convenient to know the
telegraphic code, so as to take part in any such conversation. I listen
with interest to the clicking, but it seems not to change its direction
and to have but little regularity. I wonder what it is.

The night officer has just stopped for a moment at the grating of my cell.
I ask him the time. Seven-twenty. Good Lord! I thought it must be nearly
nine. I am usually very good at guessing time, but in this place I am
utterly unable to make any accurate calculation. Just for the experience,
I'm going to stop writing and lock up my writing materials, to see how it
feels to have nothing to do.

I take down my paper and pencil again to record a most thrilling
discovery. I have found--a pocket in my prison coat! All day I have
worried at the absence of one; now I find it--left, on the inside. Imagine
the state of mind when such a thing really produces almost a feeling of
nervous excitement.

I simply must keep on writing out of sheer desperation. I have tried to
use up some minutes by rearranging my clothes, pulling up my socks, and
tightening my belt; I have not yet investigated the workings of my bed, as
I wish to leave that for a later excitement.

From the distance I catch the single stroke of the City Hall bell, which
marks eight o'clock. Another hour yet before the lights go out; and then
ten hours more before I can leave this cell!

How in the world do they bear it--the men who look forward to long years
of imprisonment? My working partner, Murphy, has a life term. For what, I
wonder? He seems like such a good fellow; and the Chaplain has just spoken
of him most highly.

What a mystery it all is! And what a commentary on our civilization that
we can do nothing better with such men than to throw away their lives and
ruin them, body and soul. The old ones arouse one's pity; but the young
men--many of those in chapel yesterday were mere boys.

God! What a miserable, shameful waste of human life--of human energy! Must
we not find some way in which the good there is in these broken lives can
be repaired and made useful to society?

At last a bell, the first signal for the night. I think it is twenty
minutes before nine. As the kindly gallery boy has brought me a glass
tumbler, I brush my teeth with a minimum of inconvenience, wash my face,
and then investigate the workings of the bed. It is loosely fastened to
two iron hooks in the wall, on the inside; and the outside rests on two
legs which d