them all, by
the way--who, when it had alighted three or four times in rapid
succession on my taboo wall and succeeded each time in eluding the velvet-
careful swoop of my hand, would grow so excited and jubilant that it
would dart around and around my head at top speed, wheeling, veering,
reversing, and always keeping within the limits of the narrow circle in
which it celebrated its triumph over me.

Why, I could tell well in advance when any particular fly was making up
its mind to begin to play. There are a thousand details in this one
matter alone that I shall not bore you with, although these details did
serve to keep me from being bored too utterly during that first period in
solitary. But one thing I must tell you. To me it is most memorable--the
time when the one with a grouch, who never played, alighted in a moment
of absent-mindedness within the taboo precinct and was immediately
captured in my hand. Do you know, he sulked for an hour afterward.

And the hours were very long in solitary; nor could I sleep them all
away; nor could I while them away with house-flies, no matter how
intelligent. For house-flies are house-flies, and I was a man, with a
man's brain; and my brain was trained and active, stuffed with culture
and science, and always geared to a high tension of eagerness to do. And
there was nothing to do, and my thoughts ran abominably on in vain
speculations. There was my pentose and methyl-pentose determination in
grapes and wines to which I had devoted my last summer vacation at the
Asti Vineyards. I had all but completed the series of experiments. Was
anybody else going on with it, I wondered; and if so, with what success?

You see, the world was dead to me. No news of it filtered in. The
history of science was making fast, and I was interested in a thousand
subjects. Why, there was my theory of the hydrolysis of casein by
trypsin, which Professor Walters had been carrying out in his laboratory.
Also, Professor Schleimer had similarly been collaborating with me in the
detection of phytosterol in mixtures of animal and vegetable fats. The
work surely was going on, but with what results? The very thought of all
this activity just beyond the prison walls and in which I could take no
part, of which I was never even to hear, was maddening. And in the
meantime I lay there on my cell floor and played games with house-flies.

And yet all was not silence in solitary. Early in my confineme