Oh, the horrors of insomnia! If one could only forget one’s sufferings in sleep! During all the fifteen years of my imprisonment, insomnia was (and, alas! is still) my constant companion. Little wonder! I might fall asleep, when suddenly the whole prison is awakened by shriek upon shriek, rending the stillness of the night. I am now, perforce, fully awake. Into my ears go tearing all the shrill execrations and blasphemies, all the hideous uproars of an inferno, compounded of bangs, shrieks, and general demoniac ragings. The wild smashing of glass startles the halls. I lie in my darkened cell with palpitating heart. Like a savage beast, the woman of turmoil has torn her clothing and bedding into shreds, and now she is destroying all she can lay hands on. The ward officers are rushing about in slippered feet, the bell rings summoning the warders, who are always needed when such outbursts occur, and the woman, probably in a strait-jacket, is borne to the penal cells. Then stillness returns to the ghastly place, and with quivering nerves I may sleep--if I can. MEDICAL ATTENDANCE But what if one is ill in the night? The lonely prisoner in her cell may summon aid by ringing the bell. The moment it is set in motion it causes a black iron slab to project from the outer wall of her cell in the gallery. On the slab is the prisoner’s number, and the ward officer, hearing the bell, at once looks for the cell from which the call has been sent. Presently she finds it, then fetches the principal matron, and together they enter the hard, unhomelike place. If the prisoner is ill they call the doctor of the prison, and medicines and aid will be given. But sympathy is no part of their official duty, and be the warder never so tender in her own domestic circle, tenderness must not be shown toward a prisoner. The patient may be removed from her cell to the infirmary, where they will care for her medically, perhaps as well as they would in a hospital; she may even receive a few flowers from an infirmary warder whose heart comes out from its official shell; but through it all, sick though she be, she is still a prisoner under lock and key, a woman under surveillance, a woman denied communion with her kind. ADDED SUFFERINGS OF THE DELICATELY NURTURED What words can adequately describe the long years, blank and weary enough for all prisoners, but which are indescribably so to one who has been delicately nurtured! I had enjoyed the refinements of social life; I had pitied, and tried, as far as lay in my power, to help the poor and afflicted, but I had never known anything of the barbarism, the sordid vices of low life. And I was condemned to drag out existence amid such surroundings, because twelve ignorant men had taken upon themselves to decide a question which neither the incompetent judge nor the medical witnesses could themselves determine.