To pass through will be an experience surely. It is seldom opened; I have observed it so just seven times; but when it is ajar—things happen. Whenever we look out of our cages we see it; we close our eyes—we still see it. When exercising in the corridor one passes and repasses it; though we walk away, we know we are going towards it. Thinking by day and dreaming by night, it is always with us, and irresistible is its fascination. All else here is insignificant; and to us the Death-Chamber is but “The Room with the Little Door.”
CHAPTER II
“The Little Dead Mouse”
It would seem impossible for any one to escape from the Death-Chamber. But there is a story of one man who refused to stay, and who, under the very eyes of his keepers, without any privacy or apparatus, manufactured the poison with which he ended his life; for that is almost the only way you can end your stay in the Death-Chamber.
The man’s crime, his history, does not affect this story, but his personality does. He was the quietest man of all; and men who are waiting death are usually quiet men. A German by nationality, very gentle, almost affectionate one would think, from the fact that he caught and tamed a small mouse to which he seemed devoted. Now a mouse is a rare thing within the precinct of which I speak, for stone and steel do not offer it the crevices it affects. But the German—he was called “Professor” because he wore glasses—had asked when he arrived if any mice had been tamed. “You can teach them tricks,” he said. He used to sleep all day, and at night very patiently lay and watched the bread crumbs he scattered on the floor. He did this for months; and at last the great event occurred. Can you guess what he used for a trap? His stocking. He did teach the mouse tricks. He taught it to eat meat out of his hand, which was not difficult, and to come when he called, which was. It slept with him. This took patience. Remember, he had no string with which to tie it, and had to keep it under his drinking cup at first to prevent its running away.
Time went by. Winter changed to summer, and with that season came a letter to the “Professor” and a death warrant to the warden. This was for the “Professor” also; that is, it was to be read to him, and—was it sympathy, or what? Death came to the little mouse at that time. I suppose that every man would confess that it is disturbing to receive the news that he must go through the “little door” in the Death-Chamber into the beyond, and so it affected the “Professor,” philosopher though he undoubtedly was. Perhaps it was not the news, but the loss of his little friend; perhaps it was both; at any rate the “Professor” took to his bed. The prison doctor came, winked at the keeper, and said, “Fright; let him alone.” So they let the “Professor” alone, and the “Professor” died; but when they went into the cell, they found the cause of his illness had not been fright at all. It was erysipelas. Over his breast were long scratches, deep as little teeth could make them (we have no pins in the Death-Chamber), and flattened down on them and tightly bound lay the putrid remains of “the little dead mouse.”