[NOTE.—Mrs. Salome C. Foster, of blessed memory, for many years devoted herself to the unfortunates confined in the city prisons. This valuable and beautiful life was lost in the Park Avenue Hotel fire, February 22, 1902.] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ _CHAPTER XI_ _Life_ All that is enjoyable; all that one would possess, and do if one could, is summed up in this word—Life! What is it that the young would see? and the flight of which is regretted by the old? It is Life! This is the almost universal meaning of the word. You speak it, and think of dance and song, women and wine, sunlight, blue skies, and freedom. To us it has another meaning—try and imagine it. Sometimes when an important trial is closing and the jury is out till midnight perhaps, we, the inhabitants of the Tombs, sit up and listen for the little bell which rings in the prison, because one of us is being brought back across the “Bridge of Sighs.” Here he comes! “What did you get?” calls out a friend from the top tier, and there is a clutch at every heart, a horror that you on the outside will never be able to appreciate, when we hear the answer, the sentence most dreaded—“LIFE.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ _CHAPTER XII_ _My Friend the Major_ Without exception, the Major is one of the finest men I have ever met. I like him so much that I am willing to tell a truthful story, or rather, tell a story truthfully (which is a very different thing), at my own expense. It was this way: Benjamin had got religion. Benjamin preached a long sermon to us every single evening; he preached revival sermons, missionary sermons, and obituary ones on all the fellows who had gone through the “little door.” When he had exhausted these—and us, he would say, “Now this is what I am going to say about _you_, Mr. Roland, after you have gone.” What followed would depend on how I had treated him during the day.