ble
almost by heart; the smallest incidents in the life of the Prophet
Jeremiah were much more familiar to me than the history of the civil
war, and Anathoth took on proportions which made it as real as New York
and far more important. The desperate efforts I had made to keep myself
from falling into the condition of so many I had seen drooping to idiocy
and death were, I felt, successful, and any occupation which kept alive
the intellect could not but be beneficial. I was hungry, starving for
mental food. Never had books appeared so attractive, never was kingdom
so cheerfully offered for a horse as I would have offered mine for an
octavo. My friends had written for me to the Government, but with no
success. At last they had interested the American Minister in London,
who promised to write to the Home Secretary for me, but a year had
slipped by and I had heard nothing.

Jeremiah continued with me, and it seemed he was to remain with me to
the end. But a change was coming.

Can I ever forget the day it happened! Can I ever cease to remember the
delight, the incredulity, the astonishment of that happy day! I had come
in at night hungry, cold, wet and miserable. I made my way a little
depressed to my cell. As I was about to step across the threshold I saw
a book lying on my little wooden bed. Amazed and astonished, I hesitated
to enter. Small as such a circumstance appears, the very sight of the
book brought on a weakness. I feared to pick it up, a horrible dread
seized me that it might be a new Bible, and I was unwilling to risk
another disappointment. The footprint on the sand was not more
suggestive nor more awe-inspiring to Robinson Crusoe than the appearance
of that book was to me. In mood as lonely, in plight as desperate as
his, there lay before me a sight as unlooked for and, as it seemed, as
full of meaning as the footprint was to Robinson.

At last I pulled myself together, determined to end the suspense and
know what was before me. I picked up the book, and who can understand
the delight, the joy, the rapture even, with which I read on the title
page, "The Works of William Shakespeare." In an instant I became a new
man. If ever one human being felt gratitude to another I felt it at that
moment for the American Minister. To him I owed it that henceforth a new
light was to stream through the fluted glass of my window, that
henceforth a new world was opened up for me to live in, and the world
seemed lighter to m