Ukraine The Forging Of A Nation Yaroslav Hrytsak

download

https://ebookbell.com/product/ukraine-the-forging-of-a-nation-
yaroslav-hrytsak-54994744

Explore and download more ebooks at ebookbell.com

Here are some recommended products that we believe you will be
interested in. You can click the link to download.

Ukraine The Bradt Travel Guide 4th Edition Andrew Evans

https://ebookbell.com/product/ukraine-the-bradt-travel-guide-4th-
edition-andrew-evans-46482544

The Jews Of Ukraine The Jewish Quarterly Jonathan Pearlman Ed

https://ebookbell.com/product/the-jews-of-ukraine-the-jewish-
quarterly-jonathan-pearlman-ed-50552104

The Moulding Of Ukraine The Constitutional Politics Of State Formation

Kataryna Wolczuk

https://ebookbell.com/product/the-moulding-of-ukraine-the-
constitutional-politics-of-state-formation-kataryna-wolczuk-51922278

The History Of Ukraine The Greenwood Histories Of The Modern Nations

Paul Kubicek

https://ebookbell.com/product/the-history-of-ukraine-the-greenwood-
histories-of-the-modern-nations-paul-kubicek-2184560
The Battle For The Ukraine The Korsunshevchenkovskii Operation Soviet
Russian Study Of War Annotated Edition David M Glantz

https://ebookbell.com/product/the-battle-for-the-ukraine-the-
korsunshevchenkovskii-operation-soviet-russian-study-of-war-annotated-
edition-david-m-glantz-2399796

The Future Of Ukraine The Economist

https://ebookbell.com/product/the-future-of-ukraine-the-
economist-47998338

Foreign Fighters In Ukraine The Brownred Cocktail Kacper Rkawek

https://ebookbell.com/product/foreign-fighters-in-ukraine-the-
brownred-cocktail-kacper-rkawek-48710266

Religion And Politics In Ukraine The Orthodox And Greek Catholic

Churches As Elements Of Ukraines Political System Michal Wawrzonek

https://ebookbell.com/product/religion-and-politics-in-ukraine-the-
orthodox-and-greek-catholic-churches-as-elements-of-ukraines-
political-system-michal-wawrzonek-50849826

Grain Subsidies In Ukraine The Role Of Wto Law And The Euukraine
Association Agreement 1st Edition Kataryna Zelenska

https://ebookbell.com/product/grain-subsidies-in-ukraine-the-role-of-
wto-law-and-the-euukraine-association-agreement-1st-edition-kataryna-
zelenska-51627550
 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
 THE PENITENTIARY
"As long as a nation harbors a body of men authorized to inflict
punishment, as long as there are prisons in which such a body
can carry out these punishments, that nation cannot call itself
civilized."
Message written on his prison wall,
by Francisco Ferrer.

It was a clear December morning when, from the little boat which
carried me across the river, I spied the outline of the penitentiary
squatting on the lower end of Blackwell's Island. It was my first view
of it and the impression made on my mind was so ominous and
sinister that my heart almost sank within me as I entered the fateful
gates.
"Hey, there! Where do you t'ink you are? Take dem gloves off!"
shouted a tough, strong voice as I stood waiting in front of the office
window, recounting my pedigree and giving up my private
belongings for safe keeping. In the old prison, I found six new
prisoners waiting in line.
Our hair was clipped by a convict barber, and we were ordered to
divest ourselves of our civilian clothes and take a shower bath. While
we were trying to dry ourselves with two small hand towels, prison
underwear and striped suits were thrown at our feet.
The trousers were decidedly too long, the coat, and the rag—
unjustly named a vest—both too short; a cap which came down to
my eyebrows made up this uniform of degradation and infamy.
Harlequin's costume never looked more ridiculous than our own,
which was mended, patched and repatched from long use by
generations of long-suffering convicts.
The prison authorities, I suppose, are to be commended for their
thrift; but I cannot help feeling that by putting on those frayed and
wornout caricatures of uniforms we are endangering our health.
In the photographer's house behind the shower baths we are
"mugged"; our Bertillon measurements are taken, even to "beauty
spots" and pimples, by a red-haired, freckled-faced young man. A
sign twelve inches long, black, with white numerals, is hung round
my neck over a black cotton coat, and I am told to look pleasant
until the camera has focussed my profile and full face.
Sitting on benches, waiting for their turn, are a dozen prisoners.
They are all old, white-haired, naked and shivering; old offenders,
recidivists, tramps, bums, drunken louts; lean, pale, bruised, with
anemic, unhealthy skins, red noses, fishy eyes, bloated faces, large
hands, knotty, ungainly feet, purple with the cold.
A very old man attracts my attention by his immobility, his general
paleness, and his extraordinary gauntness, which shows the perfect
outline of his muscles, and reminds me of the statue representing
San Bartolommeo in the cathedral of Milan, holding his whole skin
over his arm like a bath robe.
Squint-eyed and almost blind, this old man, of more than the
allotted span of seventy years, seems unable to recollect his name,
occupation or social status.
"A bum, I guess," remarks the keeper.
It appears that he is deaf, and his neighbour nudges him with an
elbow and shouts in his ear:
"Say yes!"
"Yes, sir!" hastily answers the old man.
These derelicts of society are going to the workhouse on Monday.
Later we are ordered to clean and wash the small glass panes in the
windows of the main prison. Trusties in smart, new, striped clothes,
with creased pants and caps, rushed by eyeing us with curiosity.
"Whatcheh in fer?" "What did the judge hand yeh?" are the leading
whispered queries.
A pungent, musty, sickening smell pervades the old prison, which is
barely lighted by a dismal and gray reflection filtering through the
small windows. An inscription on the wall shows the date of
construction to be 1864. The cell where Boss Tweed died is pointed
out to me.
Suddenly the electric lights are switched on and a bell starts ringing
in a loud, metallic, persistent note, not unlike the subway starting
bells. A heavy, automatic, dull noise in the distance announces the
approaching footsteps of the convicts returning from work. In
measured step, each gang followed by its keeper, more than a
thousand men march past the head keeper's desk.
All the varieties of ages, figures, physiognomies, expressions, are
illustrated to my astonished eyes. Young men with red cheeks and
simple faces; strong men with bullet heads, broad shouldered, surly
or impassive; fat men with wabbling bellies and cheerful faces; old
men bent and hoary with age; slow and listless young men with
effeminate gestures; a few cripples on sticks or crutches, and
wobbling along behind the lines, a paralytic led by a companion.
They all file by, stamping their feet in German military fashion.
At moments the order is given to slow up or stop, and the convicts
continue to move the legs in rhythmic step, their bodies almost
touching, and giving the appearance of an enormous centipede
dancing a gruesome, macabre saraband.
Finely shaped heads are rare; it looks as if an almighty sculptor had
left his handiwork unfinished, or purposely kept it in rude outline.
Foreheads are either too bulging or too retreating, eyes too sunken
or too protruding, noses too large or too small, mouths too sensual
or too cruel, chins too powerful or too weak.
Smiling or frowning, aggressive or indifferent, surly or pleasant, all
the different expressions and gestures are sketched out in violent
chiaroscuro, and compose a cartoon worthy of a Frans Hals or a
Michelangelo.
My eyes absorb the kaleidoscopic, ignoble, unbelievable pageant. As
an artist I am fascinated, hypnotized by this fantastic procession of
human zebras, slashed with broad stripes of gray and black, with the
four prison tiers as a background, and the dark blue uniforms and
gold buttons of the keepers adding a touch of color.
As a human being I am shocked and repelled by this grotesque,
degrading parade.
Is this really the Inferno or only the last Judgment, I ask myself?
"Get in line, you loafer!" shouts a red-faced keeper, shaking his stick
at me. Thus I am awakened from my dreams.

I
I am locked in the old prison for the night—my first night in the
penitentiary.
A bed made of an iron frame with coarse canvas stretched across it,
two cheap cotton blankets, a straw pillow, a large covered pail and a
drinking cup, complete the total of my furniture. It is the simple life
with a vengeance. The bed takes up the whole length of the cell;
there is no room for walking except sideways from the bucket to the
cell door. Sitting in a lateral position on the couch, with my back
touching the wall, I can place my legs on the opposite wall only in a
bended posture.
A tier man comes to the cell shouting "Water." While pouring it into
my cup from a large can I peer at his face through the bars. His pale
features, beaked nose, cruel mouth and yellow eyes make him seem
like some tropical carrion-eating bird. I am so fascinated by his
depraved and satanic look that I allow water from the cup to drop
onto the floor.
He utters curses, "not loud, but deep," and returns to mop the floor.
I try to interest myself in an old magazine, but my mind seems
unable to concentrate in a continued effort; I read, but my
imagination wanders away in an interminable circle without
beginning or end.
The cold is intense; the blankets, thin and gray, afford no protection.
My whole body is shivering and shaking uncontrollably as if in high
fever, my teeth rattle like castanets accompanying a Spanish
fandango. I light a cigar and watch the smoke curl slowly, lazily
across the cell until it appears like a veil between the ceiling and the
floor and finally settles over my couch like a pale, transparent
shroud.
Evidently there is no ventilation, but I continue to puff away, hoping
to fumigate and kill the fetid odor in the cell.
Everything is still except for the occasional moaning of a sick man.
Finally the electric light at the foot of the bed is extinguished, and I
am left in the dark.
I turn into bed with all my clothes, including cap and shoes, trusting
in this manner to warm myself and in the hope of forgetting my
troubles in blissful sleep.
But there seems to be no rest for me.
As soon as a little heat radiates from my body, scores of bedbugs are
attracted and start a vicious, incessant campaign. When I am
deceived into sleep by a lessening of their attacks, I am awakened
by the cold air under the canvas, which freezes my back and forces
me to shift my position.
Horrible nightmares shake me with a start as soon as I am lulled into
slumber. My throat is parched as if sand had been my last meal, and
I pick up the tin cup to get a drink; to my intense despair the rusty,
filthy cup has a leak, and all the water has trickled to the floor.
I dream that the cell, with its massive walls reeking with stench and
humidity, is growing smaller, closing upon me like an accordeon,
until the cell door is as small as a keyhole from which I get the last
gasp of air; then instead of air, an endless cool, refreshing flow of
water runs down my throat. But, unluckily, my intense thirst
awakens me and I start toward the cell door calling for water in a
faint, hoarse whisper.
A keeper silences me with a gruff, impatient voice: "Where in hell do
you think I can get it?"
And I can hear the water dripping lustily from a faucet into a full
barrel on the ground floor!
I try philosophically to force my thoughts into past and pleasant
memories, but the present distress is so tyrannical and overpowering
that all the physical, moral and intellectual suffering of the world
seems to be centered within the few square feet of this dungeon. My
via crucis has begun. I reflect with terror that my mind may not
withstand the strain of uninterrupted agony, and suicide appears as
an easy solution.
The absurdity of the impulse is evident, for my death in this filthy
cell, like a rat in a hole, would delight those responsible for my
presence here; and furthermore it would shock and sadden those
dearest to me.
What is all my fortitude and philosophy worth if it cannot steady and
concentrate my will at the most crucial, heart racking and desperate
moment of my life?
Why should my trained mind crumble like a match box and be
destroyed under physical torture, mental distress and moral
humiliation?
Is not suffering the greatest of all tests, necessary, purifying and
regenerating? Why not wait patiently and courageously for the day
of reckoning, worthy of the gods on Olympus?
I count my heart-beats to get an idea of the passing of time. The
minutes seem to have frozen on the fountain of time; they drip
laboriously as if each and every one of them represented eons of
memories and experiences; as if each was attempting to
demonstrate that in the accounting of eternity they were as
significant as centuries. In a supreme physical effort of my will I grip
the bars and grit my teeth to stop the impending and foolish
disintegration of my mind. The waves of despair, the racking pain,
the insane delirium are slowly beaten back into submission, like a
defeated army. The imagination is disciplined, the will has thrown
the switch and illuminated the real inward self, as I stand watching,
through the steel bars, the windows on the opposite wall. I feel
calm, serene and strong.
Of a sudden, as if to illustrate my state of mind, out of the gray, blue
mist, a large, luminous, rose disk slowly arises beyond the opening.
The sun, the glorious sun! Silently it looms up, magnificent through
the haze, like a mirage announcing the advent of better things and
more hopeful days.
The same sun I had seen arise in India, Egypt, Italy, Mexico, in
many frames of classical and tropical beauty; but never has it
seemed to me so divine, so perfect, so precious as on that awful
morning.

II
At 6 A. M. a quick, metallic carol announces a new day—and a
Sunday. With a clanking noise and in swift succession the cell doors
are unlocked and on every tier the whole line of convicts walks along
the galleries and down to the ground floor, to a long iron sink,
divided into small dirty tubs that are filled with murky water.
Our ablutions are performed in rapid military style; those not strong
or nimble enough to get near the crowded trough, before the
command, "Back out," is shouted, have to return to their cells half-
washed or dirty. Sometimes a laggard insists on finishing his
washing; and then an angry voice assails him rudely: "Come on, you
God damn bum, didn't yeh hear me? Back out!" And a guard "fans"
him over the back with a club, pushing and shoving him all the way
to the galleries, as a reminder to quicker obedience.
Back at the cells, every man stands at attention behind the door
with hands on the bars, waiting for the keeper to count the men
until he orders, "Close," and with a deafening noise every iron door
bangs in unison. Then after a short rest the bell rings for breakfast,
and we march into the mess hall.
What a depressing, fantastic assemblage there unfolded itself before
my eyes! Row after row of cropped gray heads, the black and gray
stripes, moving unceasingly in a rippling pattern, giving the
semblance of an enormous, ghostly, shivering tiger skin. The faint
light from the barred windows forces the tonality to a low pitch and
adds to the vagueness, uneasiness and consternation of my mind.
The benches and narrow tables seat fifteen to twenty in a row; and
the two mess halls over a thousand convicts.
Breakfast is served in dented low pans, filled with potato and corn
beef hash, alternating every other day with oatmeal and syrup. The
rusty tin cups are half filled with an unsweetened, brownish,
transparent concoction called coffee, which the convicts long ago
nicknamed "bootleg."
But the bread, made of wheat and cornmeal, is very good. The
raising of the hand is the signal for an additional slice of bread,
which is distributed by a convict, and when it reaches you it has
usually been handled by ten or fifteen different, not to say unclean,
hands.
The men eat voraciously and in great haste, coughing, chewing,
smacking their lips; grunting and snorting like pigs with their snouts
in the trough. My poor appetite is not improved by their
disconcerting exhibition, and my portion is quickly swallowed by my
neighbours.
On both sides of the hall we are watched by keepers standing
against the wall, or perched on high stools, swinging their sticks.
On my right there is a goodnatured-looking keeper with a bullet
head and sleepy eyes; on the other hand a small, wiry, thin-faced,
long-nosed, white-mustached keeper, with wicked eagle eyes, who
uses not only the foulest of language, but also his stick, on the
slightest provocation.
After the "feed" comes the bucket parade. Each man carries his own
bucket into the yard behind the prison building, facing the Brooklyn
side. The Queensboro bridge on the north, with two feet on the
island uniting Brooklyn and New York, appears gigantic on the
horizon.
The air is cold, crisp, exhilarating, after the oppressive night. The
whole prison is marching line after line to a well-shaped opening,
wherein the dirty water and excreta are dumped in succession by
the men, while an old convict belabors its interior with a long pole to
prevent the opening being clogged. The clear morning air cannot
blow away the overpowering stench of a thousand dirty buckets,
intensified by the acrid smell of chloride of lime which is thrown into
the hastily washed pails.

III
The resting day without reading or occupation or exercise of any sort
is agonizing; intolerable in the extreme.
From four o'clock on Saturday afternoon until Monday morning at
eight, except for the short freedom for meals, we are locked up in
our cells. There is no exercise, no work, for almost forty hours. Most
of the cases of insanity in prison are due to this enforced inaction,
and the accumulation of foul air in the cells. Even the keepers who
have to inspect the top tiers run swiftly along the galleries with their
noses closed tight.
Hoping to break up this dreadful monotony, I attend the Catholic
mass in the morning and the Protestant service in the afternoon.
The one delightful and exquisite balm to our jaded minds is the
music of the organs, which accompanies the singing of hymns by
convicts.
The chapel on the second floor is crowded with prisoners; and on
one side there are a few women, with large poke bonnets covering
their faces to prevent their flirting with the men.
A convict informs me that I would have been punished "against the
wall" if I had been caught going to the two services. At the slightest
infraction of the rules, I learn, the offender is dragged towards the
main prison and kept standing, facing the wall, sometimes all day
without food or water—and there is no way of finding out what and
how many rules there are.
On week days the warden stops to inquire and punishes according to
the state of his mind or his stomach, or perhaps the weather.
The dinner consists of a soup of beans, carrots, lentils or potatoes;
meat with vegetables, or cornbeef and cabbage; and "bootleg." For
supper there is unsweetened tea, bologna sausage or red gelatine
with bread.
The anticipation of another night like the last one fills my mind with
uneasiness and dread and fright. The memory of it is burned forever
into my consciousness. But fortunately it was not so full of terror. It
was bad; but no other night ever could be as horrible as the first
night I spent in that place.
 IV
In the morning we are ordered into the new section of the prison.
The old bums go to the workhouse, and we await our turn to be
placed in the shops, according to our sentences and our work or
profession. The distribution of labor among us is strange and
mysterious. A butcher, for instance, is sent to work in the stone
quarry, a smuggler into the kitchen gang, a lawyer in the "skin
gang," a "sissy" into the coal gang, a waiter into the garden; a
burglar is sent to make socks, and I am sent into the tailor shop.
In this simple distribution of labor we shall learn many things which
will be highly useful and remunerative when we go out into the
world again.
I am finally alone in my new cell, which is spacious, clean, airy. I can
walk seven or eight paces up and down, like an animal in a cage.
The steel beds are chained to the walls; instead of the filthy canvas,
a steel wire is stretched across the frame, but there is no mattress
or sheets as there were in the Tombs. There is also a covered bucket
in the lower corner, and a tin cup. The bars are strong, but
nevertheless plenty of air and light come in from the large windows
opposite our cells. Two small hand towels and a piece of scrubbing
soap are added to our simple belongings.
The number of my cell is 23, the last one in our row, and on the
second tier, which contains men who work in the tailor shop. The
shops stand together, in a separate building between the prison and
the river, on the Brooklyn side. The shops where they make brushes,
shoes, beds, and the tailor and repair shops, are under one roof, and
under the control of a contractor. In the shops all kinds of work are
performed: repairing, cutting and making clothes for outgoing
prisoners; there are machines turning out underwear and socks;
mattresses are made, stuffed and sewn up. At one end of the large
room a keeper sits on a platform, while another surveys it from the
other end.
Although the prisoners are forbidden to talk, nevertheless they
communicate as freely as if the rule did not exist. When I attempted
to ask my neighbour a question, he hushed me up with a hissing
noise—but he answered my question. His lips did not move, but I
could hear him talk in a faint murmur which would have been
inaudible ten paces away.
It is very hard at first to follow this new method of carrying on
conversation, as in everyday life one is used to watching a man's
eyes and lips while listening to his voice. But after a while the
hearing becomes used to it and is trained to listen and catch these
slightest sounds, which escape the untrained ear of the keeper.
The convicts never glance into the speaker's face or at his lips; they
look straight ahead and talk in the manner of ventriloquists, but
instead of using a loud and clear tone they whisper in a low murmur.
Men who have passed years in jail can always be recognized by their
monotonous, whispering manner and their almost expressionless
faces. This form of speech is necessary in order to avoid
punishment.
Under the pretext of helping me, a young convict comes over to my
side of the shop. He shows me the intricate workings of the machine
which turns out the uncut cloth for the prisoners. Later it is cut and
fashioned into prison underwear.
On top of the machine the spools feed the thread incessantly. Care
has to be taken not to use "sabotage" methods, as punishment is
meted out unmercifully by the contractor, who seems to have as
much power over us as the warden.
My other companion is a young Russian sailor, healthy looking, fair
and quite peaceful when let alone. He warns me that my anxious
instructor is a "stool pigeon," who proves his status by giving me
very detailed instructions as to how to manage to escape
successfully.
I ask why he has not put his own methods into practice; and he
gives as an excuse that he is going to be released in a few days.
Then he furnishes me with paper, pencil, and soap; and he even
offers to send out letters for me. When I answer that I have no
letters to write he recites an endless list of rules, and tells me how
to evade them, and how to keep the friendship of the keepers.
He reveals to my astonished ears the underground system of
communication with the outer world. With money and friends a
convict can get all the contraband he desires: dope, newspapers,
matches, letters—coming in and going out—whiskey, writing paper
and pens, stamps, delicacies, tobacco. My mentor has passed a year
in the penitentiary for the offense of "repeating," or of voting many
times on election day. The gang leader who paid him for his work is
looking out for him from his Brooklyn haunts.
Facing us there is a long table at which old convicts are sitting,
without making a pretence at working. As long as they keep quiet
nobody notices them. Some of them look over seventy years old;
sad-faced, pallid, curved, almost venerable in their old age. They are
mostly old sneak thieves and pickpockets, the wrecks and failures of
their profession. They sit like graven images, silently, patiently, hour
after hour, year in and year out, until some fine day one of them will
be found rigid in his cell, and then four striped convicts and a keeper
acting as a pallbearer will carry him away in a large black coffin to
the morgue.
To-day for the first time since my incarceration I beheld the
reflection of my face in a mirror. The sight was humiliating and
shocking in the extreme. My keen sense of caricature lowered my
well fed conceit half way down the ladder of vanity.
Then I consoled myself by thinking of all the good-looking,
impressive, well-groomed men friends, enemies and acquaintances
of mine; and I tried to imagine them with clipped hair, togged out in
ill-fitting, patched, striped garments and cap; collarless and tieless;
with a week's growth of beard on their cheeks—and the comparison
made me laugh and cheered me up considerably.
The Deputy Warden comes in on his daily visit. His approach has
been telegraphed in some mysterious manner and the whole shop
takes on a lively bustling appearance. Second in rank as an officer of
the penitentiary, the "Dep," a tall, good-looking man, strides into the
room like a Prussian officer. He is not disliked by the convicts, as he
seems just in his dealings with them.
Going back from work through the yards, a fat German convict who
had been working in the brush shops, broke away from the line and,
before he could be stopped, jumped into the river in an attempt to
drown himself. A few shots were fired. A negro and two white
convicts jumped in after him, and with the help of a keeper who
patrols the island in a row boat, they fished him out. They laid him
flat on the ground and worked to revive him.
His fat belly stuck out like a barrel, his face was livid, his lips purple.
Finally he opened his eyes, and sputtered and murmured: "Let me
die! Let me die!" "Shut up, you s——!" yelled an angry keeper, and
he was dragged feet first to the hospital.

V
My skin has been itching for two days, and I attribute it to the
coarse underwear and ill-fitting clothes. In my cell after the day's
work I make a careful inspection and am quite frightened to find my
whole body covered with red spots. Evidently I have caught some
skin disease from those tattered old rags which have been worn by
generations of unclean and diseased convicts. The thought of having
to pass a year in a prison hospital is anything but cheerful.
I turn my thoughts to other things by trying to read a novel from the
prison library. A slip had been left in the cell to be filled out with the
name of any book that I might desire to read. In my innocence I put
down "Shakespeare's plays or the Bible." A novel entitled "Truthful
Jane" was left in their stead.
But I cannot read. And so I start instead to inspect my surroundings.
The new cells compare very favorably with the cells of the old
prison, which are really holes in the wall and reeking with the
mysterious unwholesome smell of rat holes and graveyards.
At one end of the cell opposite the door are two small openings for
ventilation; one at the top on the right hand side and the other at
the bottom on the left. In trying to find out the depth and direction
of the holes I plunge my arm into the opening, and my hand feels a
square object. It is a small bible! I am delighted by the discovery. On
the fly leaf there is some handwriting in pencil in a careful,
intelligent hand: "To my successor: May this book while away your
long and weary hours and make you forget your troubles and
worries as it did to me. Don't forget to replace the book where you
found it when you leave."
A tier man comes to the cells with a light for those who care to
smoke. He is a pleasant-faced individual, quite polite and ready to
do any small services within his limited powers. I find out that he
has been condemned to a year for keeping back mail in the post
office. The tier man who had made such a disagreeable impression
on me that first night in the old prison, is a church thief.
My battered and rusty cup has been filled up with water. I am afraid
to drink from it, as it might have been used by some consumptive or
syphilitic convict. Necessity being a great inventor, I press some
paper to the rim of the cup to prevent my lips from touching it.
As I walk up and down the cell I am always unconsciously trying to
put my cold hands in my trousers pockets, only to discover over and
over again that there are no pockets there, only one on the inside of
the coat.
The clipping of my hair so close to the skin at the height of the cold
season has brought a cold in the head. I have no handkerchief, and
shall have to wait a whole month until they allow me to write to
have a few sent by mail.
These apparent trifles, and all the nagging, idiotic rules, invented by
senile commissions and wardens to torment the helpless captives of
society, are always magnified by men brooding in the solitude of
cells. But I have made up my mind not to permit anything to ruffle
my equanimity, so I pick up some letters from friends and read and
reread their cheering contents. If people who write to their
unfortunate friends in prison only guessed how they yearned to
receive those familiar scrawls, and how they are treasured and
memorized, they would write oftener.
A night keeper walks by like a shadow, flashing a bull's eye lamp into
the cells to catch us in any infringements of the rules.
There is only one rule tacked up on the walls, but the other 999 we
have to guess or learn from fellow convicts. The list of rules which
we have to find out at our own expense or from wiser convicts
would fill up a small volume.
As there are no written rules, and nobody informs us of all the
unwritten rules on our entrance here, as is done in Sing Sing, the
thought comes to my mind that this apparent forgetfulness is really
meant to give the warden and the keepers an unchallenged power
of persecution over suspected and unruly convicts.
Most of the punishments inflicted by the warden are for infractions
of rules which the newcomers are in entire ignorance of, and these
infractions occur no matter how obedient and willing the new arrivals
may be to keep within bounds of the prison laws. The foreigners,
Italians, Slavs and Teutons, all those who do not know English and
who cannot learn the rules from their fellow prisoners, are the
greatest sufferers from this carelessness, whether it is intentional or
otherwise.

VI
After breakfast I was watching from my cell some sparrows that had
nested inside the prison walls, high up on top of the large windows
facing the tiers. I dropped some bread crumbs on the floor of the
gallery, and some on my cell floor, to induce the little birds to come
in.
At first they were afraid to trust themselves inside the bars of my
cell; but they kept fluttering about nervously outside, keeping up an
incessant twitter and chatter that sounded quite musical to my ears.
Finally they grew bolder, and recklessly they flew into my cell, first
peeping at me, with bended heads as if they would ask: "Are we
really safe here from capture or treachery of any kind?" And hastily
picking up the crumbs, they flew out to inform their companions of
the god-send of fat bread crumbs in a large, barred room, instead of
the poor hunting in the prison courtyard.
Then they came back fearlessly, and thanked me with quick little
nods of their pretty heads, and sidelong trusting looks from their
black beads of eyes; with low, graceful courtesies and a cheerful
piping song.
And then one morning a keeper who had been attracted by the
noise, shooed the birds away and swore in a gruff voice, warning me
that it was against the rules to throw crumbs on the floor, as well as
to keep bread in my pockets or in my cell.

Once a week the prisoners are privileged to wait in line to see the
warden, to protest against any injustice, to recount a grievance, or
to ask a favor.
Like a dozen or more I stood waiting for the quick-lunch justice of
the Czar of the penitentiary. After a while he appeared, accompanied
by a tall young secretary who jotted down our names and the details
of the business on hand. Walking slowly, with bent shoulders, hands
behind his back, the warden seemed to be about seventy-five years
old. His face was furrowed with irregular, meaningless wrinkles, and
he had small shifty eyes, with white hair and a white beard. He had
a habit of staring at the convict who was speaking to him, and
suddenly bending one ear toward the speaker as if he were partially
deaf.
The warden's answers came quickly, in the jerky, high pitched voice
of the Sistine Chapel cantors, and often breaking under the strain of
anger. A convict suffering from locomotor ataxia, leaning on a
walking stick, hanging on to a companion, begged for permission to
get a pair of crutches ... his mother would get them for him.
"What for?" queried the warden, innocently.
"Because I can't walk with this stick," answered the convict.
"Then why don't you get a cab!" said the warden. And he snickered
and then coarsely guffawed.
Again he furiously upbraided another petitioner.
"Where do you think you are? At the Waldorf-Astoria? Next thing
they'll be asking me to get them flowers, candy and theatre tickets. I
am here to see that you are punished. See?"
After having thus vented his spleen he uttered some alleged
witticism at the expense of the helpless convict, and showed a great
appreciation of his own humor, uncovering a row of yellow, brown,
half-decayed teeth in a sneering grin most unpleasant to behold.
My turn came, and I asked for an extra blanket, as the cold was
intense and the metal springs of the bed offered no protection
against it. This it seemed was also against the rules. When I
suggested that as he was the warden he could make and unmake
the rules, he did not answer, but asked irrelevantly how I liked his
hotel?
I answered that it was preferable to the castle of San Juan de Ulloa
in Vera Cruz.
He looked puzzled, then he smiled as if he saw the point.
"We'll take care of you," he repeated twice, waving a thin, wrinkled,
old hand.

VII
At lunch time the sick convicts ask their keepers for permission to
see the doctor. They are kept waiting in line near the head keeper's
desk. The head keeper is a person of great power in the prison, only
third in importance of rank, but as he comes in daily contact with the
convicts, his good or ill will is felt more keenly than the warden's.
The discipline of the prison, the distribution of the mails, of the
clothes, underwear, shoes, all the details of management, are carried
on through him.
As we were waiting for the doctor, the head keeper came along to
look us over. He had a big brown face, and a large mustache
covered his mouth; two piercing gray eyes gave the impression of an
unlimited reserve of pent-up bile, anger and contempt, which at
times flowed in a torrent of choice and rare blasphemies.
"Damn you, wop! I'll cure you! You s——!" he shouted, and with
both hands he clutched the neck of an Italian, and shook him as
savagely as a terrier shakes a rat. His face red and with sickness in
his eyes, the unfortunate man tried to explain that he had a sore
throat and a fever; but without success. He only aroused another fit
of anger.
"You're a faker, that's what you are! You're all fakers, every one of
you!" he yelled at us, and finished up by spitting on the floor. The
next moment he punished a convict for doing the selfsame thing.
A young doctor hardly out of his teens entered the old prison,
escorted by a convict carrying a tray filled with medicine bottles.
Sick prisoners are cured in the simple, old-fashioned way of having
mixtures administered to them, the medicine bottles being labeled
according to the contents, and the most prevalent ailments, which
do not require the remanding of the sick man to the hospital. Cough
mixture seemed to be quite popular, fever mixture less so, then
followed constipation and diarrhœa mixture, toothache mixture,
court-plaster, some pills, and various ingredients for venereal
diseases, some cotton gauze, and the indispensable large bottles
containing salts and codliver oil.
The visit did not take long. Those who had come twice on the line
without having been found sick were punished "against the wall."
After a short inspection the doctor ordered me to the hospital,
without allaying my fears by any diagnosis or declaration of a
disease, but cautioned me to take a hot bath every day, and to rub
the skin with sulphur ointment.
 THE HOSPITAL
The hospital is situated on top of the chapel, over the main entrance
and hall of the prison.
Two spacious rooms are dedicated to that purpose. The smaller one
with a bathroom faces the Brooklyn side and overlooks the mess
hall, the keepers' dining room and kitchen, and is usually kept apart
for the consumptives. The larger room, also with a bathroom,
contains a dozen beds, a closet for underwear and clothes, another
for the crockery, two tables, two medicine closets, chairs, and some
small tables for patients near each bed.
Six windows face towards East 55th Street on the Manhattan side.
Two higher windows look over the roof of the prison, across the
Queensboro bridge. The hardwood flooring, the small hospital cots,
with mattresses, white pillows and spreads, all spotlessly clean,
made the place look quite cheerful and sunny. Every opening was
heavily barred. A spacious, clean and airy prison, but still a prison,
with a tantalizing outlook towards New York, which seemed so near
that one could discern people on the other side of the river.

I
There are five sick men, plus three consumptives, in the two rooms;
and our large room looks deserted.
The patients wear a cheap, white shirt, instead of the striped one,
and slippers instead of shoes.
A bald-headed man with small, kindly gray eyes and a close-cropped
mustache, keeps perfect discipline without raising his voice, using
profane language, or bullying the patients. In character, breeding,
morals, education, he is superior to the warden and to most of the
keepers. His name is Charles Noonan.
Between the hours of eight o'clock in the morning and four in the
afternoon a uniformed hospital orderly attends to the distribution of
medicine, takes temperatures, and reports to the doctor. At night
another orderly takes his place.
The cleanliness of the two hospitals, the distribution of bedding,
laundry and food, is in the hands of a convict, usually a patient; all
the unpleasant tasks and irksome duties which the orderly is too
proud or too lazy to perform the trusty is obliged to do.
Servant and boss, scullion and diplomat, doctor's help and sick man,
waiter and majordomo, the convict orderly is the last buffer in the
line of authority, the expiatory goat of the penitentiary hospital, a
suffering soul in a modern purgatory.
When a criticism drops from the lips of the supreme Prison
Commissioner, the Warden passes it along to the "Dep," who calls
down the hospital keeper, who in his turn upbraids the orderly, who
in the end roasts the trusty.
The present trusty is an old man suffering from an eczema on his fat
legs. Tall, bloated, gray, pale, he is despised by the convicts for his
avariciousness, his gluttony, his arrogant attitude. They suspect him
of being a stool pigeon, and they revenge themselves by making his
life miserable through a series of cruel persecutions.
Another trusty who sleeps in a cell downstairs, and eats in the
keeper's kitchen, is a famous pickpocket.
Like all or nearly all the old timers, Ed, as he is called, never gossips
about his private affairs; he may joke and talk about other prisoners,
but never does he say a word about his life outside. He is an old
offender, but obedient, useful and energetic; and he is always
welcomed back as a trusty or a tier man.
Once inadvertently I asked him: "What do you do outside for a
living, Ed?" His laconic answer was, "Oh, everybody!"
But one evening several weeks later, when we had become quite
chummy, at the psychological moment when even the most silent
and sullen crooks will sometimes confess and bare their hearts, he
unfolded his life, his methods, his cynicism and his mental make-up.
It was an amazing story, interspersed with slang, picturesque
phrases, and a callous, sordid philosophy. Later, the testimony of
other thieves proved that his story was true.
As he told his story, it seems that clever thieves organize themselves
into trusts, or what they call "mobs," frequent the same "joints" and
"hang-outs," and work in co-operation with detectives. When a fair, a
holiday, or any extraordinary event is announced in any part of the
state—or anywhere in the world, for that matter—they are "tipped
off," or told about it by the "bulls."
Then when the event "comes off," and a great crowd is gathered, a
whole gang of pickpockets, two or three score of them, arrive on the
spot.
To save time one after another is sent to the fair authorities to
inform them of the presence of pickpockets, and an official jumps on
a platform or soap box, and shouts a warning to the crowd against
thieves; and while this is going on the keen-eyed "dips" watch the
astonished and frightened people place their hands on the pocket or
the region which contains their valuables. With this knowledge they
can work without blundering, and in teams of three or four, by
rubbing or jostling against their victims, they soon relieve them of
their money or jewelry.
Watches are seldom stolen, as they are too easy of identification.
Often a prominent "sucker" discovers his loss before he leaves the
fair, and starts kicking up a row. At once a detective offers to find
and return the stolen goods for a reward.
Then, after it is over, the result of the day's work is divided between
the "bulls" and the "dips."
Ed became a pickpocket right after he left school. From the reform
school to the house of refuge, from the house of refuge to the state
reformatory, from the reformatory to the penitentiary, he has
climbed all the rungs of the ladder of crime.
He soon discovered that "lonesome," single-handed thieves were
crushed in the struggle, so he joined the Benevolent Association for
Mutual Protection of "dips" and "guns," paid his dues, and then
when he was caught, he got off with a light sentence. His return to
prison was part of the game; he came back philosophically, as a
travelling salesman returns to his favorite hostelry, as an intermittent
but familiar visitor, recognized by the keepers and convicts, and
knowing all the ropes along the prison line of least resistance.
Ed barely looks his age, although his face bears the stamp of his
dissipated life and the mannerisms peculiar to his breed. He is a
perfect fruit of the criminal system. Sodden with all the sexual
perversities acquired in prison, he has finally caught the white
plague, is afflicted with several venereal diseases, and has become
an inveterate dope fiend. Although keen of intelligence, he seems to
be without moral prop or ideal of any kind; coldly and cynically he
surveys society as his natural prey, his rightful enemy, and an object
of his revenge.
Morally, intellectually and physically as crooked and shifty as a
mountain trail, he seems utterly beyond redemption, human or
divine.

II
The view from the hospital window shows the bridge on the right; in
front, the row of cheap tenement houses and streets abutting on the
river front from the forties to the sixties; and on the left, looming out
of the city-scape, appears the Metropolitan tower. Behind the
innumerable painted signs on the river front, the Cathedral on Fifth
Avenue, the Plaza Hotel and the St. Regis can be seen distinctly; the
Times Building is also vaguely outlined. In the daytime the sight is
commonplace; but after the sun, like an enormous ball of fire, has
dipped behind the city line back of the streets in the fifties, the
scene becomes inspiring to a painter.
The shadows, full of greens and purples, cover as with a charitable
veil all the ugly details of the river front; the skyline becomes darker,
as if cut out with monster scissors; the sky appears more
resplendent and luminous with gorgeous tints, until the fiery blaze
slowly dies out, and bluish tints, gray and purple predominate; and
then the city lights, those on the bridge and in the Metropolitan
tower, shimmer like innumerable stars.
Sometimes with a clear sky, sometimes in fog, in a snow storm, in
rain or in clear moonlight, every night for ten months I have
watched an ever recurring picturesque metamorphosis.
Through the north window I have watched the dawn come up
behind the Queensboro bridge, and seen the sun appear like an
enormous Japanese lantern of pure vermilion—a sight to gladden
the heart of a Claude Monet.
Boats pass constantly by, day and night; they are the one great
source of amusement of the patients. The little, swift-sailing tug-
boats announce their passage by angry and piercing whistles; the
graceful yachts of the multi-millionaires sound melodious notes; the
large excursion boats announce themselves by their stronger and
more ringing whistlings; the largest ones, on their way to Portland,
are heard in the distance grunting like sonorous leviathans.
But the most amusing of all is the tiny boat that plies between the
dock of the penitentiary and the foot of 54th Street. The distance is
about two or three minutes, but this diminutive craft goes two or
three blocks up the river and comes back down the same number of
blocks, to show that if it tried it really could navigate on the high
seas.
Should any vessel larger than this microcosm be seen from a
distance trying to pass our little boat, it would start a series of angry,
piercing toots, repeated in quick succession. We used to wonder and
laugh—oh, we laugh, even in prison; how else could we live?—at the
impertinence of this minnow of the river of New York, until we
discovered that after a large boat like the Yale passed by, the waves
left in its wake almost upset the little craft, and it took all the efforts
of the brave pilot to bring it tossing like a champagne cork on top of
the waves, back safe to the dock.
In summer time the excursion boats, returning home with crowded
decks, with all the lights lit, and the band playing and the
passengers singing, "The Island of Blackwell," make us home-sick
and pensive with longing for life and the world we are shut away
from.

III
The trusty in charge of the hospital is getting nervous as the day of
his release approaches. A week before the release, no matter how
disciplined and peaceful the prisoner may have been, he starts
getting cranky and impertinent to the keepers. He acts like a man
under great stress, and when he is disturbed he turns savagely
round like an angry dog.
The old trusty acted like a drunkard, talking and laughing
incessantly, and we thought it was for joy at the thought of his near
release. But the real reason was soon discovered. The old thief, Fritz,
had been operated on, and when the night orderly was ordered by
the doctor to change the sick man's bandages every fifteen minutes,
he bribed the old trusty with a long drink of whiskey to do the work
for him.
The spectacle of the official orderly trying to do his duty was
intensely amusing. In all the years of his work he had slept and
snored peacefully and undisturbed. When the time came to change
the bandages, he uncovered the patient and began gingerly
removing the soaked bandages, holding them with two fingers, at a
safe distance, and walking on tiptoe, as if expecting the whole thing
to explode. When he saw the terrible, gaping wound he dropped
everything back, saying: "I can't do it, it makes me sick!" and woke
up the trusty to do the work for him. The next day he reported sick,
and he never showed up again until he heard that the patient was
dead.
In the meanwhile the old trusty left and I had to attend to the sick
man. Every fifteen minutes of twenty interminable days and nights I
had to watch, and nurse, and answer the calls of that cranky old
man. The wound was ghastly. The surgeons had made an incision
twelve inches long right down into the bladder, wherein they had
stuck a thick rubber tube.
The sight was sickening, the work exhausting and thankless, and if I
had not known that the patient had only a few days to live, I think I
would have applied for a job in the coal gang.
On the twentieth night, at about twelve o'clock, I was awakened by
the moans of the dying man, who was calling in a faint voice. His
face was flushed and it seemed as if all the blood had gone to his
head; but he seemed suddenly to turn deadly white, and he lay back
still.
A young boy sleeping next to him hid his head under the bed clothes
in fright. I was sent to notify the doctor upstairs.
The young doctor declared him dead, and turning to me ordered me
to dress him.
I looked at him puzzled and asked: "Dress him up in his striped
suit?"
"No," answered the doctor, smiling, "put the shroud on and make
him ready for the morgue."
"But I have never dressed a corpse in my life and would not know
how to go about it," I protested. So the doctor kindly volunteered to
teach me.
First he closed the dead man's eyes; then we put on the shroud,
which looked like a night-shirt with frills at the sleeves, and attached
to it a conical fool's cap to cover his head; then his hands and feet
were tied separately.
When we had done, we laid the body on an empty bed in the
smaller hospital, very much to the dismay and terror of the three
consumptives who slept there. But they kicked up such a row that
they were allowed to sleep in our section.
The next morning when I went on an errand into the next room I
stopped to gaze on the body of Fritz. The change that had taken
place was startling. During the few months that Fritz had passed in
the hospital, although disciplined and silent like most old convicts, he
always wore a peculiarly shifty, sneering expression on his reddish
face. Now it was wax white, the eyelids had opened, and the pale
blue eyes were staring at me with a peaceful, angelic expression. For
an instant I gasped at the thought that he might have come back to
life, and I called out: "Fritz! Fritz!" but no answer came, and only the
gentle, inscrutable smile persisted. I touched his cheek. It was cold
and hard. But I could not explain the almost miraculous change in
the expression of the face. Suddenly it dawned upon me that death
had released the unclean spirit, and left the body to go back to
mother earth as clean as it had been conceived.
Soon four convicts came into the room; one, a gangster, with a
broken nose, and beady, black eyes, asked me: "Where is the stiff?"
As in prison language "stiff" is also the name used for newspapers, I
looked at him foolishly and answered that I had none. He added in
explanation: "I mean the guy that croaked last night."
Neither the keeper nor the convicts relished the post-prandial
funeral.... Death had come so suddenly and informally, and had left
his victim in the enemy's camp, to be carried to the morgue, and
later to be buried on a convict's island without benefit of clergy.

IV
Before the old thief died the old trusty had gone, and I had to take
his place. I did so only with great reluctance, and with many
misgivings as to my peace of mind and body.
I had noticed how the convicts nagged and harassed the old trusty
with insults and petty, malicious persecutions to revenge themselves
for his greed and his authoritative, arrogant manner towards them.
I realized that life might be made unbearable for me, and that I
might be forced to go downstairs to the cells before I had completed
my cure.
When the old trusty received fruit he had sold it promptly to the
convicts for money. He asked five cents for an apple, ten cents for
an orange, so much for tobacco or for a pipe, another price for
suspenders, handkerchiefs, or whatever he might have to sell or
barter.
After his release the Italian consumptive said that he had got only
half portions of his special food that had been sent in for him, as the
trusty cut the portions in half in order to sell the remainder to
others.
I unconsciously sensed that the only successful method of taming
the ferocious, revengeful natures of the convicts was by kindness
and patience; by treating them as friends in misfortune, and not as
enemies or inferiors.
When I received tobacco or fruit I divided it among the men who
seldom if ever had any visits or mail; the magazines were distributed
among them and later were carried downstairs from cell to cell, until
the whole prison had read them. To my intense surprise, English,
German, Italian—even "high brow" magazines like the Mercure de
France and La Revue were eagerly demanded and read by some of
these strangely intellectual convicts.
The men who had considered me an aristocrat, and nicknamed me
"The Count," soon began to discover that my sympathy was for their
troubles, their unhappiness, their helplessness, and not for the
warden and the keepers.
I was fully repaid for my attitude. I was made their confidant, their
confessor, the judge of their squabbles, a peacemaker and a go-
between; when trouble and punishment were in sight, when some
particularly unclean and revolting duty was to be performed, the
convicts always asked to relieve me of it; and it came to pass that
after a while I could devote most of my time to reading, and only
attended to the less manual work, such as acting as assistant to the
doctor.
Among the patients there was a one-legged negro who was suffering
from a painful and unmentionable disease. His big lips, square jaw
and scowling countenance made him resemble a big, black bull-dog.
Even the keepers were in awe of him. In a fit of danger one day
before the old trusty left he very nearly smashed the old man's skull
with his crutch.
The first morning that I was left in charge of the hospital I felt some
trepidation as to the outcome of my policy of kindness.
The test came quickly. During lunch the negro ordered me, in a loud,
angry voice, to bring him something. I went over to his bed and told
him gently I was surprised that he had forgotten his good manners;
that he had evidently made a mistake in thinking that I was either
his keeper or his valet; that we were both convicts, both in trouble,
and should treat each other like self-respecting men, helpfully and
considerately.
He looked at me with a frown on his face, as he was not quite
certain whether I was deriding him; but soon the frown disappeared,
and then I said to him: "Now, Davis, what can I do for you?" He
answered in a gentle and friendly voice: "Excuse me, mister. I
always been treated like a dog. Will you please bring me a spoon?"
From that day on he was tamed; he became more talkative, and
even polite. During the long winter evenings he broke the morose
silences to tell us of his adventures, and to relate the story of his
tragic and terrible life.
He had lost his leg in a railroad accident; and then he had spent
several years in hospitals and more years in legal fights to try to
collect a few hundred dollars which were never paid. Then, jobless,
hungry, destitute, desperate, he had begun to steal. Always unlucky
and awkward, he was invariably caught, arrested, and sentenced to
jail. Twenty years of his life he had spent in jails and prisons all over
the country, and he had even had a taste of the horrible chain gangs
of Georgia. He described the punishments he had to undergo
because of his inability to work in prison shops; the weeks passed in
the "coolers"; the beatings, the tortures he had undergone at the
hands of savage, ruthless wardens.
It was an awful, an almost incredible story! It seemed somehow
impossible that a human being could go through such an ordeal,
such harrowing brutalities, and come out alive and tell the story.
One day he said, "I ain't no good since my accident. Never had a
chance to learn a trade or be honest. If I don't come across to the
'bulls' they send me back to the 'pen' for a year. I'm sick of this life.
Next time I'll do something that'll send me to Sing Sing for life. This
dump is rotten. I'd rather go up the river for two years than stay in
here for six months."

V
The orderly asks me to attend to the consumptive, as he hates to do
it himself. I have to bring him his food, I have to clean the cup which
he uses as a cuspidor, and be careful to wash it in a solution of
carbolic acid, and wash my hands each time afterwards.
The poor boy flies into uncontrollable fits of anger over trifles; then
his face becomes almost a livid green, and he seems to be foaming
at the mouth—little flecks of foam and saliva—like a vicious horned
toad. When in that state I usually speak to him in a low,
monotonous voice, hoping to quiet him; and after a while he
becomes calmer, his features relax, his body slowly unbends, and he
finally slips under the bed sheets, going to sleep as if the effort had
completely exhausted him.
It used to remind me of the snake charmers in India, taming angry
and hissing cobras by the monotonous sound of a flute. Suddenly
the hoods would fold, the terrible fanged mouths close, and the
snakes would wag their heads slowly to and fro, with little red
tongues playfully wiggling in sign of delight until placed, harmless
and hypnotized, in a capacious basket.
I do not know if it was my arguments or my voice that attained the
object with my consumptive patient, but the result was evident after
I had talked to the poor boy for a few minutes.
In great excitement he confessed to me one morning that he had
made up his mind to commit suicide if his fine was not remitted, and
he was not released after his one year term. I told the Sister of
Mercy of his threat and she promised to see to it that the judge
would remit the fine. When the day of his release came, much to my
relief, he was freed.

I have reached some interesting conclusions as a result of my

observations of the ways of the convicts and their attitudes towards
one another.
Life in a prison, under ignorant and often vicious wardens and
keepers, although seemingly leveling the men's standard to the most
degrading and contemptible measure allowed by law, does not
eradicate the convict's idea of class. A class, or perhaps it would be
better to say a caste system, exists here, as in all the jails all over
the world, as well and as subtly graded as social life in Manhattan,
London, or Benares.
The Camorra, of Naples, originated in the jails of the old kingdom of
Naples during the rule of the Spaniards and Bourbons, being
invented by the convicts to protect themselves against the greed of
the prison authorities. Later it branched out and was organized
outside. The same holds true in America, in the sense that convicts
in prison plot and plan crimes before their release, and agree to
continue their acquaintance and work on the outside. Boys and
young men serving their first term are easy prey for older and wiser
criminals.
Although the ideas of caste in prison are not the same, and are not
formulated according to religious, financial, intellectual or aristocratic
standards, nevertheless the principle is the same. In most societies
the leaders are people with "blood," money, or privileges of some
sort. In India the high caste Brahmin is born to his station, and no
amount of money or intellectual attainment can make one if he is
not born to it.
In prison the ethical standard is as simple as the cave dweller's, or
as that of savage tribes. Caste among convicts is a sop to their
vanity, to their outraged and primitive sense of justice; society made
them outcasts, and they retaliate by creating a society of outcasts
wherein they strive to become the leaders, the greatest, the bravest,
the cleverest among the Pariahs; and like the Pariahs they consider
other castes outside as lower than their own.
Convicts admire physical prowess and brute strength, fearlessness,
"nerve"; they look up to those who commit deeds of violence, such
Welcome to our website – the perfect destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. We believe that every book holds a new world,
offering opportunities for learning, discovery, and personal growth.
That’s why we are dedicated to bringing you a diverse collection of
books, ranging from classic literature and specialized publications to
self-development guides and children's books.

More than just a book-buying platform, we strive to be a bridge

connecting you with timeless cultural and intellectual values. With an
elegant, user-friendly interface and a smart search system, you can
quickly find the books that best suit your interests. Additionally,
our special promotions and home delivery services help you save time
and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Join us on a journey of knowledge exploration, passion nurturing, and

personal growth every day!

ebookbell.com