g,
one grows superstitious, and is easily governed by the merest
accidents; The first person who met me, and stared at me, as if
doubting who I was, was my former captain, who had left the service,
and was superintendent of a House of Correction for men. He had seen
the notice of my discharge, and remembering some of my former attempts
in that direction, asked whether I meant to devote myself entirely to
poetry. I answered in the negative, and he told me that he was looking
for an assistant. My decision was soon made; I would consecrate myself
to the care and elevation of my fallen fellow-men. After entering on my
new occupation I wrote to my parents. My father replied to me, that he
appreciated my efforts, but foresaw with certainty that my natural love
of beauty would make a life among criminals unbearable to me; he was
right. I tried with all my might to keep in subjection a longing for
the higher luxuries of life, but in vain. I was without that peculiar
natural vein, or perhaps had not reached that elevated standpoint,
which enables one to look upon and to treat all the aspects of life as
so many natural phenomena. In my captain's uniform, I received more
respect from the prisoners than in my citizen's dress. This experience
was a sort of nightmare to me. Life among the convicts, who were either
hardened brutes or cunning hypocrites, became a hell to me, and
this hell had one peculiar torment. I fell into a mood of morbid
self-criticism, because I could not forget the world, but was
constantly trying to guess the thoughts of others. I tormented myself
by imagining what men said of my course. In their eyes I seemed to
myself now an idealistic vagabond, if you will allow the expression.
This I was not, and would not be, and above all, I was determined that
my enemies and deriders should not have the triumph of seeing me the
wreck of a fickle and purposeless existence.

"Ah, I vexed myself unnecessarily; for who has time or inclination to
look for a man who has disappeared! Men bury the dead, and go back to
their every-day work, and so they bury the living too. I do not
reproach them for it, it must be so.

"It became clear to me that I was not fitted for the calling I had
chosen. I lived too much within myself, and tried in every event to
study the foundation and growth of character of those around me, not
willing to acknowledge that the nature and actions of men do not
develope themselves so logically as I had tho