if he had any person in his charge who was shortly going out. He
had one, he said, whose time was up next day; but he had only been
a prisoner two years.
Two years! I looked back through two years of my own life – out of
jail, prosperous, happy, surrounded by blessings, comforts, good
fortune – and thought how wide a gap it was, and how long those two
years passed in solitary captivity would have been. I have the
face of this man, who was going to be released next day, before me
now. It is almost more memorable in its happiness than the other
faces in their misery. How easy and how natural it was for him to
say that the system was a good one; and that the time went ‘pretty
quick – considering;’ and that when a man once felt that he had
offended the law, and must satisfy it, ‘he got along, somehow:’ and
so forth!
‘What did he call you back to say to you, in that strange flutter?’
I asked of my conductor, when he had locked the door and joined me
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Dickens, Charles – American Notes for General Circulation
in the passage.
‘Oh! That he was afraid the soles of his boots were not fit for
walking, as they were a good deal worn when he came in; and that he
would thank me very much to have them mended, ready.’
Those boots had been taken off his feet, and put away with the rest
of his clothes, two years before!
I took that opportunity of inquiring how they conducted themselves
immediately before going out; adding that I presumed they trembled
very much.
‘Well, it’s not so much a trembling,’ was the answer – ‘though they
do quiver – as a complete derangement of the nervous system. They
can’t sign their names to the book; sometimes can’t even hold the
pen; look about ’em without appearing to know why, or where they
are; and sometimes get up and sit down again, twenty times in a
minute. This is when they’re in the office, where they are taken
with the hood on, as they were brought in. When they get outside
the gate, they stop, and look first one way and then the other; not
knowing which to take. Sometimes they stagger as if they were
drunk, and sometimes are forced to lean against the fence, they’re
so bad:- but they clear off in course of time.’
As I walked among these solitary cells, and looked at the faces of
the men within them, I tried to picture to myself the thoughts and
feelings natural to their condition. I imagined the hood just
taken off, and the scene of their captivity disclosed to them in
all its dismal monotony.
At first, the man is stunned. His confinement is a hideous vision;
and his old life a reality. He throws himself upon his bed, and
lies there abandoned to despair. By degrees the insupportable
solitude and barrenness of the place rouses him from this stupor,
and when the trap in his grated door is opened, he humbly begs and
prays for work. ‘Give me some work to do, or I shall go raving
mad!’
He has it; and by fits and starts applies himself to labour; but
every now and then there comes upon him a burning sense of the
years that must be wasted in that stone coffin, and an agony so
piercing in the recollection of those who are hidden from his view
and knowledge, that he starts from his seat, and striding up and
down the narrow room with both hands clasped on his uplifted head,
hears spirits tempting him to beat his brains out on the wall.
Again he falls upon his bed, and lies there, moaning. Suddenly he
starts up, wondering whether any other man is near; whether there
is another cell like that on either side of him: and listens
keenly.
There is no sound, but other prisoners may be near for all that.
He remembers to have heard once, when he little thought of coming
here himself, that the cells were so constructed that the prisoners