“Would you like to see a man in the act of perishing through the habitual breach of Rule 37 in ——­ Jail?”

“Can you show me such a case?”

“Come with me.”

They entered Strutt’s cell.  They found the old man in a state bordering on stupor.  When the door was opened he gave a start, but speedily relapsed into stupor.

“Now, Mr. Lacy, here is a lesson for you.  Would to God I could show this sight to all the pedants of science who spend their useless lives in studying the limbs of the crustaceonidunculae, and are content to know so little about man’s glorious body; and to all the State dunces who give sordid blockheads the power to wreck the brains and bodies of wicked men in these the clandestine shambles of the nation.  Would I could show these and all other numskulls in the land this dying man, that they might write this one great truth in blood on their cold hearts and muddy understandings.  Alas! all great truths have to be written in blood ere man will receive them.”

“But what is your great truth?” asked Mr. Lacy impatiently.

“This, sir,” replied Mr. Eden, putting his finger on the stupefied prisoner’s shoulder and keeping it there; “that the human body, besides its grosser wants of food and covering, has its more delicate needs, robbed of which it perishes more slowly and subtly but as surely as when frozen or starved.  One of these subtle but absolute conditions of health is light.  Without light the body of a blind man pines as pines a tree without light.  Tell that to the impostor physical science deep in the crustaceonidunculae and ignorant of the A B C of man.  Without light man’s body perishes, with insufficient light it droops; and here in all these separate shambles is insufficient light, a defect in our system which co-operates with this individual jailer’s abuse of it.  Another of the body’s absolute needs is work.  Another is conversation with human beings.  If by isolating a vulgar mind that has collected no healthy food to feed on in time of dearth you starve it to a stand-still, the body runs down like a watch that has not been wound up.  Against this law of Nature it is not only impious but idiotic to struggle.  Almighty God has made man so, and so he will remain while the world lasts.  A little destructive blockhead like this can knock God’s work to pieces—­ecce signum—­but he can no more alter it while it stands than he can mend it when he has let it down and smashed it.  Feel this man’s pulse and look at his eye.  Life is ebbing from him by a law of Nature as uniform as that which governs the tides.”

“His pulse is certainly very low, and when I first felt it he was trembling all over.”

“Oh, that was the agitation of his nerves—­we opened the door suddenly.”

“And did that make a man tremble?”

“Certainly; that is a well-known symptom of solitary confinement; it is by shattering a man’s nerves all to pieces that it prepares the way for his death, which death comes sometimes in raging lunacy, of which eight men have died under Mr. Hawes’s reign.  Here is the list of deaths by lunacy from breach of Rule 37, eight.  You will have the particulars by and by.”