e your hair cropped to half
the length of a prize-fighter's, to lay aside the dress which you have
chosen and which seems half your individuality, and put on a suit of
cheerless penitentiary uniform--to cease to be a man with a place among
men, and to become simply a convict. This is not nearly so agreeable as
living at the hotel. Did Helen Minorkey ever think of the difference?

There is little to be told of the life in the penitentiary. It is very
uniform. To eat prison fare without even the decency of a knife or
fork--you might kill a guard or a fellow-rogue with a fork--to sleep in a
narrow, rough cell on a hard bed, to have your cell unlocked and to be
marched out under guard in the morning, to go in a row of prisoners to
wash your face, to go in a procession to a frugal breakfast served on tin
plates in a dining-room mustier than a cellar, to be marched to your
work, to be watched by a guard while you work, to know that the guard has
a loaded revolver and is ready to draw it on slight provocation, to march
to meals under awe of the revolver, to march to bed while the man with
the revolver walks behind you, to be locked in and barred in and
double-locked in again, to have a piece of candle that will burn two
hours, to burn it out and lie down in the darkness--to go through one
such day and know that you have to endure three thousand six hundred and
fifty-two days like it--that is about all. The life of a blind horse in a
treadmill is varied and cheerful in comparison.

Oh! yes, there is Sunday. I forgot the Sunday. On Sundays you don't have
to work in the shops. You have the blessed privilege of sitting alone in
your bare cell all the day, except the hour of service. You can think
about the outside world and wish you were out. You can read, if you can
get anything interesting to read. You can count your term over, think of
a broken life, of the friends of other days who feel disgraced at mention
of your name, get into the dumps, and cry a little if you feel like it.
Only crying doesn't seem to do much good. Such is the blessedness of the
holy Sabbath in prison!

But Charlton did not let himself pine for liberty. He was busy with
plans for reconstructing his life. What he would have had it, it could
not be. You try to build a house, and it is shaken down about your ears
by an earthquake. Your material is, much of it, broken. You can never
make it what you would. But the brave heart, failing to do what it would,
do