In most ways, of course, my life in prison during the second term was similar to what it was on my first term. Books and opium were my main pleasures. If it had not been for them and for the thoughts about life and about my fellow convicts which they led me to form, the monotony of the prison routine would have driven me mad. My health was by that time badly shattered. I was very nervous and could seldom sleep without a drug. My moral health was far worse, too, than it had been on my first term. Then I had made strong efforts to overcome the opium habit, and laid plans to give up grafting. Then I had some decent ambitions, and did not look upon myself as a confirmed criminal; whereas on the second term, I had grown to take a hopeless view of my case. I began to feel that I could not reform, no matter how hard I tried. It seemed to me, too, that it was hardly worth while now to make an effort, for I thought my health was worse than it really was and that I should die soon, with no opportunity to live the intelligent life I had learned to admire through my books. I still made good resolutions, and some effort to quit the hop, but they were weak in comparison with the efforts I had made during my first term. More and more it seemed to me that I belonged in the under world for good, and that I might as well go through it to the end. Stealing was my profession. It was all I knew how to do, and I didn't believe that anybody was interested enough in me to teach me anything else. On the other hand, what I had learned on the Rocky Path would never leave me. I was sure of my knowledge of the technique of graft, and I knew that a sucker was born every minute. CHAPTER XII. _On the Outside Again._ My time on the second bit was drawing to a close. I was eager to get out, of course, but I knew way down in my mind, that it would be only to graft again. I made a resolution that I would regain my health and gather a little fall-money before I started in hard again on the Rocky Path. On the day of my release, Warden Sage called me to his office and talked to me like a friend. He did not know that I was a second timer, or he might not have been so kind to me. He was a humane man, and in spite of his belief in the stool-pigeon system, he introduced good things into Sing Sing. He improved the condition of the cells and we were not confined there so much as we had been before he came. On my first term many a man staid for days in his cell without ever going out; one man was confined twenty-eight days on bread and water. But under Mr. Sage punishments were not so severe. He even used to send delicacies to men chained up in the Catholic Chapel.