“It broke me down on my first sentence. It destroys a man.”
“I had a cold lonely feeling. . . . Nine months of it is killing for most men.”
“It’s punishment to shut up a man for nine months.” (This is a fair specimen of the very general under-statement of evidently acute feelings.)
“It’ll send men ‘up the stick.’ ” (Off their heads.)
“I’m very miserable and down-’earted. You feel it more and more as you get older. I hardly know sometimes what I’m doing.” (This was from an old man of sixty-one who had been twenty years in prison, and said he did not expect to last through this sentence. He had still six months of separate to run, and struck me as very broken up, and suffering.)
“I keep ‘picturing’ things, and walking about. It sends men ‘up the pole!’ ” (Another bad case of a young recidivist of twenty-nine, with five months of his ‘separate’ still to run.)
“Walls seem to close in. . . . I get blankness in the brain; have to stop reading.”
“It’s hell upon earth.” (An educated prisoner.)
“Almost unbearable depression.” (An educated prisoner.)
“Sleep’s the only comfort.”