Prisoner for BlasphemyFoote, G. W. (George William)
Religion
Prisoner for Blasphemy
Foote, G. W. (George William)
Blasphemy; Trials (Blasphemy) -- Great Britain
After dining I walked up and down my cell--tramp, tramp, tramp. How the
time crawled, weary hour on hour, like a slow serpent over desert sands.
There was nothing to read, nothing to do, nothing to hear, and nothing
to see. I was steeped in nothing. And as the senses were unexercised,
thought worked on memory till the brain seemed gnawing itself, as
a shipwrecked man might assuage his thirst at his own veins. Then
imagination, the magician, lovely in weal but terrible in woe, began to
weave his spell, and visions arose of dear loved ones agonising beyond
the prison walls, to whom my heart yearned through the dividing space
with an intense passion that seemed as though its potency might almost
annihilate our barriers. Alas! hearts yearn in vain. Nothing avails but
strength, and what we cannot achieve the Fates never bestow. My cell
walls stood cold and impassable around me, like sentinels of destiny,
too vigilant for evasion and too strong for resistance. Brute force
overmatches even genius and divinity in the ultimate appeal. Prometheus
lies chained to his Caucasian rock, in eternal pain though in eternal
defiance; and Napoleon frets away his mighty life at St. Helena watched
by the callous eyes of Sir Hudson Lowe.
About three o'clock my cell door was again unlocked and I was invited to
take a bath. In the corridor I met my two fellow prisoners, and we were
all three marched back to the reception room. Three good baths of warm
water were awaiting us. What a glorious luxury after the six days'
confinement, without any means of washing one's skin! Some of the
prisoners, I understand, regard the first bath as the worst part of the
punishment. They are brought up in dirt, and love it; like the Italian
who deserted the English girl he was engaged to, and justified himself
by saying: "Oh, if I marry her, she wash me, and then I die." We,
however, splashed about in our baths, uttering ejaculations of pleasure,
and congratulating each other on at least one pleasant bit of prison
experience.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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