There was a
spontaneous courtesy and a charitableness in it that touched the heart.
The same sentiment was manifested at meals; if anybody got hold of
anything that seemed to him a little better than usual, he could not
rest till he had offered some of it, or all of it, to his neighbors at
table. "Here, take this--take it--I got more'n I want!" Or, watching his
opportunity, Ned the runner, who had comforted us on our first night in
prison, would come to the door of my cell, with his Irish humor and
cordiality shining in his eyes. "Say, Mr. Hawthorne, there's a dividend
been declared!" and out of some surreptitious receptacle he would
produce three or four crumpled cigarette papers--of all contraband
articles in the prison the most prized. "No--take 'em--I got no end of
'em!"
A peculiar consideration was manifested by the men toward "the old man";
my hair was white enough, to be sure, but it had been so for nearly
twenty years, and I was in much better physical condition than most of
them. I accepted their kind offices with gratitude and emotion, and,
when I saw that to do otherwise would hurt their feelings, their
concrete gifts, too.
But there were many instances of self-sacrifice greater than these; men
would go to the hole sooner than betray a comrade; and you are fortunate
in being unable to comprehend what that means.
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