They took me to Northampton and brought me before a Justice, on a charge of bigamy:  The sheriff who arrested me, and the relatives who accompanied him were willing to swear my life away, if they could, and the justice was ready enough to bind me over to take my trial in court, which was not to be in session for full six months to come.  Those long, weary six months I passed in the county jail.  Then came my trial.  I had good counsel.  There was not a particle of proof that I was guilty of bigamy; no attempt was made on the part of the prosecution to produce my first wife, from whom I had separated, or, indeed, to show that there was such a woman in existence.  But, evidence or no evidence, with all Worthington against me, conviction was inevitable.  The jury found me guilty.  The judge promptly sentenced me to three years’ imprisonment in the State Prison, at Charlestown, with hard labor, the first day to be passed in solitary confinement.

This severe sentence fairly stunned me.  I was taken back to jail, and the following day I was conveyed to Charlestown with heavy irons on my ankles and handcuffed.  No murderer would have been more heavily ironed.  We started early in the morning, and by noon I was duly delivered to the warden at Charlestown prison.  I was taken into the office, measured, asked my name, age, and other particulars, and then if I had a trade.  To this I at once answered, “no.”  I wanted my twenty-four hours’ solitary confinement in which to reflect upon the kind of “hard labor,” prescribed in my sentence, I was willing to follow for the next three years; and I also wanted information about the branches of labor pursued in that prison.  The next words of the warden assured me that he was a kind and compassionate man.

“Go,” he said to an officer, “and instantly take off those irons when you take him inside the prison.”

I was taken in and the irons were taken off.  I was then undressed, my clothes were removed to another room, and I was redressed in the prison uniform.  This was a grotesque uniform indeed.  The suit was red and blue, half and half, like a harlequin’s, and to crown all came a hat or cap, like a fool’s cap, a foot and a half high and running up to a peak.  Miserable as I was, I could scarcely help smiling at the utterly absurd appearance I knew I then presented.  I even ventured to remark upon it; but was suddenly and sternly checked with the command: 

“Silence!  There’s no talking allowed here.”

Then began my twenty-four hours’ solitary confinement, and twenty-four wretched hours they were.  I had only bread and water to eat and drink, and I need not say that my unhappy thoughts would not permit me to sleep.  At noon next day I was taken from my cell, and brought again before the warden, Mr. Robinson, who kindly said: 

“You have no trade, you say; what do you want to go to work at?”

“Anything light; I am not used to hard labor,” I replied.