Again some discussion ensued, terminated by some one asking me if I could produce the required securities.
By this time a slight reaction to my state of debility had set in,—that fevered condition in which passion assumed the ascendant; and I answered, haughtily,—
“Bail for whom? Is it for him to whom they refused bread that they will go surety? Look at these rags, sir,—see these wasted arms,—hear this voice, hoarse as it is with hunger,—and ask yourself who could pledge himself for such misery?”
He uttered some commonplaces—at least so they sounded to me—about there being no necessary connection between want and crime; but I stopped him short, saying,—
“Then you have never fasted, sir,—never known what it was to struggle against the terrible temptations that arise in a famished heart; to sink down upon a bed of straw, and think of the thousands at that moment in affluence, and think of them with hate! No link between want and crime! None, for they are one. Want is envy—want is malice. Its evil counsellors are everywhere,—in the plash of the wave at midnight; in the rustle of the leaves in a dark wood; in the chamber of the sick man: wherever guilt can come, a whispering voice will say, 'Be there!'”
Some friendly bystander here counselled me to calm myself, and not aggravate my position by words of angry impatience. The air of sympathy touched me, and I said no more.
I was committed to prison—remanded, I believe they said—to be called up at some future day, when further inquiries had been made into my mode of life and habits. The sentence—so well as I could understand it—was not a severe one,—imprisonment without labor or any other penalty. I was told that I had reason to be grateful! but gratitude was then at a low ebb within me; for whatever moralists may say, it is an emotion that never thrives on misery. As I was led away, I overheard some comments that were passed upon me. One called me mad, and pitied me; another said I was a practised impostor, far too leniently dealt with; a third classed me with the vile herd of those who live by secret crimes, and hoped for some stringent act against such criminals.
There was not one to ask, Why has he done this thing? and how shall others be saved from his example?
They who followed me with looks of contempt and aversion never guessed that the prison was to me a grateful home; that if the strong door shut out liberty, it excluded starvation too; and that if I could not stray at will through the green lanes, yet my footsteps never bore me to the darksome pond where the black depth whispered—oblivion!