‘would play music before long.’ He had extracted some colours from
the yarn with which he worked, and painted a few poor figures on
the wall. One, of a female, over the door, he called ‘The Lady of
the Lake.’
He smiled as I looked at these contrivances to while away the time;
but when I looked from them to him, I saw that his lip trembled,
and could have counted the beating of his heart. I forget how it
came about, but some allusion was made to his having a wife. He
shook his head at the word, turned aside, and covered his face with
his hands.
‘But you are resigned now!’ said one of the gentlemen after a short
pause, during which he had resumed his former manner. He answered
with a sigh that seemed quite reckless in its hopelessness, ‘Oh
yes, oh yes! I am resigned to it.’ ‘And are a better man, you
think?’ ‘Well, I hope so: I’m sure I hope I may be.’ ‘And time
goes pretty quickly?’ ‘Time is very long gentlemen, within these
four walls!’
He gazed about him – Heaven only knows how wearily! – as he said
these words; and in the act of doing so, fell into a strange stare
as if he had forgotten something. A moment afterwards he sighed
heavily, put on his spectacles, and went about his work again.
In another cell, there was a German, sentenced to five years’
imprisonment for larceny, two of which had just expired. With
colours procured in the same manner, he had painted every inch of
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Dickens, Charles – American Notes for General Circulation
the walls and ceiling quite beautifully. He had laid out the few
feet of ground, behind, with exquisite neatness, and had made a
little bed in the centre, that looked, by-the-bye, like a grave.
The taste and ingenuity he had displayed in everything were most
extraordinary; and yet a more dejected, heart-broken, wretched
creature, it would be difficult to imagine. I never saw such a
picture of forlorn affliction and distress of mind. My heart bled
for him; and when the tears ran down his cheeks, and he took one of
the visitors aside, to ask, with his trembling hands nervously
clutching at his coat to detain him, whether there was no hope of
his dismal sentence being commuted, the spectacle was really too
painful to witness. I never saw or heard of any kind of misery
that impressed me more than the wretchedness of this man.
In a third cell, was a tall, strong black, a burglar, working at
his proper trade of making screws and the like. His time was
nearly out. He was not only a very dexterous thief, but was
notorious for his boldness and hardihood, and for the number of his
previous convictions. He entertained us with a long account of his
achievements, which he narrated with such infinite relish, that he
actually seemed to lick his lips as he told us racy anecdotes of
stolen plate, and of old ladies whom he had watched as they sat at
windows in silver spectacles (he had plainly had an eye to their
metal even from the other side of the street) and had afterwards
robbed. This fellow, upon the slightest encouragement, would have
mingled with his professional recollections the most detestable
cant; but I am very much mistaken if he could have surpassed the
unmitigated hypocrisy with which he declared that he blessed the
day on which he came into that prison, and that he never would
commit another robbery as long as he lived.
There was one man who was allowed, as an indulgence, to keep
rabbits. His room having rather a close smell in consequence, they
called to him at the door to come out into the passage. He
complied of course, and stood shading his haggard face in the
unwonted sunlight of the great window, looking as wan and unearthly
as if he had been summoned from the grave. He had a white rabbit
in his breast; and when the little creature, getting down upon the
ground, stole back into the cell, and he, being dismissed, crept
timidly after it, I thought it would have been very hard to say in