shaved, my hair cropped close, convict stripes had been put upon my body; I was forced to toil hard on a diet of bread and water and to march the shameful lock-step with armed guards over me—­and all for what?  What had I done?  What crime had I committed against the good citizens of Niagara Falls that all this vengeance should be wreaked upon me?  I had not even violated their “sleeping-out” ordinance.  I had slept outside their jurisdiction, in the country, that night.  I had not even begged for a meal, or battered for a “light piece” on their streets.  All that I had done was to walk along their sidewalk and gaze at their picayune waterfall.  And what crime was there in that?  Technically I was guilty of no misdemeanor.  All right, I’d show them when I got out.

The next day I talked with a guard.  I wanted to send for a lawyer.  The guard laughed at me.  So did the other guards.  I really was incommunicado so far as the outside world was concerned.  I tried to write a letter out, but I learned that all letters were read, and censured or confiscated, by the prison authorities, and that “short-timers” were not allowed to write letters anyway.  A little later I tried smuggling letters out by men who were released, but I learned that they were searched and the letters found and destroyed.  Never mind.  It all helped to make it a blacker case when I did get out.

But as the prison days went by (which I shall describe in the next chapter), I “learned a few.”  I heard tales of the police, and police-courts, and lawyers, that were unbelievable and monstrous.  Men, prisoners, told me of personal experiences with the police of great cities that were awful.  And more awful were the hearsay tales they told me concerning men who had died at the hands of the police and who therefore could not testify for themselves.  Years afterward, in the report of the Lexow Committee, I was to read tales true and more awful than those told to me.  But in the meantime, during the first days of my imprisonment, I scoffed at what I heard.

As the days went by, however, I began to grow convinced.  I saw with my own eyes, there in that prison, things unbelievable and monstrous.  And the more convinced I became, the profounder grew the respect in me for the sleuth-hounds of the law and for the whole institution of criminal justice.

My indignation ebbed away, and into my being rushed the tides of fear.  I saw at last, clear-eyed, what I was up against.  I grew meek and lowly.  Each day I resolved more emphatically to make no rumpus when I got out.  All I asked, when I got out, was a chance to fade away from the landscape.  And that was just what I did do when I was released.  I kept my tongue between my teeth, walked softly, and sneaked for Pennsylvania, a wiser and a humbler man.

THE PEN

For two days I toiled in the prison-yard.  It was heavy work, and, in spite of the fact that I malingered at every opportunity, I was played out.  This was because of the food.  No man could work hard on such food.  Bread and water, that was all that was given us.  Once a week we were supposed to get meat; but this meat did not always go around, and since all nutriment had first been boiled out of it in the making of soup, it didn’t matter whether one got a taste of it once a week or not.