or the _morale_. Does the _physique_ fare better.

When you enter the gaol, there is probably laid up in your lungs a
certain store of fresh, free air, which takes some time to exhaust
itself; but soon you begin to draw your breath more and more slowly, and
to feel that the atmosphere inhaled no longer refreshes you; no
wonder--it is laden with compressed animal life. Then a dull, hot weight
closes round your brows, as if a heavy, fever-stricken hand was always
clasping them; there it lies--at night, when the drowsiness which is
_not_ sleep overcomes you--in the morning, when you wake, with damp
linen and dank hair: plunge your forehead in ice-cold water; before the
drops have dried there it is burning--burning again. The distaste for
all food grows upon you, till it becomes a loathing not to be driven
away by bitters or quinine: there is no savor in the smoke of
Kinnekinnick, nor any flavor in the still waters of Monongahela.
Physical prostration of necessity speedily ensues. Let me mention one
fact--not in vaunting, but in proof that I do not speak idly. When we
were trying those athletics at Greenland, the day after my capture, I
could rend a broad linen band fastened tightly round my upper arm by
bending the _biceps_: when I had been a month in Carroll place I had to
halt, at least once, from absolute breathlessness and debility, on the
stairs leading from the yard to the third story; my pulse was almost
imperceptible. By this time my sight had become so seriously affected
that I was absolutely unable to read the clearest print; even now, a
month after my enfranchisement, though keen Atlantic breezes and home
comforts have worked wonders, I cannot write five consecutive sentences
without a respite.

I am forced to quote my own experience; but I know that it could be
matched, if not exceeded, by very many cases of equal or worse
suffering.

Long confinement falls, of course, intensely harder on a stranger than
on a native. The latter, I suppose, can never quite divest himself of an
interest in passing events, which the former, at the best of times, can
but faintly share: besides which, most Americans--not purely political
prisoners--have either a definite term of captivity to look forward to,
or are, in one way or other, subject to the chances of exchange.

If the Federal Government had avowed at once, that it was their
sovereign pleasure to keep an Englishman in durance for a _certain_
period, without attempting