Hon. James G. Blaine, 248 Hon. Robert T. Lincoln, 256 Hon. John Hay, 288 Hon. Joseph H. Choate, 320 Samuel V. Hayden, 352 Leonidas D. Yarrell, 368 FOREWORD The writing of this book has been to me no joyful task, as its making has been at the expense of much-needed rest and peace of mind. In returning to my dear native land after a long imprisonment, I cherished the hope that I might as quietly as possible be permitted to take up the threads of outward existence so cruelly broken, little dreaming that trials hardly less grievous than those left behind awaited me; for no sooner had I touched these hospitable shores, when I was met by the fear-inspiring cry, “You must write a book--you must give the world an account of your sufferings”--as if one could never suffer enough. My well-meaning friends could hardly have known what they were asking in forcing upon me a mental return to the dread past. Solitary confinement in Woking Prison (as the reader may learn from these pages) was not such an elysium that one should voluntarily desire to hark back to it, nor is penal servitude in Aylesbury an Arcadian dream. While within their grim walls I did my best to exclude from thought the world without; and now that I am once again in the world (though scarcely of it), my one desire to shut out all the abhorrent things which so-called “prison life” stands for has thus far not only failed of realization, but, under conditions even more trying than the repressive prison régime (because of the free and happy life all about, which it seemed to poor me that I had some right to share), I have been compelled by force of circumstance to return to my cast-off prison shell, and live all the old heart-and-brain-crushing life over again. However, my second “trial and imprisonment,” like the first, is at last drawing to a close; and I devoutly trust that I shall be now permitted to enter upon a long-coveted rest, and partake as I may of those tempered joys which my countrymen by their beautiful sympathy have so chivalrously endeavored to make possible for me. Theoretically my imprisonment terminated on English soil, but so relentlessly have the fates pursued me that I have been in nowise free quite up to the present moment. In Rouen, France, where I sojourned at my mother’s home for three weeks, I was as much in durance to my genial enemy, the ubiquitous reporter, as when the English Government held me in its inexorable grasp. Our cottage was completely invested by him, and all approaches and exits held with a persistency which, under other circumstances, might well have extorted my admiration.