The night officer has just stopped for a moment at the grating of my cell. I ask him the time. Seven-twenty. Good Lord! I thought it must be nearly nine. I am usually very good at guessing time, but in this place I am utterly unable to make any accurate calculation. Just for the experience, I'm going to stop writing and lock up my writing materials, to see how it feels to have nothing to do. I take down my paper and pencil again to record a most thrilling discovery. I have found--a pocket in my prison coat! All day I have worried at the absence of one; now I find it--left, on the inside. Imagine the state of mind when such a thing really produces almost a feeling of nervous excitement. I simply must keep on writing out of sheer desperation. I have tried to use up some minutes by rearranging my clothes, pulling up my socks, and tightening my belt; I have not yet investigated the workings of my bed, as I wish to leave that for a later excitement. From the distance I catch the single stroke of the City Hall bell, which marks eight o'clock. Another hour yet before the lights go out; and then ten hours more before I can leave this cell! How in the world do they bear it--the men who look forward to long years of imprisonment? My working partner, Murphy, has a life term. For what, I wonder? He seems like such a good fellow; and the Chaplain has just spoken of him most highly. What a mystery it all is! And what a commentary on our civilization that we can do nothing better with such men than to throw away their lives and ruin them, body and soul. The old ones arouse one's pity; but the young men--many of those in chapel yesterday were mere boys. God! What a miserable, shameful waste of human life--of human energy! Must we not find some way in which the good there is in these broken lives can be repaired and made useful to society? At last a bell, the first signal for the night. I think it is twenty minutes before nine. As the kindly gallery boy has brought me a glass tumbler, I brush my teeth with a minimum of inconvenience, wash my face, and then investigate the workings of the bed. It is loosely fastened to two iron hooks in the wall, on the inside; and the outside rests on two legs which dangle in the air vaguely, and will probably let me down in the night if they do not rest firmly on the floor to begin with. After manipulating the bed successfully, I let down the mattress on top of it and arrange the blankets as well as possible. About a quarter of an hour more before lights out. It is all very well to look forward to that landmark, but what after that? What of the ten-hour night ahead of me? And this is only the first night of six. Suppose it were the first night of six thousand.