The games occur, weather permitting, once a week, on
Saturdays. From Saturday at half past three until Monday morning at half
past seven, the men are locked in their cells, absolutely inactive in
body, and abandoned to such mental activities as, for the most part,
breed no good either for themselves or others. The only outlet is the
Sunday church service hour--a crowded session in a blank hall, with
rifles ready to subdue any disorder. A very apostle might fail in his
efforts under such circumstances; and very apostles are few.
A man who is sick and sad day after day and year after year, and
conscious of his impotence to amend his state, is in no mood for moral
reform. Much of the sickness might be averted if the medical treatment
at the outset of disease were such as to encourage the patients to avail
themselves of advice. But each man, as he comes up in the sick line
every morning, is met with indifference or insults; he is presumed to be
a malingerer unless he can prove himself genuine on the instant; the
only other recourse is to become so sick as to be beyond help of
medicine, and then, taken belated to the hospital, to die outright. The
consequence is that the men will suffer silently in their cells rather
than appeal to the doctor; and many diseases become ineradicable from
this cause.
Even a convict, when he is miserable and weak from illness, shrinks from
facing rough and unsympathetic handling and words in the doctor's room,
with a good chance of being sent to the hole if he remonstrates.
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