It is an established fact, that a few months'
confinement within four walls, without stint of food or aggravation of
punishment, will bring an athletic Red Indian to the extreme of bodily
prostration, if not to mortal sickness.
It is humiliating to confess, but I fear unhappily true, that in despite
of all advantages of a civilized education, some of us, under like
circumstances, will go down as helplessly as the noble savage.
Would you like to hear of the process? It is not pleasant to look upon,
or to tell.
The first few days are spent in an uneasy, irritable expectation that
every hour will bring some news--good or bad--from the world without,
bearing on your own especial case; then comes the frame of mind wherein
you allow that there must be certain official delays, and begin to
calculate, wearily, how far the wire-drawn formalities will be
protracted, making a liberal margin for unexpected contingencies: this
phase soon passes away: then comes the bitter, up-hill fight of hoping
against hope; how long this may endure depends much on temperament--more
on bodily health; but in most cases it is soon over, and is succeeded by
the last state, ten thousand times worse than the first: slowly, but
very surely, the dense black cloud of utter listlessness settles down,
never broken thereafter save by brief flashes of a futile, irrational
ferocity.
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