Most yeggs are men of more than average intelligence, and sometimes of
fair education; they were not born outlaws; but, if you can win them to
speak of themselves, you will generally find that they have undergone
things both in and out of prison enough to make an outlaw out of a
saint. Most men succumb under such things, and either die, or become
cowed in spirit; the yeggs have survived, and their spirit is unbroken.
They hold the highest place in the estimation of their fellow prisoners;
and the warden and the guards fear them. By that I mean that they fear
to inflict severities upon them except upon some pretext at least
plausible; for the yeggs know the rules, and though they will submit
without a whimper to the crudest punishments if cause can be alleged for
it, yet wanton liberties, such as prisoners less well informed or more
pusillanimous submit to, cannot safely be taken with them.
The yeggs stand together; they have esprit de corps, and if, as happened
last summer at Atlanta, the food supply drops actually to the starvation
point in both quantity and quality, they stand forward--as they did
then--as champions for the rest of the men; they protest openly, they
will not be wheedled or terrorized, and they go to the hole as one man.
Nor will they come out thence until the warden comes to them and
promises improvement.
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