“Barren of mental resources, too stupid to see, far less read, the vast romance that lay all around him, every cell a volume; too mindless to comprehend his own grand situation on a salient of the State and of human nature, and to discern the sacred and endless pleasures to be gathered there, this unhappy dolt, flung into a lofty situation by shallow blockheads, who, like himself, saw in a jail nothing greater or more than a ‘place of punishment,’ must still like his prisoners and the rest of us have some excitement to keep him from going dead. * * * Growth is the nature * * * even of an unnatural habit. * * * Torture had grown upon stupid, earnest Hawes; it seasoned that white of egg, a mindless existence.” The satisfaction one has in seeing him finally routed and dismissed is enhanced by the manner of his exit. He is given permission to collect his belongings before departure:--[303] “‘I have nothing to take out of the jail, man,’ replied Hawes rudely, ‘except’--and here he did a bit of pathos and dignity--‘my zeal for Her Majesty’s service, and my integrity.’ “‘Ah,’ replied Mr. Lacy, quietly, ‘You won’t want any help to carry them.’” Next in order comes the “Visiting Injustice,” a purblind creature, who sees only what the warden points out to him, and comforts a tortured prisoner with pious exhortations to be patient and submit:[304] “Item. An occasion for twaddling had come, and this good soul seized it, and twaddled into a man’s ear who was fainting on the rack.” Later a sarcastic contrast is drawn between the dinner the official enjoys at home and the convict’s gruel he had just ordered diluted.[305] The first chaplain, well meaning and gentle, is also a failure, through simple inanity:[306] “Yet Mr. Jones was not a hypocrite nor a monster; he was only a commonplace man--a thing moulded by circumstances instead of moulding them. * * * But at the head of a struggling nation, or in the command of an army in time of war, or at the head of the religious department of a jail, fighting against human wolves, tigers, and foxes, to be commonplace is an iniquity and leads to crime.” On the enlightened officialdom that permits all this, Reade is one with Dickens. When an urgent appeal for investigation is sent to headquarters, the reply is returned that the inspector would reach that place in his normal circuit in six weeks:[307] “‘Six weeks is not long to wait for help in a matter of life and death,’ thought the eighty-pounders, the clerks who execute England.” Most unpardonable of all are such cases as Carter,--[308] “* * * half-witted, half-responsible creatures, missent to jail by shallow judges contentedly executing those shallow laws they ought to modify and stigmatise until civilization shall come and correct them.”