One time "Bob got nutty, and
wouldn't come out of his cell, and started setting fire to his bedding.
His cell got filled with the smoke and he was near choking to death, and
fell down on the floor. A bunch of screws stood in front of his door
making fun of him, and they held a blanket up so the smoke wouldn't get
out. At last they opened the door and pulled him out, and they clubbed
him good and plenty, and then they dragged him down the stairs--he was
in an upper tier, understand--with his head bumping against every step.
They threw him into a dark cell, and left him there." There he had
leisure to recover from his "nuttiness." It was nothing much out of the
usual, only the incident happened to offer spectacular features which
served to keep the memory of it fresh. But does the Department of
Justice countenance such diversions?
To return to my theme--I came to feel that whether or not I was handled
softly, others as deserving as I, or less deserving, or more deserving,
were not; and that if I had no personal grounds for complaint, they had.
I could not adopt the point of view of one of the "better" class of
convicts: "The warden has always treated me decently, and I don't mean
to bite the hand that caressed me." I need not affirm, either, that my
good fortune was due to an expectation that I would respond in kind;
that would be an unverifiable inference.
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