belligerent escaped into a crevice between the bricks, we promptly
walled him in with a daub of the chewed bread. We toiled on until the
light grew dim and until every hole, nook, and cranny was closed. I
shudder to think of the tragedies of starvation and cannibalism that
must have ensued behind those bread-plastered ramparts.

We threw ourselves on our bunks, tired out and hungry, to wait for
supper. It was a good day's work well done. In the weeks to come we at
least should not suffer from the hosts of vermin. We had foregone our
dinner, saved our hides at the expense of our stomachs; but we were
content. Alas for the futility of human effort! Scarcely was our long
task completed when a guard unlocked our door. A redistribution of
prisoners was being made, and we were taken to another cell and locked
in two galleries higher up.

Early next morning our cells were unlocked, and down in the hall the
several hundred prisoners of us formed the lock-step and marched out
into the prison-yard to go to work. The Erie Canal runs right by the
back yard of the Erie County Penitentiary. Our task was to unload
canal-boats, carrying huge stay-bolts on our shoulders, like railroad
ties, into the prison. As I worked I sized up the situation and
studied the chances for a get-away. There wasn't the ghost of a show.
Along the tops of the walls marched guards armed with repeating
rifles, and I was told, furthermore, that there were machine-guns in
the sentry-towers.

I did not worry. Thirty days were not so long. I'd stay those thirty
days, and add to the store of material I intended to use, when I got
out, against the harpies of justice. I'd show what an American boy
could do when his rights and privileges had been trampled on the way
mine had. I had been denied my right of trial by jury; I had been
denied my right to plead guilty or not guilty; I had been denied a
trial even (for I couldn't consider that what I had received at
Niagara Falls was a trial); I had not been allowed to communicate with
a lawyer nor any one, and hence had been denied my right of suing for
a writ of habeas corpus; my face had been shaved, my hair cropped
close, convict stripes had been put upon my body; I was forced to toil
hard on a diet of bread and water and to march the shameful lock-step
with armed guards over me--and all for what? What had I done? What
crime had I committed against the good citizens of Niagara Falls that
all this vengeance should be