elp feeling considerable
sympathy.

I have more than once heard governors express their disapproval of the
starvation system and of the ferocity of treatment toward men who some
day or other must go back to society.

Under such governors the new arrival speedily finds out that to a
certain extent his comfort depends upon himself. No man can make a bad
thing good or trick himself into believing that suffering is pleasure.
If pain be not an evil, it is an exceedingly good imitation, and the
wisest philosopher is just as restless under the toothache as the most
perfect idiot.

[Illustration: PENTONVILLE PRISON.]

CHAPTER XLVII.

HIS ROW BECOMES FILLED WITH VERY SHARP-EDGED STONES INDEED.

The inhabitant of a cell has a very rough row to hoe under any
circumstance, and it has to be hoed, but there is no necessity for him
to fill his row with stones and to plant roots in it himself. He soon
finds his level, and the impression he makes on his arrival is the one
which, as a rule, clings to him to the end.

When prison air and prison influence have succeeded in incasing a man
with the sort of moral hardbake that renders him callous to those
feelings which at first so gall the raw spots, he finds himself watching
with curiosity the shapings of newcomers. Some announce immediately on
arrival that they cannot possibly be there more than a month or two;
their arrest was a mistake, and their uncle, the member of Parliament,
is now busily engaged making representations to the Home Secretary. One
of the very few amusements prisoners have is in watching the important
fellows, the men whose friends could do so much for them if they would
only let them know where they are. Sometimes a chap who has perhaps been
a body servant or something of the kind, who has picked up the kind of
veneer he could catch by aping his master, will furnish food for smiles
to every one he comes in contact with during his stay. He never receives
a letter without explaining confidentially to every one that another
aunt whose favorite he was has just died, leaving him L10,000 in cash,
not to speak of a trifle or two in the shape of half a dozen houses.
These gentlemen are immediately furnished with a name which becomes much
better known than their own, and whenever they have delivered themselves
of their periodical brooding of lies the news goes smiling round that
Billy Treacle's aunt has died again and left him another fortune.

So long as thei