We watch the visitors come in from the boats; the doctors, the officials, the prisoners arriving escorted by the sheriffs. The average prisoner is well dressed; some of them are quite dandified in their appearance, while others are poorly dressed, some of them even without an overcoat in winter time. One day a bum came, escorted by a sheriff, all alone, with a straw hat, at the height of the winter season.
The other morning a big, square-shouldered tramp was following the sheriff in a lazy, shuffling manner. There was no hat on his long, dishevelled mop of reddish hair; his beard was of enormous proportions; his face was brick red, as well as the hands, from dirt and exposure to the air. A coat and trousers which almost dropped from his body, so ragged were they; no shirt, no underwear, and a pair of shoes through which his toes peeped smilingly, completed his wardrobe. A sudden gust of wind would have divested him of all covering.
Half an hour later I happened to pass near the head keeper's desk, and I could hardly believe my eyes when I beheld that tramp. In his case the transformation was highly creditable to prison methods. They had clipped his hair, cut his beard, given him a bath, covered him with a striped shirt and a striped suit, and he was standing in brand-new, prison-made shoes. He looked indeed like a gentleman as compared with his former wild, dirty, disreputable and pitiful appearance.
On Sunday droves of visitors come to the island on the 23rd Street boat. The women are more numerous than the men; poorly dressed women are in the majority; often flashily dressed women with expensive fur coats and stylish hats are seen elbowing old and homely women wearing shawls and with babies on their arms. Almost everybody carries packages of fruit to the inmates. Little boys and girls often accompany the women, and handkerchiefs are often raised to wipe away tears. It is a tragic, fateful, unhappy procession.
XXV
The first and the last week seem longest in the term of imprisonment. During the rest of the time the hours pass in swift succession, as the work and the regular hours help to shorten the time; there is a spirit of patience, and the mind becomes more and more introspective and philosophical.
But in the last week all the thoughts, the plans, the ambitions, the discoveries of a new future, seem to be concentrated. The minutes drag by with a laborious and torpid slowness, and there is an intensity of time which seems to crowd sixty hours into one single hour by the clock. The ordinary patient, often of a cheerful habit of mind, is of a sudden transformed into a cranky, impatient, unruly, violent attitude.
During that last week I very nearly got into trouble, for the first time in my ten months of imprisonment "with good behaviour;" and this when an impertinent answer might have kept me two months longer within this barred prison.
A keeper known and hated for his brutal and insulting attitude towards the prisoners was relieving our own hospital keeper during the lunch hour. He was watching the prisoners file into the room at the opposite end of the hospital to wait for the arrival of the dentist. A belated man came in holding a handkerchief close to his mouth as if he were suffering from an agonizing toothache.