e. Many a month and year afterward my cell was filled
and my heart cheered by the multitude of friends the divine William
provided for me.

About the time I received my Shakespeare another piece of happy fortune
befell me. A smallpox scare was existing outside, and all hands in the
prison were ordered to be vaccinated. When the doctor came around a few
days afterward to examine the effects of the operation he found my arm
so swollen that he directed me to be taken to the hospital.

For twenty-five days I had full opportunity to learn what the girl in
Dickens' "Little Dorritt" meant when she called the hospital an
"'eavenly" place. It was the first time I had ever been admitted, and
the change from the horrible mud hole to the rest and comfort of a cell
in the hospital was indeed almost "'eavenly." With nothing to do but to
read my Shakespeare, the cravings of hunger for the first time since my
imprisonment satisfied, I was tempted to believe--I did partly
believe--that the world had few positions pleasanter than mine.

Godliness with contentment is undoubtedly great gain. Contentment alone
without the godliness is no poor thing, and was I not content? Few,
indeed, of all the thousands who have toiled in that torturing prison
house have ever been or are likely ever to be so content as I was.

How true it is that happiness is altogether relative, and that it is
divided much more evenly among men than we are willing to believe! A
mere respite from an intolerable position, a single book to keep the
mind from cracking, transformed gloom and misery into light and at least
comparative happiness.

After a time I began to watch the effects of the unnatural life upon
others. They arrived full of resolution, buoyed often by hopes which
they were soon destined to find delusive. The short-time men, those with
seven or ten year sentences, could face the prospect hopefully. To them
the day would come when the prison gate must swing back and the path to
the world be open once more. But no such hope cheers the long-timers,
the men with twenty years and life, who quickly learn how great the
proportion is of their number who find relief only in the box smeared
with black which incloses what is left of them in the grave. Every day I
used to see the effects on them of hunger and torment of mind. The first
part visibly affected was the neck. The flesh shrinks, disappears and
leaves what look like two artificial props to support the head.