with your
absurd rules about water. And I shall not--I can not--leave the prison
unless something is to be done about it."

This and much more I pour into the patient ears of the P. K. It is written
in the veracious "Bab Ballads," concerning Sir Macklin, a clergyman
"severe in conduct and in conversation," that:

"He argued high, he argued low,
He also argued round about him."

It is much the same in this case. My arguments are many, and some are
based on high moral ground and others on mere motives of self-interest. My
words flow easily enough now.

The P. K. takes refuge behind the official policies. He disclaims any
personal motives--almost any personal responsibility. He seems to think
that there is little or no occasion for the exercise of any judgment on
his part. A complaint comes from an officer about a prisoner. There is
apparently nothing for the P. K. to do but accept the complaint, take the
word of the officer as a matter of course, and punish the prisoner. I also
get the impression that sending every offender to the jail is the most
desirable form of punishment, as it involves no troublesome discrimination
or attempt at careful adjustment; it makes the thing so simple and easy.

Anything more crude, any greater outrage upon justice and common sense
than the system of prison discipline as revealed in this illuminating
discussion, it would be impossible to conceive. If a deliberate attempt
were to be made to draft a code of punishment which should produce a
minimum of efficacy and a maximum of failure and exasperation among the
prisoners, it could not be more skilfully planned. One can no longer be
surprised at the anomalous condition of things, as revealed by the kind of
men I found in the jail.

In the midst of the discussion I welcome a warm ally in the Doctor, who at
my request is brought into consultation. He had by no means intended that
Number Two should be sent to the jail when discharged from the hospital;
although he states it as a fact that the boy was a somewhat troublesome
and unruly patient--a fact which I do not doubt in the least. Under
existing conditions I should think any man, unless he were a dolt or an
idiot, would be troublesome.

This statement of the Doctor's gives me the chance to utter a tirade
against a System which has no gradation in its punishments. If stress is
to be laid on punishment rather than reward, there should be at least some
approximation to justice, and t