Towards democracy

470 Towards Democracy

To hear no news from the outer world, save at unimagin- able intervals a letter ;

To read no book—save some goody-goody inhuman . rubbish recommended by the Chaplain ;

To nauseate, and yet to hunger ravenously for the same scant ever-same food ;

To sicken at and hate the same insults and loud impera-_ tives of the jailer, unendingly continued, unendingly bornethe same idiotic vacancy of the cell—

The three-legged stool, the can, the barred little window ; |

The same long hours of the night with pain at the heart, the sound of silly fingers every hour at the slide of the spyhole, and the flashing of the night-officer’s lantern in one’s face ;;

* The recurring effort of the irritated mind and starved | body to compose themselves to sleep; .

In vain: the same same thoughts thought over and over ° and over and over again;

The same little stock of memories and fancies brought with one into this whited sepulchre—getting smaller and slighter daily—now like a wheel with ever rapider motion *

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going round and round, Till the brain itself is reeling. :

[And now a Fear, perhaps for the safety of some loved | one outside, leaps into the grinning circle and courses with it ; ; and now another, perhaps for one’s own fate in the years still in front; and now—worst of all phantoms—the Dread that 3 one’s mind is giving way: till, in fact, out of momentary sleep ¢ awaking to the same awful nightmare, a chill runs down the =