...
I pleaded with the jailer to deliver it for me ... told him how
important it would be to our lives ... adjured him to consider our
helpless and penniless state. He promised to deliver it for me.
"I have nothing to give you, now," I ended, "but, if I ever get free,
I'll send you twenty-five dollars or so from up home, when I reach the
North."
* * * * *
A prisoner's first dream is "escape." Voices outside on the street, the
sight of the tops of green trees through bars, dogs barking far away,
the travels of the sun as shown by moving bands of light on the walls
and in the cells--all remind him of the day when he was, as he now sees
it, happy and free ... he forgets entirely, in the midst of the jail's
black restraints, the lesser evils of outside, daily life. Even the
termagant wife is turned into a domestic angel.
* * * * *
Under the smoky prison lamp made of a whiskey bottle filled with oil,
and a shred of shirt drawn through a cork, we planned to cut out.
"The way to do it is easy," said the little pickpocket, "in the sole of
every good shoe is a steel spring. I'll take the steel from my shoe.
There's already one bar removed from the chuck-hole (No use trying to
reproduce the dialect). If we saw out another bar, that will give us
enough room for going through.
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