is handed over to a good-looking, well-groomed young officer, to whom I am given in charge.
On Saturday, when writing out yesterday’s address, it occurred to me that it might be useful to take an alias. Such a notion doubtless seems a trifle foolish at first thought; considering that there is no secret of my identity, but I reasoned that if officers and prisoners always had my own name in mind or on tongue every time they looked at or addressed me, it would really make it more difficult to be accepted on the basis of an ordinary inmate. I decided, therefore, to take a name which would have no association whatever with the chairman of the Prison Reform Commission, yet would be somewhat in character. So on the records I am entered as Thomas Brown, No. 33,333x.
The young officer in his neat blue uniform, carrying his loaded stick, says briefly, “Step this way, Brown.” I am hazily aware of being a momentary object of interest to the men in the back office; a heavy iron door is unlocked at the head of a flight of iron stairs; and as the door clangs behind me and I hear the key turn in the lock, I begin to realize that I am a prisoner. I have made a bargain with myself to stay here a week, and I cannot leave sooner without serious loss of self-respect.
The taciturn young officer takes me downstairs and across the yard. I am conscious of many pairs of eyes looking out from windows and doors, and the few prisoners scattered about the yard singly or in groups stare with interest. My guide accompanies me to one of the buildings about halfway down on the left, which proves to be the tailor shop. Here in a corner of the shop, without any screens and in full view of all passers in and out, are three porcelain-lined iron bathtubs side by side, looking very white and clean. I am directed to take off my clothes, which I do, and then ordered to get into one of the tubs, in which a negro prisoner has drawn a warm bath. I obey and make use of the soap, and later of the towel which the attendant hands me. After I am dry I am given my prison clothes—a suit of underwear, a pair of socks, a cotton shirt with narrow blue and white stripes, and a suit of rough gray cloth. There is also a pair of very thick and heavy shoes. All the clothes are new. My coat fastens down the front with five light metal buttons, on which are the words State Prison in raised letters. The seven smaller buttons of the waistcoat are similar. My uniform is not exactly a first-class fit, but good enough for the purpose. A cap, rough gray to match the suit,