help it.”
The old man looked at me keenly, and said: “You seem to know a great deal about it, neighbour! And is it really true that nothing came of it?”
“This came of it,” said I, “that a good many people were sent to prison because of it.”
“What, of the bludgeoners?” said the old man. “Poor devils!”
“No, no,” said I, “of the bludgeoned.”
Said the old man rather severely: “Friend, I expect that you have been reading some rotten collection of lies, and have been taken in by it too easily.”
“I assure you,” said I, “what I have been saying is true.”
“Well, well, I am sure you think so, neighbour,” said the old man, “but I don’t see why you should be so cocksure.”
As I couldn’t explain why, I held my tongue. Meanwhile Dick, who had been sitting with knit brows, cogitating, spoke at last, and said gently and rather sadly:
“How strange to think that there have been men like ourselves, and living in this beautiful and happy country, who I suppose had feelings and affections like ourselves, who could yet do such dreadful things.”
“Yes,” said I, in a didactic tone; “yet after all, even those days were a great improvement on the days that had gone before them. Have you not read of the Medi?val period, and the ferocity of its criminal laws; and how in those days men fairly seemed to have enjoyed tormenting their fellow men?—nay, for the matter of that, they made their God a tormentor and a jailer rather than anything else.”
“Yes,” said Dick, “there are good books on that period also, some of which I have read. But as to the great improvement of the nineteenth century, I don’t see it. After all, the Medi?val folk acted after their conscience, as your remark about their God (which is true) shows, and they were ready to bear what they inflicted on others; whereas the nineteenth century ones were hypocrites, and pretended to be humane, and yet went on tormenting those whom they dared to treat so by shutting them up in prison, for no reason at all, except that they were what they themselves, the prison-masters, had forced them to be. O, it’s horrible to think of!”
“But perhaps,” said I, “they did not know what the prisons were like.”
Dick seemed roused, and even angry. “More shame for them,” said he, “when you and I know it all these years afterwards. Look you, neighbour, they couldn’t fail to know what a disgrace a prison is to the Commonwealth at the best, and that their prisons were a good step on towards being at the worst.”
Quoth I: “But have you no prisons at all now?”
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I felt that I had made a mistake, for Dick flushed red and frowned, and the old man looked surprised and pained; and presently Dick said angrily, yet as if restraining himself somewhat—
“Man alive! how can you ask such a question? Have I not told you that we know what a prison means by the undoubted evidence of really trustworthy books, helped out by our own imaginations? And haven’t you specially called me to notice that the people about the roads and streets look happy? and how could they look happy if they knew that their neighbours were shut up in prison, while they bore such things quietly? And if there were people in prison, you couldn’t hide it from folk, like you may an occasional man-slaying; because that isn’t done of set purpose, with a lot of people backing up the slayer in cold blood, as this prison business is. Prisons, indeed! O no, no, no!”
He stopped, and began to cool down, and said in a kind voice: “But forgive me! I needn’t be so hot about it, since there are
In a way he had; but he was so generous in his heat, that I liked him the better for it, and I said:
“No, really ’tis all my fault for being so stupid. Let me change the subject, and ask you what the stately building is on our left just showing at the end of that grove of plane-trees?”
“Ah,” he said, “that is an old building built before the middle of the twentieth century, and as you see, in a queer fantastic style not over beautiful; but there are some fine things inside it, too, mostly pictures, some very old. It is called the
