This steady growth of a good and useful character in spite of the sneers and rebuffs of the ill-disposed, and in the face of mighty difficulties, brought substantial comforts to myself also. I was released from strict confinement; I was made overseer of a considerable party; I was allowed liberties I had not known before; and I was fed with abundance from the officers’ table. Thus, with advancing years, I became contented and happy, and my means of being useful to others were greatly increased. I was permitted to plant flowers and vines in the interior courtyard of our prison. After long and patient labor I adorned and beautified the spot so greatly that it attracted the attention of every visitor. The mission of flowers is like that of poetry, to enchant, to elevate, and to purify. Therefore the Spring comes annually to shower her myriads of fragrant little lyrics upon the world! It seemed a shame to constrain these sweet and free children of the air and sunlight to illumine the interior of a dungeon and to live with criminals; but I remembered that the angels whom they represent, delight to visit the humblest spot and to assist the most forlorn and helpless creatures of God. I had been in prison about fifteen years without seeing a book, when a singular old Greek character was confined with us for some nameless crime. He was taciturn and stately, and evidently a man of education. He had a copy of the Tragedies of Eschylus which the guard had not taken from him, although parchments so well executed as that, were of considerable value. He seemed to know Eschylus by heart, and he loaned the book to me. With what delight I devoured it! It was to me a whole flower-garden of sweets and beauties. The sad fate of Orestes, haunted by the Furies, struck the tenderest chords in my heart; and I contemplated with the joy of kinship and sympathy the grandeur of Prometheus chained to the rock, for holding in his possession secret knowledge which no tortures could compel him to reveal. I, too, was to learn the sanctity of silence! One day the old Greek, when working on a pier, suddenly plunged twenty feet into the rapid Orontes. He struck out boldly down the river for the sea, and the boat sent after him did not overtake the desperate swimmer. He left Eschylus behind him. I had been in prison about twenty-five years, when I came into possession of another and far greater book. A young Jew was condemned to hard labor for striking a Roman officer who had insulted his sister. He fell sick almost immediately, and was carried off by grief and a rapid consumption. I nursed him closely, and he seemed much attached to me until he discovered that I was a Christian. He became at once stern and cold and uncommunicative, and ended by requesting the keeper to provide him with another nurse or none at all.