At last I tired of bread and water, got on my good behavior, and took to reading. The prison had a splendid library, not a worthless book in it. All the best English authors were there and I went through them hungrily. I became so immersed in reading that I was careful not to break the rules lest I lose three days or more from the books. I got schoolbooks and studied them. Remembering my poor arithmetic, I tried mathematics but couldn’t get anywhere. Then the grammar, but the rules seemed to have been made for no other purpose than to confuse the beginner and “repress his noble rage,” so I gave that up, got intensely interested in a small dictionary, and almost went into the dark cell for carrying it out with me to work and looking into it when the guard’s back was turned. I read the best books in the library, except the Bible, and would have taken that only I already had six months with it in the Scotchman’s jail.
I went through Chambers’s Encyclopedia from A to Z. Read all about acids and paper, metals and metallurgy, dies and molds. I studied the history of locks and lockmaking, poring over the pictures of locks and their escutcheons—all kinds of locks and keys, door locks, padlocks, combination locks, nothing was neglected. I read a most interesting paper on picklocks and lock-picking by a famous lock-maker of London. I followed the history of explosives from gunpowder down to nitroglycerin. I found a passage that told clearly and concisely which explosives did the greatest damage and made the least noise. What a mine of information! I was fascinated. I studied guns and pistols, drills and saws and files, braces and bits and drilling machines of high and low pressure and fast or slow motion.
I investigated poisons, herbs, and drugs. I discovered that the finest quality of morphine may be obtained from lettuce and proved it in the prison garden by extracting it and eating it. I read up on sleeping and dreaming and learned just what kind of noise is most apt to wake a sleeping person; just when he sleeps the deepest and at what hour of the night his courage is at its lowest ebb. I can sit in a hotel lobby to-day and pick out the sound sleeper, the medium sleeper, and light sleeper. I got it out of the encyclopedia, and proved it in practice later.
The time flew by. I read away the long evenings, Sundays, holidays, and rainy days. We ate in our cells and I always had a book propped up behind my pan of pea soup. My feud with guards was forgotten. I had no trouble with fellow prisoners; the silent system and single cells prohibited that. There was no whispering, plotting, scheming, and snitching as there is where the congregate system prevails. The stool pigeon, so fostered and encouraged in American prisons, did not flourish there. The silence obliterated him, made him unnecessary.
There was a little cloud on my mind that began to grow. My time was getting short, some of my credits had been forfeited, and not being able to find out how much, I was uncertain about the day of my discharge and expected to be called out any time for the last installment of my lashing. This made me very nervous, restless, and irritable. The books no longer held me.
CHAPTER XIX
At last I was sent for by the prison tailor to be fitted into a discharge suit, and knew that I hadn’t more than a week or ten days to do. A day or two later the same guards took me to the same room, where I found the doctor, the deputy warden, the flogging master, and the triangle all ready for me. I saw I was in for it. The atmosphere was a little more “official” than on the former occasion. Mr. Burr’s beard bristled more, and his eye was a little harder. The doctor looked me over with more interest. The guards turned their eyes away from mine as they trussed me up to the tripod, and the deputy warden’s “Now, Mr. Burr,” was ominously soft, smooth, oily.
The lashing is regulated by law as is every other detail of British penology. The strap is just so long, so wide, so thick, and so heavy. The flogging master can swing it just so far and no farther. Mr. Burr did the best he could with those limitations and reservations, and it was plenty.
To make an unpleasant story short, I will say he beat me like a balky horse, and I took it like one—with my ears laid back and my teeth bared. All the philosophy and logic and clear reasoning I had got out of books and meditation in my two years were beaten out of me in thirty seconds, and I went out of that room foolishly hating everything a foot high. I had a chance to cool off during the remaining week of my time, and the day of my release found me halfway rational again.
On my way out of the prison grounds I passed the deputy warden directing a gang of prisoners. I had nothing against them; I was going out and feeling good. I waved them a farewell. He turned on me savagely, snarling, “Be on your way.” I stopped, gave him my best dirty look, and turned my back on him and his prison forever.