I had a great deal more time for reading and meditation in my lonely cell than one would think by the above routine. I was put to work in the shop making chairs. It was the first time I had ever worked in my life, and I took my time about it. I felt no strong desire to work for the State. I was expected to cane a hundred chairs a day, but I usually caned about two. I did not believe in work. I felt at that time that New York State owed me a living. I was getting a living all right, but I was ungrateful. I did not thank them a wee bit. I must have been a bad example to other "cons," for they began to get as tired as myself. At any rate, I lost my job, and was sent back to my cell, where I stayed most of the time while at Sing Sing.
I worked, indeed, very little at any time during my three bits in the penitentiary. The prison at Sing Sing, during the nine months I was there on my first term, was very crowded, and there was not enough work to go round; and I was absolutely idle most of the time. When I had been drafted to Auburn I found more work to do, but still very little, for it was just then that the legislature had shut down on contract labor in the prisons. The outside merchants squealed because they could not compete with unpaid convict labor; and so the prison authorities had to shut down many of their shops, running only enough to supply the inside demand, which was slight. For eighteen months at Auburn I did not work a day. I think it was a very bad thing for the health of convicts when this law was passed; for certainly idleness is a very bad thing for most of them; and to be shut up nearly all the time in damp, unhealthy cells like those at Sing Sing, is a terrible strain on the human system.
Personally, however, I liked to be in my cell, especially during my first year of solitary confinement, before my health began to give way; for I had my books from the good prison libraries, my pipe or cigarettes, and last, but not least, I had a certain portion of opium that I used every day.
For me, prison life had one great advantage. It broke down my health and confirmed me for many years in the opium habit, as we shall see; but I educated myself while in stir. Previous to going to Sing Sing my education had been almost entirely in the line of graft; but in stir, I read the English classics and became familiar with philosophy and the science of medicine and learned something about chemistry.
One of my favorite authors was Voltaire, whom I read, of course, in a translation. His "Dictionary" was contraband in prison but I read it with profit. Voltaire was certainly one of the shrewdest of men, and as up to snuff as any cynical grafter I know, and yet he had a great love for humanity. He was the philosopher of humanity. Goethe said that Luther threw the world back two hundred years, but I deny it; for Luther, like Voltaire, pointed out the ignorance and wickedness of the priests of their day. These churchmen did not understand the teachings of Christ. Was Voltaire delusional? The priests must have thought so, but they were no judges, for they were far worse and less humane than the French revolutionists. The latter killed outright, but the priests tortured in the name of the Most Humane. I never approved of the methods of the French revolutionists, but certainly they were gentle in comparison with the priests of the Spanish Inquisition.
I think that, in variety of subjects, Voltaire has no equal among writers. Shrewd as he was, he had a soul, and his moral courage was grand. His defense of young Barry, who was arrested for using language against the church, showed his kindness and breadth of mind. On his arrival in Paris, when he was only a stripling, he denounced the cowardly, fawning sycophants who surrounded Louis XIV,[B] and wrote a sarcastic poem on His Nibs, and was confined in the Bastille for two years. His courage, his wit, his sarcasms, his hatred of his persecutors, and his love and kindness, stamp him as one of the great, healthy intellects of mankind. What a clever book is Candide! What satire! What wit! As I lay on my cot how often I laughed at his caustic comments on humanity! And how he could hate! I never yet met a man of any account who was not a good hater. I own that Voltaire was ungallant toward the fair sex. But that was his only fault.
I enjoyed Victor Hugo because he could create a great character, and was capable of writing a story with a plot. I rank him as a master of fiction, although I preferred his experience as a traveller, to his novels, which are not real enough. Ernest Renan was a bracing and clever writer, but I was sadly disappointed in reading his Life of Jesus. I expected to get a true outline of Christ's time and a character sketch of the man himself, but I didn't. I went to the fountain for a glass of good wine, but got only red lemonade.
I liked Dumas, and revelled in the series beginning with The Three Musketeers. I could not read Dumas now, however. I also enjoyed Gaboriau and Du Boisgobey, for they are very sensational; but that was during my first term in stir. I could not turn a page of their books now, for they would seem idiotic to me. Balzac is a bird of another feather. In my opinion he was one of the best dissectors of human nature that the world ever produced. Not even Shakespeare was his equal. His depth in searching for motives, his discernment in detecting a hypocrite, his skill in showing up women, with their follies, their loves, their little hypocrisies, their endearments, their malice and their envy is unrivalled. It is right that Balzac should show woman with all her faults and follies and virtues, for if she did not possess all these characteristics, how could man adore her?
In his line I think Thackeray is as great as Balzac. When I had read Vanity Fair, Pendennis, The Newcomes and Barry Lyndon, I was so much interested that I read anything of his I could lay my hands on, over and over again. With a novel of Thackeray's in my hand I would become oblivious to my surroundings, and long to know something of this writers personality. I think I formed his mental make-up correctly, for I imagined him to be gentle and humane. Any man with ability and brains equal to his could not be otherwise. What a character is Becky Sharp! In her way she was as clever a grafter as Sheenie Annie. She did not love Rawdon as a good wife should. If she had she would not be the interesting Becky that she is. She was grateful to Rawdon for three reasons; first, he married her; second, he gave her a glimpse into a station in life her soul longed for; third, he came from a good family, and was a soldier and tall, and it is well-known that little women like big men. Then Rawdon amused Becky. She often grinned at his lack of brains. She grinned at everything, and when we learn that Becky got religion at the end of the book, instead of saying, God bless her, we only grin, too.
Pendennis is a healthy book. I always sympathize with Pen and Laura in their struggles to get on, and when the baby was born I was willing to become Godpapa, just for its Mamma's sake. The Newcomes I call Thackeray's masterpiece. It is truer to life than any other book I ever read. Take the scene where young Clive throws the glass of wine in his cousin's face. The honest horror of the father, his indignation when old Captain Costigan uses bad language, his exit when he hears a song in the Music Hall—all this is true realism. But the scene that makes this book Thackeray's masterpiece is that where the old Colonel is dying. The touching devotion of Madam and Ethel, the love for old Tom, his last word "adsum" the quiet weeping of his nurse, and the last duties to the dead; the beautiful tenderness of the two women, of a kind that makes the fair sex respected by all men—I can never forget this scene till my dying day.