Winter was setting in and he found no work that he could do, and yet thought himself too well to again seek admission to a hospital. The outlook of life darkened, for there seemed to be no place for him anywhere. He did not write to me during that time of uncertainty, and one day, after having spent three nights in a railroad station, as a last resort he asked to be sent to the county home and was received there; after that he could not easily obtain admission to a hospital.
Western county homes were at that time hard places; in some respects existence there was harder than in the prison, where restraint and discipline are in a measure a protection, securing a man undisturbed possession of his inner life and thoughts, during working hours at least. The ceaselessly intrusive life of the home, with the lack of discipline and the unrestrained intercourse of inmates, with the idleness and the dirt, is far more demoralizing; crime itself does not sap self-respect like being an idle pauper among paupers. All this could be read between the lines of Wilson's letters.
And now a new dread was taking hold of him. All his hope and ambition had centred in the desire to be good for this life. He had persistently shut out the thought of death as the one thing that would prevent his realizing this desire. Nature and youth clung passionately to life, and all the strength of his will was nerved to resist the advance of disease. But day by day the realization that life was slipping from him forced itself deeper into his consciousness; even for the time discouraging him morally. His high resolves seemed of no avail. It was all of no use. He must die a pauper with no chance to regain his lost manhood; life seemed indeed a hopeless failure. I had supplied Wilson with paper and envelopes, stamped and addressed, that I might never fail of hearing from him directly or through others; but there came an interval of several weeks when I heard nothing, although writing regularly. Perplexed, as well as anxious, in my determination to break the silence at all hazards, I wrote a somewhat peremptory letter. The answer came by return mail, but it was the keeper of the county home who wrote that Wilson had written regularly and that he was very unhappy over my last letter, adding: