This maimed, ex-convict life he must bear to the end: only outside of that could he meet men as their equal; and so he guarded his incognito, but not altogether successfully.
Once he made the experiment of going to a neighboring city and trying to make some commercial use of his mathematics, but he could not gain his starting-point. He had no credentials as teacher, and while he might have been valuable as an expert accountant his disadvantages were too great to be overcome.
More and more frequently as the years passed came allusions to loss of time through illness. His faithful friend, the superintendent of the home, had passed to her reward, and the home as Belden had known it was a thing of the past.
Life was becoming a losing game, a problem too hard to be solved, when tubercular tendencies of long standing developed and Belden became a charge on some branch of the anti-tuberculosis movement, where he spent a summer out of doors. Here he frankly faced the fact of the disease that was developing, and characteristically read all the medical works on the subject that the camp afforded, determined to make a good fight against the enemy. He seemed to find a sort of comfort in bringing himself into companionship with certain men of genius who had fought the same foe; he mentions Robert Louis Stevenson, Chopin, and Keats, and, more hopefully, others who were finally victorious over the disease.
With the approach of cold weather it was thought best to send Belden to a warmer climate; arrangements were made accordingly, and he was given a ticket to a far distant place where it was supposed he would have a better chance of recovery. There for a time he rallied and grew stronger, but only to face fresh hardships. He was physically incapable of earning a living, and it was not long before he became a public charge and was placed in an infirmary for old men; for more than fifty years of poverty and struggle with fate had left the traces of a lifetime on the worn-out body. But the "something" which he felt told him to keep on through many hardships does not desert him now, and the old spirit of determination to make the best of things holds out still. His letters show much the same habit of observation as formerly; bits of landscape gleam like pictures through some of his pages, and historical associations in which I might be interested are gathered and reported. His one most vital interest at present seems to be the production of this book, as he firmly believes that no one else can "speak for the prisoners" as the writer.
It seems that even Death itself, "who breaks all chains and sets all captives free," cannot be kind to Peter Belden, and delays coming, through wearisome days and more wearisome nights. But at last, when the dark curtain of life is lifted, we can but trust that a happier fortune awaits him in a happier country.
CHAPTER VII
At the time of my first visit to the penitentiary of my own State the warden surprised me by saying: "Among the very best men in the prison are the 'life' men, the men here for murder."