Setting my teeth firmly together, while the blood goes rushing to my temples, I feel for the moment as if I should smother. Perhaps it is as well that I am under lock and key, for I should like to commit murder. To think that any man can grow so callous to human suffering as to forget the very first duty of humanity. Even soldiers on the battlefield will give a drink of water to a dying enemy. And here we have an organized System which in cold blood forbids the giving of a few drops to the parched lips of a sick lad, to save him from misery and madness! And if I am almost stifling with anger at the outrage, what must those men feel who are really suffering? What must those have felt who in the past have been kept here day after day, slowly dying of thirst or going mad on one gill of water in twenty-four hours?
Is it imagination that the very air here seems to be tainted with unseen but malign and potent influences, bred of the cruelty and suffering—the hatred and madness which these cells have harbored? If ever there were a spot haunted by spirits of evil, this must surely be the place. I have been shown through dungeons that seemed to reek with the misery and wretchedness with which some lawless medieval tyrant had filled them; but here is a dungeon where the tyrant is an unreasoning, unreachable System, based upon the law and tolerated by good, respectable, religious men and women. Even more then than the dungeons of Naples is this “the negation of God”; for its foundation is not the brutal whim of a degenerate despot, but the ignorance and indifference of a free and civilized people. Or rather, this is worse than a negation of God, it is a betrayal of God.
After duly waking my companions the keeper amuses himself by fussing with the steam pipes. The vault was already disagreeably close and hot; but he chooses to make it still hotter, and none of us dares to remonstrate. Then he turns out the light and goes his way, and he certainly carries with him my own hearty maledictions, if not those of my fellow prisoners.
It is hopeless to think of going to sleep again at once, although my head is thick and my eyes heavy with fatigue. So again I sit close to the grated door and open up communication with Joe. As usual, he is entirely willing to give his attention, and enters readily into conversation.
“Hey, Tom! Do you want to know my name? It’s Joseph Matto. Funny name for an Irishman, ain’t it? Well, you know, it ain’t my real name. My real name’s McNulty. But you see it was this way. When my case came up in court, down in New York, they called out, ‘Joseph Matto’; and the cop said, ‘Here, you, get up there!’ I said, ‘That ain’t my name’; and he said, ‘Never you mind, get up!’ So you see I got some other fellow’s name, but I thought I might as well keep it, and so I have ever since.
“But it’s all right, because I don’t want to disgrace my folks. They don’t know where I am, and I wouldn’t have my mother know for anything. You see, I’m the black sheep of the family, the rest are all right. I’m the only one that ain’t goin’ straight. But when I get out of here I mean to go straight. Say, Tom, do you think I can get a job, here in Auburn? My bit is up in December, and I should like to stay here and get straight before I go back home.”
“When you get out,” is my answer, “it will be up to me to stand treat for a dinner of beefsteak and fried potatoes, at any rate. And I’ll do the best I can to help you get a job, Joe, if you really do mean to go straight. But in that neither I nor any one else can help you; you know you’ll have to do that yourself.”
Poor Number Four! I have not the slightest doubt he means what he says, but here again—this cursed System. It is particularly deadening to a young fellow like Joe. He evidently has just that lively, good-natured, shiftless, irresponsible temperament which needs to be carefully trained in the bearing of responsibility.
While Joe and I are conversing, Number Eight makes his one remark. “Would there be a job for a bricklayer around here?”
I don’t know, and tell him so; but add, as in Joe’s case, that if he means to go straight I will gladly do what I can for him; and in any event I consider that I owe each of them a good dinner. Thus it is agreed that they will all dine with me in turn upon the happy occasions of their release.