For he, too, got all his “marks” and has never failed to get three months off every year served.
There is not an idle bone in his body; he is industrious, skilled and intelligent; he loves liberty; to him the song of the birds and the smiling of the flowers are pleasant; he is kind to dumb animals, and to him children are a joy.
His health is not broken, his intelligence is not atrophied, he is still alert and brisk—in fact, he is too much so. He knows all there is to be known about prisons, and he knows the “ropes” too.
At liberty, he makes war upon society. In prison, he bows to the inevitable and makes the best of things. He is, and always has been, prepared to take the consequences, if caught, of his crime. But he has never yet persuaded himself, or tried to persuade himself, that he is a fool.
If again allowed liberty, he will cheerfully prepare for another campaign, and hope for a “long run.” He weighs things up, for he is a logician, and so many crimes are equal to so much detention.
I have many of this man’s letters from various prisons. I have details of his daily life. He tells of being in hospital and of his better food; he tells me that he is hoping for liberty and means to see me again. But he never makes any complaint, neither does he complain at liberty. Many hours have I spent with him discussing his life and prospects, crime and prison, but no complaint about his treatment has he ever uttered. Although habitually criminal, he considered himself much above the bulk of prisoners, and he will tell, ingenuously enough, that “prison is too good for most of them.” Yet he had carried fire-arms and shot a policeman. He was not well educated, but he had read a great deal while in prison, where he had picked up a smattering of French.
He was a clever workman, and had developed a special branch of his trade during his many detentions. As a prisoner he is perfect, as a citizen he is atrocious and impossible.
If we ask the half-mad fellow who is constantly in prison for deeds of violence to whom uncontrolled liberty means joy and life, we shall be able to read his answer in his eyes; they tell us that revenge is his great hope. But if we ask the aimless and hopeless wanderer who has been certified again and again as “unfit for prison discipline,” we find no evidence of passion, no sense of grievance and no signs to indicate that prison was an undesirable place. Did not old “Cakebread” go cheerfully to prison, although her detentions numbered over three hundred!