Often we conveyed letters, the chain of communication of which was so complex that we knew neither sender nor sendee.  We were but links in the chain.  Somewhere, somehow, a convict would thrust a letter into my hand with the instruction to pass it on to the next link.  All such acts were favors to be reciprocated later on, when I should be acting directly with a principal in transmitting letters, and from whom I should be receiving my pay.  The whole prison was covered by a network of lines of communication.  And we who were in control of the system of communication, naturally, since we were modelled after capitalistic society, exacted heavy tolls from our customers.  It was service for profit with a vengeance, though we were at times not above giving service for love.

And all the time I was in the Pen I was making myself solid with my pal.  He had done much for me, and in return he expected me to do as much for him.  When we got out, we were to travel together, and, it goes without saying, pull off “jobs” together.  For my pal was a criminal—­oh, not a jewel of the first water, merely a petty criminal who would steal and rob, commit burglary, and, if cornered, not stop short of murder.  Many a quiet hour we sat and talked together.  He had two or three jobs in view for the immediate future, in which my work was cut out for me, and in which I joined in planning the details.  I had been with and seen much of criminals, and my pal never dreamed that I was only fooling him, giving him a string thirty days long.  He thought I was the real goods, liked me because I was not stupid, and liked me a bit, too, I think, for myself.  Of course I had not the slightest intention of joining him in a life of sordid, petty crime; but I’d have been an idiot to throw away all the good things his friendship made possible.  When one is on the hot lava of hell, he cannot pick and choose his path, and so it was with me in the Erie County Pen.  I had to stay in with the “push,” or do hard labor on bread and water; and to stay in with the push I had to make good with my pal.

Life was not monotonous in the Pen.  Every day something was happening:  men were having fits, going crazy, fighting, or the hall-men were getting drunk.  Rover Jack, one of the ordinary hall-men, was our star “oryide.”  He was a true “profesh,” a “blowed-in-the-glass” stiff, and as such received all kinds of latitude from the hall-men in authority.  Pittsburg Joe, who was Second Hall-man, used to join Rover Jack in his jags; and it was a saying of the pair that the Erie County Pen was the only place where a man could get “slopped” and not be arrested.  I never knew, but I was told that bromide of potassium, gained in devious ways from the dispensary, was the dope they used.  But I do know, whatever their dope was, that they got good and drunk on occasion.