To understand fully the Prison System it should be added that this long iron bar, which forms the third lock and about which so much fuss is made, only exists in the basement and second tier in the North Wing, and not at all in the South Wing. There is no discrimination made, by confining the more dangerous men in the extra-locked cells. But, gravely, every night and morning, that silly extra bar is lowered and raised for a small percentage of the prisoners—a ridiculous waste of time and energy.
This evening has been marked by a visit from the Chaplain, who has returned from Syracuse. He tells me that my experiment has aroused great interest among the clergymen assembled at a religious conference he has been attending; that he has had to answer countless questions. He also tells me that he is returning there again this evening and will telephone to the gentleman who was proposing to employ his assistant, Dickinson, and see if work cannot possibly be found for him. I tell the Chaplain of my letter, and beg him to add assurance of my own belief in the young man’s stability and intention to do right.
Later the Warden comes. He brings me, as usual, a copy of the Auburn newspaper, so that I must set this down as the third exception that is made in my case. As a regular newcomer I should not be allowed a newspaper.
I ask the Warden about last night’s disturbance. He has inquired into it, he says, and found it was only a case of a troublesome fellow, sent up from Sing Sing recently, who was making some little disturbance in the gallery. After they admonished him he wouldn’t stop, so they had to take him down to the jail. When the officer entered his cell, he threw his bucket at the officer and there was a little row. “I’m inclined to think,” adds the Warden, “that he may be a little bit crazy, and I’m going to look into it.”
“I suppose that is the official version,” I remark to the Warden. “Well, I certainly hope you will look further into it; for, speaking frankly, I think they are trying to slip one over on you. If my information is correct, and I believe it is, the case is rather different from what you have told me; and the treatment given the young fellow was inexcusably brutal.”
I put the matter rather mildly to the Warden, for I don’t want him to think that I am losing my balance and taking everything that is said to me by all my fellow-prisoners as gospel truth. To believe everything they say would doubtless be as stupid as to believe nothing.
The Warden and I again discuss the desirability of my working in one of the other shops during the remaining time here; but after full consideration we both feel that more is to be gained by staying where I am. There is only a day and a half left.
“You still feel, then, as if you wanted to try the jail?” asks the Warden.
“Yes, more so than ever,” I answer, “for I must find out why the prisoners all speak of it with such horror. When you showed me the place last June, I thought it a very uncomfortable hole, and it was not pleasant to think about afterward. But there must be some such place to put men who defy all authority; and it didn’t strike me as so very terrible. These fellows all speak of it with bated breath and a queer look in the eyes, as though it held some ghastly recollection. What can it be?”