Alone
When I opened my eyes I was in bed and alone. I gazed around. At the bedside was a chair with a china cup containing milk, and a plate of bread upon it. The cell was bare. The light struggled in dimly through a dirty, barred window. The stillness was appalling, and I felt benumbed—a sense of terrible oppression weighed me down. If only I could hear once more the sound of a friendly voice! If only some one would tell whose diabolical mind had conceived and directed suspicion against me!
I remained in the cell three days, when my lawyer visited me. He arranged that I was to have a room especially set apart for prisoners awaiting trial who can afford to pay five shillings ($1.25) weekly, for the additional comfort of a table, an arm-chair, and a wash-stand. Had I not been able to do so I should have been consigned to an ordinary prison cell, and my diet would have been the same as that of convicted prisoners. Instead, my food was sent from a hotel outside. I was locked in this room for twenty-two hours out of the twenty-four. The only time I was permitted to leave it was for chapel in the morning and an hour’s exercise in the afternoon in the prison yard. The stillness, unbroken by any sound from the outside world, got on my nerves, and I wanted to scream, if only to hear my own voice. The unnatural confinement, without any one to speak to, was torture. The governor, the doctor, and the chaplain, it is true, came around every morning, but their visits were of such short duration, and so formal in their nature, that it was impossible to derive much relief from conversation with them.