" He was about seventy, with the soft brown hair of youth, but
bent and stiff and wrinkled with hard years and rheumatics; and if I
questioned him more closely, he would confess that he suffered from
"lots o' misery here!"--passing his gnarled old hands over his digestive
tract. Indeed, four-fifths of the men had that trouble in more or less
acute form, owing to the atrocious food supplied as our regular diet.
Joe's face, though lined with the hardships and privations of a long
life, was beautifully formed, aristocratic in its delicate contours; and
he possessed, and constantly used, one of the most delectable,
contagious and genuine laughs that ever made music in my ears. The men
would ransack their humorous resources in conversation with Joe, merely
for the sake of making him laugh. He would fix his old eyes squarely on
yours, and laugh and laugh with infinite mirth and good nature. Such a
sound in such a place was rare and wonderful, and helped one like fresh
water in a desert.
The general friendliness among the men--so contrasted with their
demeanor toward the officials--was due to the identity of their common
interests; they were in the same boat, facing the same perils and
disasters, united in the same aims and hopes, and leagued against the
same oppressors. They lived in the constant dread of some calamity; and
if I met the same man three or four times in the same day, he would
never fail to make the same enquiry--"How're you feeling?" recognizing
that I might have received some ugly blow in the interval.
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