About the time I received my Shakespeare another piece of happy fortune befell me. A smallpox scare was existing outside, and all hands in the prison were ordered to be vaccinated. When the doctor came around a few days afterward to examine the effects of the operation he found my arm so swollen that he directed me to be taken to the hospital. For twenty-five days I had full opportunity to learn what the girl in Dickens' "Little Dorritt" meant when she called the hospital an "'eavenly" place. It was the first time I had ever been admitted, and the change from the horrible mud hole to the rest and comfort of a cell in the hospital was indeed almost "'eavenly." With nothing to do but to read my Shakespeare, the cravings of hunger for the first time since my imprisonment satisfied, I was tempted to believe--I did partly believe--that the world had few positions pleasanter than mine. Godliness with contentment is undoubtedly great gain. Contentment alone without the godliness is no poor thing, and was I not content? Few, indeed, of all the thousands who have toiled in that torturing prison house have ever been or are likely ever to be so content as I was. How true it is that happiness is altogether relative, and that it is divided much more evenly among men than we are willing to believe! A mere respite from an intolerable position, a single book to keep the mind from cracking, transformed gloom and misery into light and at least comparative happiness. After a time I began to watch the effects of the unnatural life upon others. They arrived full of resolution, buoyed often by hopes which they were soon destined to find delusive. The short-time men, those with seven or ten year sentences, could face the prospect hopefully. To them the day would come when the prison gate must swing back and the path to the world be open once more. But no such hope cheers the long-timers, the men with twenty years and life, who quickly learn how great the proportion is of their number who find relief only in the box smeared with black which incloses what is left of them in the grave. Every day I used to see the effects on them of hunger and torment of mind. The first part visibly affected was the neck. The flesh shrinks, disappears and leaves what look like two artificial props to support the head. As time wears on the erect posture grows bent; instead of standing up straight the knees bulge outward as though unable to support the body's weight, and the man drags himself along in a kind of despondent shuffle. Another year or two and his shoulders are bent forward. He carries his arms habitually before him now, he has grown moody, seldom speaks to any one, nor answers if spoken to. In the general deterioration of the body the mind keeps equal step; and so unfailing is the effect that even warders wait to see it, and remark to each other that so and so is "going off." When the sufferer begins to carry his arms in front every one understands that the end is coming.