Our hall was a common stews, filled with the ruck and the filth, the scum and dregs, of society—­hereditary inefficients, degenerates, wrecks, lunatics, addled intelligences, epileptics, monsters, weaklings, in short, a very nightmare of humanity.  Hence, fits flourished with us.  These fits seemed contagious.  When one man began throwing a fit, others followed his lead.  I have seen seven men down with fits at the same time, making the air hideous with their cries, while as many more lunatics would be raging and gibbering up and down.  Nothing was ever done for the men with fits except to throw cold water on them.  It was useless to send for the medical student or the doctor.  They were not to be bothered with such trivial and frequent occurrences.

There was a young Dutch boy, about eighteen years of age, who had fits most frequently of all.  He usually threw one every day.  It was for that reason that we kept him on the ground floor farther down in the row of cells in which we lodged.  After he had had a few fits in the prison-yard, the guards refused to be bothered with him any more, and so he remained locked up in his cell all day with a Cockney cell-mate, to keep him company.  Not that the Cockney was of any use.  Whenever the Dutch boy had a fit, the Cockney became paralyzed with terror.

The Dutch boy could not speak a word of English.  He was a farmer’s boy, serving ninety days as punishment for having got into a scrap with some one.  He prefaced his fits with howling.  He howled like a wolf.  Also, he took his fits standing up, which was very inconvenient for him, for his fits always culminated in a headlong pitch to the floor.  Whenever I heard the long wolf-howl rising, I used to grab a broom and run to his cell.  Now the trusties were not allowed keys to the cells, so I could not get in to him.  He would stand up in the middle of his narrow cell, shivering convulsively, his eyes rolled backward till only the whites were visible, and howling like a lost soul.  Try as I would, I could never get the Cockney to lend him a hand.  While he stood and howled, the Cockney crouched and trembled in the upper bunk, his terror-stricken gaze fixed on that awful figure, with eyes rolled back, that howled and howled.  It was hard on him, too, the poor devil of a Cockney.  His own reason was not any too firmly seated, and the wonder is that he did not go mad.

All that I could do was my best with the broom.  I would thrust it through the bars, train it on Dutchy’s chest, and wait.  As the crisis approached he would begin swaying back and forth.  I followed this swaying with the broom, for there was no telling when he would take that dreadful forward pitch.  But when he did, I was there with the broom, catching him and easing him down.  Contrive as I would, he never came down quite gently, and his face was usually bruised by the stone floor.  Once down and writhing in convulsions, I’d throw a bucket of water over him.  I don’t know whether cold water was the right thing or not, but it was the custom in the Erie County Pen.  Nothing more than that was ever done for him.  He would lie there, wet, for an hour or so, and then crawl into his bunk.  I knew better than to run to a guard for assistance.  What was a man with a fit, anyway?