eanly for the next fellow who is to
wear the shirt, and for whom it will not be washed by order of the Warden.
Again I am thankful for that particular special privilege.

Now I come to Number Two, and, my feelings on this subject being rather
strong, I shall not trust myself to do more than state coldly the plain
facts. This boy, for he is only twenty-one years of age, on Tuesday of
this week after being two weeks in the hospital, had an operation on his
ear, being already deaf in that ear from an injury received before he came
to prison. The operation was on Tuesday; on Thursday afternoon, two days
later, he was discharged from the hospital as being able to work, although
the wound in his ear had not yet healed. Being a slight, lightly-built
youth, and just out of the hospital after an operation, he was put to work
at--shoveling coal! But the next morning, Friday, before he had fairly
started on his job, he was ordered to the jail office. There he found that
a report had come down from the hospital to the effect that while there he
had been somewhat troublesome and had talked with another patient.

For this offense the sick lad was sent down here to the dark cell on bread
and three gills of water a day. No handkerchief to wipe the running wound
in his ear. No water to wash his ear or his face. Clad in filthy clothes.
And when I arrived on Saturday afternoon he had been down here nearly
thirty-six hours. And was due to stay at least thirty-six more, for "they
never let us out of here on Sunday."

Nor is that all. This inhuman treatment--I hope I am not guilty of too
much rhetoric in the use of the adjective--this punishment of being sent
here to the dark cells, is only one, as I learn from my new friends, of
five simultaneous punishments, all for the same offense.

There is First: Your imprisonment in the jail, under such conditions as I
am trying to describe.

Second: Your hard-gained earnings are taken away by a fine which is
charged against you on the prison books. As an instance, take my own case.
My six days' work in the basket-shop would have entitled me, as a convict,
to receive from the state of New York the munificent sum of nine cents.
But my fine for spending one night in the punishment cells was fifty
cents. So at the end of my week's work I owed the state of New York
forty-one cents. If I had been a regular convict I should have had to work
four weeks more before I could have got back even again. But, on