After the prison doors
were opened, I lingered for ten minutes within them, to exchange a
farewell hand-grip with that quaint, kind old man. There was a stringent
curfew-order, enjoining the extinguishment of all lights at nine, P. M.;
but on condition of vailing my window with a horse-rug, so as not to
establish a bad precedent, I was allowed to keep mine burning at
discretion. Now some readers of these pages may think that a
confinement, such as I have described, wherein, there was to be obtained
a sufficiency of meat, drink, tobacco, and light literature, is not,
after all, a _peine forte et dure_; and that it is both weak and
unreasonable thereanent to make one's moan. So, in bygone days, when a
lazy fit was strong upon me, have I thought myself. I am not malicious
enough to wish that the most contemptuously skeptical of such critics
may be undeceived, at the price which I paid for the learning. It is
possible that a person of settled sedentary habits, endowed not only
with powerful resources within himself, but also with the ornament of a
meek and quiet spirit, might hold out well enough for awhile, more
especially if supported by the reflection that he was suffering for his
country's good or for his own private advantage. But take the converse
example of a man unsupported by any consolations of patriotism or
peculation, of a temperament somewhat impatient, and prone to anger,
accustomed, too, from youth upwards, to constant habits of strong
out-door exercise, with such an one I fancy it will fare--very much as
it fared with me.
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