At last a bell, the first signal for the night. I think it is twenty minutes before nine. As the kindly gallery boy has brought me a glass tumbler, I brush my teeth with a minimum of inconvenience, wash my face, and then investigate the workings of the bed. It is loosely fastened to two iron hooks in the wall, on the inside; and the outside rests on two legs which dangle in the air vaguely, and will probably let me down in the night if they do not rest firmly on the floor to begin with. After manipulating the bed successfully, I let down the mattress on top of it and arrange the blankets as well as possible.
About a quarter of an hour more before lights out. It is all very well to look forward to that landmark, but what after that? What of the ten-hour night ahead of me? And this is only the first night of six. Suppose it were the first night of six thousand.
I hastily take a sheet of paper, mark off a space for each day and each night I expect to be here, and scratch off Monday. One-twelfth of my penance gone at any rate. I don’t count Sunday, because that will be only half a day; or I will write in Sunday at the bottom, as a sort of separate affair. I hang this rough calendar upon the wall; and then it suddenly occurs to me that it is exactly what I have always read of prisoners doing.
Oh! Will these lights never go out!
I shall put away this writing, and just wait.
Merciful God! How do they ever stand it?
Tuesday morning: after breakfast.
The first night is over. They all say it is the worst. It could hardly be called a success—considered as a period of rest and refreshment; at least it did not “knit up the raveled sleeve of care” to any very great extent. At nine o’clock the lights at last went out. I was already in bed and waiting, but I was not at all prepared for the shock I received. While there is light in the cell, the bars of the door look gray against the darkness outside—and that is bad enough; but when the lights go out, there is just enough brightness from the corridor below to change the door into a grating of most terrible, unearthly blackness. The bars are so black that they seem to close in upon you—to come nearer and nearer, until they press upon your very forehead. It is of no use to shut your eyes for you know they are still there; you can feel the blackness of those iron bars across your closed eyelids; they seem to sear themselves into your very soul. It is the most terrible sensation I ever experienced. I understand now the prison pallor; I understand the sensitiveness of this prison audience; I understand the high nervous tension which makes anything possible. How does any man remain sane, I wonder, caged in this stone grave day after day, night after night?
And always there come the sound of keys turning and the grating of iron hinges and bolts and bars. And as if the double-locked levers were not enough, I noticed for the first time last night a triple lock. A long iron bar drops down in front of all the cells on the tier; and against that iron bar rest the ends of iron brackets projecting from the iron doors. So that by merely unlocking and pressing down the levers you cannot be set free; the long bar must be raised at the end of the gallery, where it is fastened by another lock and special key. This discovery seems to put the crowning touch to that desperate sensation of confinement. I already hate the levers; I doubly hate the lock and big key; but no words can express my detestation of that iron bar.
However, just before ten o’clock I did manage to lose consciousness; I recall the time by the sounds of the nine-fifty New York Central train. Even in the midst of my discomfort I had to smile at the plight of one who has to tell time by trains on the Auburn branch of the New York Central. I do not know how much I slept through the night, but I was greatly disturbed by the frequent and pathetic coughing, sighing, and groaning from other cells. It was only too evident that many others were sleeping no better than I. Possibly the delicate attentions of the night keeper going his rounds and flashing his electric bull’s-eye through the bars straight in our faces, may have had something to do with it. Certainly that custom is hardly conducive to unbroken slumbers. Apparently, it is considered necessary to do this in order to prevent suicides. One poor fellow had tried to make away with himself on the previous night; such attempts are not uncommon, I’m told.