"You would have only yourself to blame!"--I hear that comment. If you are kicked, be like the puppy--roll over on your back and hold up your paws for mercy. But if canine models are in question, I feel more inclination to the thoroughbred bulldog, who does what he can and would do more if he could. I have undertaken a heavy responsibility, and must make the best showing I may with it. I no longer have a lifetime before me, but I have learned while I have been alive that the methods of the puppy are not remunerative in the end. Every natural instinct in me calls out for rest and peace, and to forget the valleys of grief and humiliation; but there is another voice which summons me to other issues. I am sensible of my lack of strength and fitness for the enterprise; but I believe that it was no idle circumstance that called me to it; I believe in a Divine government of the world, which chooses sometimes to use unlikely instruments to accomplish its will. The little I can do may inspire worthier deeds by more powerful hands. Emerson found simple words for a mighty thought-- "One accent of the Holy Ghost The heedless world hath never lost!" The prophets of old had no dignity or weight in themselves, but they delivered messages which changed the world. "What! that old numskull be the mouthpiece of Jehovah?" his townsfolk might exclaim. But so it was. What is any one of us in himself? However, I don't wish to bear too hard on this pedal. It is easier to look at things from the commonplace standpoint. One thing or another prevented any of my companions in the jail from doing what it was desirable to do, and circumstances quite unforeseen opened a way for me to do it. What I have said above was with a view of showing how difficult it may ordinarily be to bring prison facts to light; and if, by chance, some individual should find means to his hand to open a window, he would be a poltroon if he forbore to do it. I am under no illusions as to the obstacles in my way, nor do I anticipate that what I am trying to do will result in prompt or vital changes for the better in prison management. The facts I adduce may be discredited, but if they are true they will not be lost. My eight hundred inarticulate comrades are always present in my thoughts. I have left them in the body, but I see their faces wherever I turn. It is a crime that any human beings should be arbitrarily kept in the conditions which surround them, and if I can loosen one stone of the Bastile which, at Atlanta and elsewhere, annually engulfs and destroys so many of them, I shall be content. XIII THE BANQUETS OF THE DAMNED