To return to my theme--I came to feel that whether or not I was handled softly, others as deserving as I, or less deserving, or more deserving, were not; and that if I had no personal grounds for complaint, they had. I could not adopt the point of view of one of the "better" class of convicts: "The warden has always treated me decently, and I don't mean to bite the hand that caressed me." I need not affirm, either, that my good fortune was due to an expectation that I would respond in kind; that would be an unverifiable inference. But it was plain that the officials took interest in the prison paper as a medium for advertising and gaining credit for the penitentiary; and that when I began to write for it, newspapers all over the country quoted the articles and commented kindly on them. My name was given a prominence, unwelcome, though well meant; accounts of my doings and condition, entirely apocryphal (for I never saw a newspaper man during my stay, or gave out any form of interview), were published and featured from time to time; I was kept more or less in the public eye. If, now, I were to be starved and clubbed, dungeoned and otherwise maltreated, not only would I be incapacitated from contributing to the paper, but some hint of the facts might leak out and impair the reputation of Atlanta Penitentiary as a Gentleman's Club and Humane Paradise. Accordingly, if I were found smoking out of hours, or were missing from count,--"Never mind--it's only Hawthorne!" It may be, of course, that my personal charm was so irresistible that every official from the warden down fell victim to it, and would rather prove recreant to their oath of office than interfere with me; my vanity craves to believe so, yet I hesitate. At any rate, with whatever sugar the gag was sweetened, or whether the suggestion of it was inadvertent, I did not feel justified in accepting it; and when I got out, the waiting reporters at last obtained what they had so long awaited. But though my eight hundred comrades seem to have been gratified with my words, I cannot think that they were equally satisfactory to the officials; for I am informed that Hawthorne's writings are henceforth barred from the penitentiary. I must have hurt their feelings in some way; no one can please everybody.