“Guv’nor! You tell me I did wrong to get in here, brought up like what I was--born in the purple--Brick Street, ’Ammersmith. My father was never up against the police; epileptic fits is what he went in for--I oughtn’t to have had him for a father; I oughtn’t to have had a mother that liked her drop o’ trouble, leavin’ me what you might call violent from a child. That’s where the little difficulty was, you see. The bloke that came about my girl knows that, seein’ he laid two years upon his back after I’d done with ’im. That set ’em on reformin’ me. To do the business proper, guv’nor, they gave me six months solitary to start on. All them six months I asks meself: ‘If I were out again, an’ he came hangin’ round my girl--what would I do?’ And I answers: ‘Hit ’im like I done!’ You tell me I oughtn’t to been thinkin’ that; guv’nor, I ’adn’t nothin’ else to think on. Only that, an’ what was goin’ on outside, with me there buried-up alive. You tell me that ther’ solitude ought to ha’ done a lot for me, an’ so it did. I ain’t never been the same man since. Well, when I came out I made a big mistake, I find, to have that sentence up against me, in the earnin’ of me livin’ honest, like as though I’d never been in prison. I oughtn’t to ’ave been a carpenter, I guess, or anythin’ where people ’as to trust yer, not likin’ them about their houses ’as has been in quod; I ought to ha’ had a trade that didn’t need no dealings with my fellow-creatures. You tell me what I wanted was to love me neighbour? But guv’nor, after I come out, I go regular wasted on _that_ job. When you get wasted, guv’nor, you take to drink; your stomach feels a funny shiverin’; what it wants is warmth, a bit of fire--so, when you gets a sixpence, you lays it out in warmth. That’s wrong, you say. But, lucky guv’nor, drink puts heart into a man as has to get his livin’ out of lovin’ of his neighbour.... Soon after that I got another little lot, with six months’ solitude again, to put me straight. When you eat your heart out for want o’ somethin’ else to do, when your mind rots for the need of ever such a little bit to chew on, when you feel all day and every day like a poor dumb varmint of a caged-up rat--like as not you hit a warder, guv’nor. When you hit a warder, it’s the cat. This time I ought to ha’ come out p’raps a different man--an’ so I did. I ought to ha’ had a different mind, bein’ chastened and taught the love o’ God; but, seein’, guv’nor, that when I come to think it over, which was all day and every day, I couldn’t really find out what I had done which in my case any other man would ha’ stopped short o’ doin’--bein’, _not any other man, but me_--I come out that time meanin’ to go upon my own. And on my own I went, and ever since I’ve been--an out-an’-outer, as you can see with lookin’ at me now. An’ if you ask me what I think of all o’ you outside, I can’t reply, seein’ I’m not allowed to speak.”