to this circumstance in a letter to my friends, written when I
had been about four years and a-half in prison; and for doing so my
letter was suppressed.

The night of my departure for England at last arrived, and I found
myself for the first time placed in heavy leg-irons, along with eleven
others. We were put into the prison-van for the railway station; and as
soon as we were seated in the carriage there commenced a scene which
baffles all description. Some of my fellow-prisoners commenced
shouting, some screamed and laughed, others mocked and jeered, whilst
above all curses loud and deep hurtled through the stifling air, and
made night hideous with the sound. Their yells and oaths still ring in
my ears, and that which was to my companions a scene of the utmost
jollity and mirth was to me the nearest approach to hell my imagination
had ever conceived. It was a cold spring night that witnessed my
degrading departure; when I arrived at my destination in Yorkshire one
of my legs was considerably swollen. It is a cold spring night now;
that swollen limb has for years been in the tomb, and the dismembered
trunk, on its "Ticket of Leave," has not yet returned to its long-lost
home.

CHAPTER IV.

MY ARRIVAL AT THE YORKSHIRE PRISON--IN SIMPLICITER NATURALIBUS--GET
ANIMAL FOOD--MEDICAL TREATMENT--STATUESQUE CHRISTIANITY--REMOVED
TO THE HOSPITAL--DEATH OF A PRISONER--MY LEG GETS MUCH WORSE--REMOVAL
TO SURREY PRISON.

On my arrival at the Yorkshire prison I and my companions were
subjected to a new, and to me most painful operation. I am quite well
aware that it would be next to useless, if not quite hypocritical, in
one in my position to lay claim to any considerable delicacy of
feeling, or to appear to be over scrupulous in matters of common
decency. But there will occasionally, however, be found even amongst
convicts those who will bear a pretty long period of imprisonment,
during which they are subjected to a variety of contaminating
influences, and yet not have their moral sensibilities completely
destroyed. Of these I was one, and I felt that the treatment which I
had now to undergo was conceived in a barbarous spirit, and was
well-fitted to destroy utterly any feelings of self-respect which my
previous experiences had still left me. Every part of my body was
minutely inspected immediately on my arrival, in order that I might not
take any money or tobacco into the prison.

Doubtless it is very desirable, an