rry Christmas:
ugh!

That night I slept in a dreadful place, called the Reception ward, on an
iron bedstead, in a room with a stone floor. I was alone, and horribly
miserable. I heard the Waits playing in the distance, and dreamed I was at
a Christmas party.

Christmas morning in Whitecross-street Prison! A turnkey conducted me to
the "Middlesex side"--a long dreary yard--on either side of which were doors
leading into wards, or coffee-rooms, on the ground floor, and by
stone-staircases, to sleeping-apartments above. It was all very cold, very
dismal, very gloomy. I entered the ward allotted to me, Number Seven,
left. It was a long room, with barred windows, cross tables and benches,
with an aisle between; a large fire at the further end; "Dum spiro,
spero," painted above the mantle-piece. Twenty or thirty prisoners and
their friends were sitting at the tables, smoking pipes, drinking beer, or
reading newspapers. But for the unmistakable jail-bird look about the
majority of the guests, the unshorn faces, the slipshod feet, the barred
windows, and the stone floor, I might have fancied myself in a large
tap-room.

There was holly and mistletoe round the gas-pipes; but how woeful and
forlorn they looked! There was roast-beef and plum-pudding preparing at
the fire-place; but they had neither the odor nor the appearance of free
beef and pudding. I was thinking of the cosy room, the snug fire, the
well-drawn curtains, the glittering table, the happy faces, when the
turnkey introduced me to the steward of the ward (an officer appointed by
the prisoners, and a prisoner himself) who "tables you off," _i.e._, who
allotted me a seat at one of the cross-tables, which was henceforward mine
for all purposes of eating, drinking, writing, or smoking; in
consideration of a payment on my part of one guinea sterling. This sum
made me also free of the ward, and entitled to have my boots cleaned, my
bed made, and my meals cooked. Supposing that I had not possessed a guinea
(which was likely enough), I should have asked for time, which would have
been granted me; but, at the expiration of three days, omission of payment
would have constituted me a defaulter; in which case, the best thing I
could have done would have been to declare pauperism, and remove to the
poor side of the prison. Here, I should have been entitled to my
"sixpences," amounting in the aggregate to the sum of three shillings and
sixpence a week toward my maintenance.