Waterbury evening Democrat., 1888-04-12
PENAL SERVITUDE.
THE STORY A CONDEMNED MAN
 TOLD AN AMERICAN.

The Miseries of Prolonged Imprisonment
 in . Siberian Dungeon--The Growing
 Fear of Insanity-Loss of self-Control.
 Scurvy-Suicids.
 You cannot imagine the misery of pro longed confinement in a casemate of tho fortress under what are known as dungeon conditions (kartsernoi polozhenie). My case mate was sometimes cold, generally damp, and always gloomy. Day after day, week after week, and month after month, lay there in solitude, hearing no sound save that of the high pitched, melancholy bells of the fortress cathedral, which slowly chimed the quarter hours and which always seemed to mo to half aruiculate the words, "Tee zdais seedesh-ee seedee tee." (Here thou iest-lie here stilD. I had absolutely nothing to do except to pace my cell from corner to corner and think. For a long time used to talk to myself in whisper; to repeat softly every thing in the shape of literature that could remember, and to compose speeches. which, under certain imagined conditions, would deliver; but finally ceased to have energy enough to do even this, and used to sit for hours in sort of stupor, in which, so far as can now remember, was not conscious of thinking st all.
 WEAK, MENTALLY AND PHYSICALLY.
 Before the end of the first year I grew SO weak mentally and physically that began to forget words. I knsw what ideas I de- sired to express, but some of the words that needed had gone fro1a me, and it was with the greatest difficulty that I could recover them. It seemed sometimes as if my own language were strange one to me, or ono which, from long disuse, I had forgotten. greatly feared insanity, and my appre- hension was increased by the fact that two or three of my comrades in cells on the same corridor were either insane or subject to hal- lucinations; and I was often reused at night and thrown into violent chill Of nervous excitement by their hysterical weeping, their cries to the guard to como and take away somebody, or something, which they inn agined they saw, or their groans and en- treaties when, in cases of violent delirium, they were strapped to their beds by the gendarmes. My inability to so what was happening in the cells from which these groans, cries and sounds of violence came gave full play, of course, to my imagina- tion, and thus increased my nervous excite ment, until was on the verge of mysteries myself.
 Several times, when feared that I was losing all self control, summoned the fort ress surgeon, or the 'feldsher," who merely
  told mo that I must not excite myself so; that nothing serious had happened; that two or three of the prisoners were sick and deliri- ous; but that there was nothing to be alarmed about. As the fortress contained no hospital, insane and delirious patients were treated in their cells, and were rarely re- moved to an asylum unless they were mani festly incurable, or the care of them became burdensome. The effect of the eternal still ness, solitude, and lack of occupation on the mind was greatly heightened by the want of proper exercise and nourishment for the body. "Accused" prisoners awaiting trial in the Trubetskoi bastion were allowed to have money in the hands of the "smatritel," or warden, and could direct its expenditure for white bread, vegetables. tea, sugar, etc., to make up the deficiencies of the prison ra- tion; but we, the ''condemned," had to live upon black rye bread, soup which it was often impossible to eat on account of the spoiled condition of the meat from which it had been made and Q small quantity of "kasha" or barley boiled with little fat and served without seasoning, and sometimes only half cooked.
 ATTACKED BY SCURvY.
 Such food, in connection with the damp, heavy air of the casenate and the lack of proper exercise, caused Arrangement of the digestive organs, and this was soon followed by more or less pronounced symptoms of scurvy Madame Lebedeya, who was in the penal servitute section with me, suffered from scurvy to such an extent that her teeth became loose and her gums greatly swollen, and she could not 1nasticate the prison bread without first soaking it in warm water. Scurvy, even in an incipient form, intensi- fled, of course, the mental depression due primarily to other causes and made it almost insupportable. l never seriously meditated suicide-iJ always seemed to me cowardly thing to escape suffering by taking ones own life-but did speculate upon the possibility of suicide, and wondered how l could kill myself in casemate where there was abso- lutely nothing that could be used as an im- plement of self-destruction.
 Once went so far as to see if I could hang myself from the small cylindrical hot air pipe which projected two or three inches into my cell from the face of the brick oven. I did not really intend to take my life, but felt morbid curiosity to know whether or not could do it in that way. As soon as I threw my weight on the pipe, it pulled out the masonry, making, as it fell to the floor, a noise which attracted the attention of the guard in the corridor. was forthwith re- moved to another cell. and I never again tried a similar experiment.. They say that poor Goldenberg succeeded in committing
 suicide ill the fortress, but I cannot imagine how he accomplished it. I became satisfied that could not kill myself in my casemate in any other way than by biting into an artery or dashing my head against the wall, and ultimately became so weak that doubt very much whether could have fractured my skull ny the latter method.-George Ken nan in The Century.
 
 The Parisians' Off-hand Manner. l In place of their old f1owery language, Parisians have of late years adopted an off
 hand manner Cumming to the extreme as is