The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1911-09-29

home or friends; the life or death OF
any single creature. He sees the
prison-officers, but with that excep-
ton, he never looks upon a human
countenance, or hears a human voice.
He is man buried alive; to be dug
out in the slow round of years; and
in the mean time dead to everything
but torturing anxieties and horrible
despair.
His name, and crime, and term of
suffering, are unknown, even to the
officer who delivers him his daily
food There is number over his
cell door, and in a book of which the
governor of the prison has one copy,
and the moral instructor another:
this is the index to his history. Be-
yond these pages the prison has no
record of his existence, and though he
years, he has no means of knowing,
down to the very last hour, in what
part of the building it is situated;
what kind of men there are about
him; whether in the long winter
nights there are living people near, or
he is in some lonely corner of the
great jail, with walls, and passages,
and iron doors between him and the
nearest sharer in its solitary horrors.
Every cell has double doors; the
outer one of sturdy oak, the other of
grated iron, wherein there is a trap
through which food is handed. He
has a Bible, and a slate and pencil,
and, under certain restrictions, has
sometimes other books, provided for
the purpose, and pen and ink and pa
per. His razor, plate, and can, and
basin, hang upon the wall, or shine
upon the little shelf. Fresh water is
it at pleasure. During the day, his
bedstead turns up against the wall.
and leaves more space for him to
work in. His loom, or bench, or
wheel, is there; and there he labors,
sleeps and wakes, and counts the
seasons as the change, and grows old.
THE first man l saw was seated at
his loom, at work He had been there
six years, and was to remain, I think,
three more He had been convicted
as a receiver of stolen goods. but
even after this long Imprisonment
denied his guilt, and said he had been
hardly dealt by. 1t was his second Of
ense.
He stopped MS work when we
went in, took off his spectacles, and
answered freely to everything that we
said to him, but always with a strange
kind of pause first, and in low,
thoughtful voice. He wore a paper
hat of his own making, and was pleas.
ed to have it noticed and commended.
He had very ingeniously manufactur.
ed sort of Dutch clock from some
disregarded odds and ends; and his
vinegar-bottle served for the pendu-
lum. Seeing me interested in this
contrivance, he looked up at it with
a great deal of pride, and said that
he had been thinking of improving it.
and that he hoped the hammer and a
little piece of broken glass beside ii
would play music before long" He
had oy+rino+od cOpoo oo10re fro,,, ~ =
yarn with which he worked, and
painted few poor figures on the
wall. One, of female, over the door
he called THE Lady of the Lake
He smiled as l looked at these
contrivances to while away the time
but, when l looked from them to him
l saw that his lip trembled, and
could have counted the beating of his
heart. | forgot how it came about
> but some allusion was made to his
having a wife. He shook his head al
the word, turned aside, and covered
his face with his hands.
g" But you are resigned now!'
said one of the gentlemen after {
: short pause, during which he had re
; sumed his former manner He an
I swered with a sigh that seemed quite
reckless in its hopelessness, "Oh yes
oh yes. I am resigned to it." -"Ant
: are better man. you think p
: We'll, l hope so. I'm sure | hope
| may be-" And time goes prett,
quickly" Thine is very long, gen
/ tlemen, within these four wallis"
> He gazed about him-Heaven only
knows how wearily,- as he sale
these words; and in the act of doins
: so, fell into strange stare as if be
had forgotten something. A moment
afterwards he sighed heavily, pu
on his spectacles, and went about his
: work again.
In another cell there was a Ger
man, sentenced to five years i'm
> prisonment for larceny, two of which
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