Meekly putting on my cap and coat, I follow the keeper out of the shop. At least I prepare to follow—I wait for him to lead the way, but he motions me to go ahead of him. Then I realize that an officer escorting a convict always walks just behind, where he can keep a watchful eye on every move of his charge.
The school is only a few steps away, in fact in the second story of the very building of which our shop occupies the ground floor. I ascend the stairs, and passing through a hall find myself in the principal’s office. Here I am told to wait until the Professor is at leisure. I wait a long time. When he arrives he gives me a single sheet of paper, and tells me to write a composition on the subject of My Education.
I sit down and quickly fill two pages with a succinct account of my stay at different institutions of learning, ending with my graduation from the university. Then I simply add that, while this has been the end of my schooling, I hope my education is still going on.
The Professor having left the room again while I am writing, I have another considerable wait. The school appears to be much larger and more important than when I saw it last, some years ago. I should like to see more of it. After a while the Professor returns and reads over my paper. His only comment is one regarding my university degree. The Chaplain has already told me that there are twenty college graduates confined in prison here, but I am pleased to have the Professor add the information that I am the only Harvard graduate in the institution. I repress the inevitable impulse to say, “I suppose the others come from Yale,” and simply express gratification at what the Professor has told me. I have already decided to reserve all jokes for my comrades.
“That is all, Brown.”
I cannot even be trusted to go down one flight of stairs and walk not more than thirty steps to the door of the basket-shop; so another wait is necessary until the keeper who brought me up is ready to take me back. He in time reappears and returns me, like a large and animated package, to Captain Kane. I appear to have satisfied the authorities with my mental equipment.
My second new experience to-day is the bath. The order to fall in comes soon after my return from the school. We are lined up and counted—35 of us—each man with his towel, soap and bundle of clean clothes. My fresh apparel appeared yesterday in the shop and George kindly took care of it for me until to-day. We march in due order to a large bathhouse where are rows of shower baths with small anterooms for dressing, arranged about three sides of a large, oblong room with a raised promenade for the officers down the middle. I am for plunging at once into my section, heedless of the careful instructions Jack has given me, but one of my companions stops me, and I wait like the others with my back to the door until we have all been counted and placed. Then the word is given, and I enter. Here is a very small space where I undress, handing the shirt, socks, and underclothes I take off to an attendant who sticks his hand under the door to get them. Then I enjoy a good warm shower for a few moments, but cut it short, having been warned that I must not waste any time. The drying and dressing are rather harder than the disrobing in such confined quarters, but are successfully accomplished, and I am among the first to emerge and take up my station outside, with my back to the door again. The officer, who has been walking up and down his elevated perch, keeping close watch of our heads while we bathed, counts us all carefully when the space in front of every man’s door is occupied. We then are marched back to the shop, are again counted, and then disperse to our work.
But the excitements of the day are not yet over. As Jack and I are working hard to make up for lost time, I suddenly see over to the left, out of the corner of my eye, a familiar figure. It is my nephew. He is followed by another familiar figure and another and another. The Warden is showing over the prison a party of visitors, among them several of my intimate friends.
I fear that the remark with which I explode will not bear repetition.