Devoutly Johnny goes to Church, and prays forgiveness for his "sins." The prosecutor was "very hard" on him, he told me. The blind mole perceives only the immediate, and is embittered against the persons directly responsible for his long imprisonment. But greater minds have failed fully to grasp the iniquity of the established. My beloved Burns, even, seems inadequate, powerfully as he moves my spirit with his deep sympathy for the poor, the oppressed. But "man's inhumanity to man" is not the last word. The truth lies deeper. It is economic slavery, the savage struggle for a crumb, that has converted mankind into wolves and sheep. In liberty and communism, none would have the will or the power "to make countless thousands mourn." Verily, it is the system, rather than individuals, that is the source of pollution and degradation. My prison-house environment is but another manifestation of the Midas-hand, whose cursed touch turns everything to the brutal service of Mammon. Dullness fawns upon cruelty for advancement; with savage joy the shop foreman cracks his whip, for his meed of the gold-transmuted blood. The famished bodies in stripes, the agonized brains reeling in the dungeon night, the men buried in "basket" and solitary,—what human hand would turn the key upon a soul in utter darkness, but for the dread of a like fate, and the shadow it casts before? This nightmare is but an intensified replica of the world beyond, the larger prison locked with the levers of Greed, guarded by the spawn of Hunger.
My mind reverts insistently to the life outside. It is a Herculean task to rouse Apathy to the sordidness of its misery. Yet if the People would but realize the depths of their degradation and be informed of the means of deliverance, how joyously they would embrace Anarchy! Quick and decisive would be the victory of the workers against the handful of their despoilers. An hour of sanity, freed from prejudice and superstition, and the torch of liberty would flame 'round the world, and the banner of equality and brotherhood be planted upon the hills of a regenerated humanity. Ah, if the world would but pause for one short while, and understand, and become free!
Involuntarily I am reminded of the old rabbinical lore: only one instant of righteousness, and Messiah would come upon earth. The beautiful promise had strongly appealed to me in the days of childhood. The merciful God requires so little of us, I had often pondered. Why will we not abstain from sin and evil, for just "the twinkling of an eye-lash"? For weeks I went about weighed down with the grief of impenitent Israel refusing to be saved, my eager brain pregnant with projects of hastening the deliverance. Like a divine inspiration came the solution: at the stroke of the noon hour, on a preconcerted day, all the men and women of the Jewry throughout the world should bow in prayer. For a single stroke of time, all at once—behold the Messiah come! In agonizing perplexity I gazed at my Hebrew tutor shaking his head. How his kindly smile quivered dismay into my thrilling heart! The children of Israel could not be saved thus,—he spoke sadly. Nay, not even in the most circumspect manner, affording our people in the farthest corners of the earth time to prepare for the solemn moment. The Messiah will come, the good tutor kindly consoled me. It had been promised. "But the hour hath not arrived," he quoted; "no man hath the power to hasten the steps of the Deliverer."
With a sense of sobering sadness, I think of the new hope, the revolutionary Messiah. Truly the old rabbi was wise beyond his ken: it hath been given to no man to hasten the march of delivery. Out of the People's need, from the womb of their suffering, must be born the hour of redemption. Necessity, Necessity alone, with its iron heel, will spur numb Misery to effort, and waken the living dead. The process is tortuously slow, but the gestation of a new humanity cannot be hurried by impatience. We must bide our time, meanwhile preparing the workers for the great upheaval. The errors of the past are to be guarded against: always has apparent victory been divested of its fruits, and paralyzed into defeat, because the People were fettered by their respect for property, by the superstitious awe of authority, and by reliance upon leaders. These ghosts must be cast out, and the torch of reason lighted in the darkness of men's minds, ere blind rebellion can rend the midway clouds of defeat, and sight the glory of the Social Revolution, and the beyond.
III
A heavy nightmare oppresses my sleep. Confused sounds ring in my ears, and beat upon my head. I wake in nameless dread. The cell-house is raging with uproar: crash after crash booms through the hall; it thunders against the walls of the cell, then rolls like some monstrous drum along the galleries, and abruptly ceases.
In terror I cower on the bed. All is deathly still. Timidly I look around. The cell is in darkness, and only a faint gas light flickers unsteadily in the corridor. Suddenly a cry cuts the silence, shrill and unearthly, bursting into wild laughter. And again the fearful thunder, now bellowing from the cell above, now muttering menacingly in the distance, then dying with a growl. And all is hushed again, and only the unearthly laughter rings through the hall.
"Johnny, Johnny!" I call in alarm. "Johnny!"
"Th' kid's in th' hole," comes hoarsely through the privy. "This is Horsethief. Is that you, Aleck?"