No resolve, however, could overcome the influence of that locked and barred gate, nor the realization that I was a convict, and that nobody inside the penitentiary had any doubt that I was justly convicted. Friends were remote and helpless; the support of former good repute was annulled; I stood there impotent, one man against the Federal Government, with nothing to aid me but the weight of my personal equation (whatever that might be worth) and my private attitude on the question of my guilt, which the trial had not modified, but which could be of no practical benefit to me here. The sensation of confronting everywhere a settled and hostile skepticism as to one's integrity was novel, and hard to meet with a firm countenance. And I felt how easily this sensation might crush the courage of one who was conscious of being justly condemned. How many men must be sitting yonder in those cells who lacked the moral consolations that I had! The thought sharpened my perception of the horror of all imprisonment, but at the same time stiffened my fortitude; for if these men could live through their ordeal, how much more could I! Meanwhile we were being hurried through the handsome corridor, and down a flight of iron steps to a less presentable region. There was no aggressive brutality, only a peremptory curtness, entirely proper in the circumstances. Our only defense against physical severity was a bearing of cheerful but not overdone courtesy, and we gave that what play we might. I could not foretell how I might behave under a clubbing, and would not bring the thing to a test, if I could decently avoid it. In a long, low, shabby, ill-lighted room we were lined up against a counter, on the other side of which were two or three of our fellow prisoners--the first we had seen--whose function it was to fit us with prison suits. They consisted of a sack coat and trousers of gray-blue cloth--rather heavy goods, for the warm season had not yet begun--and this was obviously far from being their first appearance on a convict; suits are handed down from one generation of prisoners to another until they are entirely worn out; my own was of an ancient vintage and a good deal defaced, but I had no ambition to be a glass of fashion in jail. Of course I could only conjecture what diseases previous wearers of it might have suffered from; but I hoped for the best. Every new arrival at the penitentiary is presumed to be dirty until he is proved clean, and the only way for him to prove his bodily purity is to submit to a bath. The regulation is commendable, and was welcome to us after our day and night in the train; but a comrade of mine from the mountain wildernesses of South Carolina, where bathing is still regarded as a degrading innovation, described to me long afterward what a sturdy battle he had put up against the disgrace, and being a lusty youth, it had taken the best efforts of several guards to hold him under the spout long enough