exception to be made unless specially granted, and as none but the highest official, such as the Governor (or even the Home Secretary, as I presumed, or perhaps the Queen), could sanction a change of such importance as substituting a cot for a hammock, no time was to be lost in ferreting out some one of sufficient authority to assume the responsibility.  At length the doctor was found, and after seeing me and hearing my weight, gave the necessary order, subject to the Governor’s approval in the morning.

I have often wondered in how many quires of foolscap this humane act involved the little man.  I only hope he got no wigging from the Home Office for this assumption of responsibility, for I found him most kind and courteous, and in return I fear I worried him out of his life by applications for sleeping draughts, which he invariably let me have without a murmur.  I took this opportunity also of getting his permission to keep my gas burning all night, for I felt that sleep was out of the question; and as I had asked for and been promised the special Standard, which invariably contains some paragraphs of interest of a world-renowned General’s, I began to hope that I might “settle down,” as my friend the warder had suggested.  But settling down in theory and settling down in practice, especially in the “House of Detention,” are two distinct things.  The privilege of keeping my gas burning, too, involved a most unpleasant consequence, diametrically opposed to “settling down.”  Anyone whose light is left burning is supposed to be concocting some hideous treachery, and has to be “seen” every fifteen minutes; and thus through this long dreary winter night and every subsequent ten nights of my stay found me being taken stock of every quarter of an hour.  I must—without being aware of it—about this time have commenced the “settling down” process, for I could actually bring myself to uttering the feeblest jokes, such as “Ah! how are you, old cockie?  Just in time; another minute and I should have burrowed through the ventilator.”  These little sallies, I am bound to admit, did not always meet with the reception their pungency merited.  Occasionally they extracted a grin or a chaffy reply; at others a grunt and a bang of the trap-door.  But I have again wandered from my first entrance into my cell, and demonstrating (what I honestly pleaded) my utter amateurishness in the writing of a book.  I must only hope that the tale it unfolds will make up for this defect.  A rattle of a tin knife on a pewter vessel, followed by the turning of the key, announced the arrival of my supper; and, oh, shades of Romano, how “my heart beat for thee!”

CHAPTER IV.
“PRISON FARE.”

A greasy cold chop, smelling as if it had been cooked in “Benzine collas,” and with about as much warmth as would be imparted to it by a flat iron, a slice of bread that had evidently been cut in the early part of the day, with salt, mustard, a lump of cheese, and a potato piled up beside it, and a pint of the flattest, blackest, nastiest ale in a yellow jug without a spout, with my name pasted on it and the plate, constituted my meal, and nothing but philosophy and a certain amount of hunger could have induced me to attempt to tackle it.  I did, however, and bolted the food and gulped down the liquid, and continued the contemplation of my cell.  A few minutes later my warder again appeared with the “special” and removed my “tray;” and the ringing of the most melancholy-toned bell I had ever heard up to then warned me that bed-time had arrived, and I proceeded to turn in for my first night under lock and key.  Believe me, reader, there is more in this than my words can convey.  Writing as I now am, in a comfortable bed at six in the morning (for my past experience has instilled very early habits into me), with the window open, and the sea within a few yards of me, surrounded by every luxury and comfort that an affectionate mother can think of, and in a genial climate in the South of France, I cannot even now look back without a shudder to that fearful first night of less than a year ago; and the chop and the hammock, and the key turning, and the “settling down” appear as vividly before me as the most hideous nightmare of an hour’s previous occurrence.

At 6 A.M.—and in November this means in the pitch dark—a bell rings; not a heavy tolling bell, but a shrill, sharp hand bell, wrung with all the vigour that a prison warder can impart to it.  He walks up and down the long and dreary passages, the noise rising and falling as he approaches and recedes.  I sat up on my pallet of horsehair, and took it for granted I had better get up.  By the considerate thoughtfulness of our free and enlightened Government every requisite for a (hurried) toilet is here provided, obviating the very slightest necessity for ever leaving one’s apartments.  A tap and diminutive brass basin, a water-closet (guaranteed, I should say, to produce typhoid in a marvellously short space of time), a piece of yellow soap the size of a postage stamp, and a towel of the solidity of the main sheet of an ironclad, and bearing unmistakable “marks of the beasts” that had been my immediate predecessors, were all at hand, leaving no excuse for the most whimsical for abstaining from a thorough good (official) wash.  I found, as my experience increased, that the two things most neglected in Her Majesty’s prisons are cleanliness and godliness.  A terrible make-believe distinguishes them both; but if you only burnish up the outside of the cup and the platter, the inside may, figuratively speaking, be full of dead men’s bones.  I shall adduce very good reasons for these assertions when time and my destiny have “settled me down” in Coldbath Fields.

After a delay of half-an-hour the counting process began, which consisted of a whole cloud of turnkeys passing rapidly in front of the various cell doors.  A little further delay, and I was invited to “exercise.”  I went out once and only once, for as a philosopher one must pocket one’s foolish likes and dislikes, and endeavour to see everything; but the penance was so fearful that I had a word with the doctor, and obtained exemption from that date.  Conceive, then, a large and bleak courtyard, flagged and partially gravelled, bounded on three sides by the prison walls, and on the fourth by high railings and a still higher wall beyond it; conceive, too, a couple of hundred of the scum of London, the halt and the lame, the black chutnee seller and the mendicant newsvendor, with here and there some unfortunate devil like myself in the garb of a gentleman; add to this a warder standing on a pedestal at each corner, and another roaming round in the centre, and then cap this awful picture by watching this frowsy tag-rag mass walking round in a circle about a yard apart, and you may possibly form some slight notion of my feelings.  When I got to the outer door that led into the yard, I hesitated for a moment, and I told a warder that I really did not think I could face the ordeal; but he advised me, in what was kindly meant, to have a try, and that if I walked round no one would take a bit of notice of me.  I found this assurance was hardly strictly correct, for my huge size and evident superiority (in clothes if not in morals) drew notice on me; and many a scoundrel as he limped by