The Middlesex magistrates having heard the case, which was put before them in the kindest light by the Governor, and taking into consideration the dastardly act, whereby the offence was in a measure discovered, informed me through the chairman that they knew my position and were sorry for it, pointed out the gravity of my offence, and finished with an admonition—a treatment that only gentlemen could have accorded to such as I. This generosity induced me to register a mental vow that I would not abuse their kindness. I felt indeed as if I were on my parole; but the foolish act of an illiterate jailor—instigated, I suspect, by a vindictive snob—a few days after, armed with the authority, but incapable of discriminating between the treatment most likely to be deterrent to a man like myself and that desirable with a costermonger, turned me from my good resolutions. I saw it was a question of the “best man wins,” that confidence was a thing that never entered their heads, and that I had nothing to gain by passive submission. For the first and only time in my career I felt insulted, and determined henceforth to double my precautions, to evade every regulation, and to lose no opportunity of bribing everything and everybody with whom I came in contact. The act that decided me in this course was being formally searched. A few days after my admonition I was unexpectedly visited by two warders, and ordered to change everything I had on for a fresh supply, which they brought in. Meanwhile my cell was turned upside down. The salt was capsized into the plate; my bed minutely examined; the table and stool tapped and shaken; and matches struck and poked down the ventilators; and when they discovered I had neither pencil nor paper, I was left to readjust my apartment. As I said to them at the time, nobody in his senses would have supposed that a man who had so lately escaped a severe punishment would be such a fool as to incur the risk of possessing contraband articles. As a fact, I had got rid of all my combustibles a few days before; and if any of the officials can remember a stoppage in a certain drain about that time, they can make a pretty shrewd guess at what became of them. The above incident may, I hope, attract the notice of someone in authority, and be the means of giving a discretionary power to governors of prisons as regards the treatment of a certain class of prisoners. Sauce for the goose is not always sauce for the gander, and it’s for the authorities to decide whether certain results cannot be attained by tact that can never be assured by brutality. CHAPTER XVII. PRISON TRADES.