f, appealingly, in a candid way, "what kind of name
was that for a prison paper? _Nestor!_ 'Who was Nestor?' says the man
that's been held up in the midst of his wine-swilling and money-getting.
Wise old man, he remembers. First-class preacher. Turn on the tap and
he'll give you a maxim. 'Gee!' says he, 'I don't want advice. I know
how I got here, and if I ever get out, I'll see to it I don't get in
again.'"

Lydia found this talk exceedingly diverting. She disapproved of it. She
had wanted Jeff to appear a dashing, large-eyed, entirely innocent young
man, his mouth, full of axioms, prepared to be the stay of Farvie's
gentle years. But this rude torrent of perverse philosophy bore her
along and she liked it, particularly because she felt she should
presently contradict and show how much better she knew herself. Anne,
too, evidently had an unlawful interest in it, and wanted him to keep on
talking. She took that transparent way of furthering the flow by asking
a question she could answer herself.

"You called it _Prison Talk_, didn't you?"

"Yes," said Jeff. "They called it _Prison Talk."_

"And all our newspapers copied your articles," said Anne, artfully
guiding him forward, "the ones you called 'The New Republic.'"

"What d'they want to copy them for?" asked Jeff. "It was a fool thing to
do. I'd simply written the letters to the men, to ask 'em if they didn't
think the very devil of prison life was that we were outside. Not
because we were inside, shut up in a jug. You could bear to be in a jug,
if that was all. But you've got to have ties. You've got to have laws
and the whole framework that's been built up from the cave man. Or
you're desperate, don't you see? You're all alone. And a man will do a
great deal not to be alone. If there's nothing for you to do but learn a
trade, and be preached at by _Nestor_, and say to yourself, 'I'm
outside'--why there's the devil in it."

He was trying to convince them as he had previously convinced others,
those others who had lived with him under the penal law. He looked at
Anne much as if she were a State or Federal Board and incidentally at
Lydia, as if he would say:

"Here's a very young and insignificant criminal. We'll return to her
presently. But she, too, is going to be convinced."

"And I don't say a man hasn't got to be infernally miserable when he's
working out his sentence. He has. I don't want you to let up on him.
Only I don't want him to get punky, so he is