The Subterranean Brotherhood Part 10

They looked me over keenly and thoroughly to begin with; and no inquisitors have more sensitive intuitions or are quicker to suspect double-dealing than they. My aspect, my bearing, my speech, my affiliations, my treatment, all came under their scrutiny, and were debated in that secret court which prisoners hold. Not at first, nor lightly, did they give me the honor of their confidence. I might be a spy sent in from without, or a stool pigeon made within, or I might be indifferent or loose-mouthed. But when they did resolve to trust me--when I was elected a member of the "inner circle," as one of them phrased it,--they had no reservations. I was called on to make no protestations, to register no oaths, nor did I solicit any communications. They came to me freely, and either by laboriously penned or penciled letters written on surrept.i.tious sc.r.a.ps of paper in ill-lighted cells, or by circ.u.mspect word of mouth mumbled into my ear on the baseball ground of a Sat.u.r.day afternoon, they would disclose their long h.o.a.rded and grievous facts. "I wouldn't lie to you, Mr.

Hawthorne--what would be the use? it would come back on me!" But I was listening to the break and tremor in their voices, the hurry and awkward indignation, the eager marshaling of insignificant details, the dreary, apathetic recital of sordid or callous outrages, the hopelessness striving once more to hope. "If they'd only send us an inspector who wouldn't be always dining with the warden, and junketting in his auto, and taking the screws' word against ours--a fellow who'd peel off his coat and size things up independent!" Their wish was not fulfilled in my time; the inspections were a farce and a scandal. There was a tradition of one inspector who had really effected something--who seemed to think of his duty, as well as of good dinners and joy rides--but that was long ago. That he never repeated his visit would seem to indicate that his report was found inconvenient.

Meantime, I did not need their a.s.severations of veracity; the truth shone through their uncouth stories. They were widely different from the glib patter that runs out of a crook's mouth in the presence of an official. Some of these men were seasoned criminals; often they did not themselves understand how iniquitous was the "deal" that had been given them, being too much inured to the tricks and treachery of the detectives' practises to feel special animosity regarding them; but more or less dimly they felt that wrong was being done them that was not contemplated or recognized by the law. The last thing to die in a man is his sense of justice; "I'm as bad a man as you like, and I'm willing to take my proper medicine; but they ought to give a man a square deal!"

There was a young fellow there, well educated, with an intelligent, agreeable face and gentlemanly bearing; I got his story, not from him, but from the reminiscences of others. One time "Bob got nutty, and wouldn't come out of his cell, and started setting fire to his bedding.

His cell got filled with the smoke and he was near choking to death, and fell down on the floor. A bunch of screws stood in front of his door making fun of him, and they held a blanket up so the smoke wouldn't get out. At last they opened the door and pulled him out, and they clubbed him good and plenty, and then they dragged him down the stairs--he was in an upper tier, understand--with his head b.u.mping against every step.

They threw him into a dark cell, and left him there." There he had leisure to recover from his "nuttiness." It was nothing much out of the usual, only the incident happened to offer spectacular features which served to keep the memory of it fresh. But does the Department of Justice countenance such diversions?

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" cla.s.s 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.

The naive surprise expressed in some local quarters outside the penitentiary went to show how unexpected and almost incredible my statements appeared to be--or, from another point of view, how successfully hitherto the truth had been suppressed. The truth being once unshackled, I was anxious to get the widest possible circulation for it, and therefore arranged for its publication in various newspapers distributed over the country; but I was not altogether sanguine that my plan of public enlightenment would prove an unqualified success. The System, as I have indicated, had several guns which it might bring to bear, and it was conceivable that some of the editors who had subscribed to the syndicate might find reason to regard the articles as not adapted to the taste of their readers, and decline to risk offending them any further. If other guns of the System should prove inadequate, there was always the great gun to be depended upon, known as the Law for Libel. I took what precautions I could with respect to this formidable and most respectable weapon; I stipulated that a competent lawyer should read each article before it was offered for publication, and inform me of any pa.s.sage in any of them which might be obnoxious to the provisions of this law, in order that such pa.s.sages might be modified or expunged. He carefully discharged his function; and if any reader should detect a lack of continuity or explicitness in any of my statements, he may charitably ascribe it to the consequences of the lawyer's advice; since, even in this free country, the proprieties must be observed. If I were fortunate enough to escape the missiles of the Libel gun, I had still to be on my guard against more obscure and personal weapons; I am an ex-convict, and any lenity of treatment which I had hitherto enjoyed is not to be looked for in the future. If I were sent back to prison, my shrift was likely to be short; and I could only hope, in that event, to have been able to say enough to afford my entertainers ample provocation for giving me, as my comrades would say, the limit.

"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 circ.u.mstance 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 circ.u.mstances 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 antic.i.p.ate 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 d.a.m.nED

The walls of jails are good non-conductors of what goes on behind them, and this applies to other prisons as well as to that at Atlanta. Yet once in a while a groan or protest, or a partial account of some outbreak, finds its way through; and in many cases the gist of the story is to the effect that the food is bad or scanty. Other things the men behind the bars suffer stoically, or not so stoically; but lack of food arouses them to despair and frenzy. We have lately heard reports from Sing Sing ill.u.s.trative of this condition there; and many another jail could echo the complaints of the unfortunates in that gloomy h.e.l.l-chamber.

Convicts know that they are to be punished, that the government has sentenced them, that it is the law; and though they may find cause to disagree with the decree that consigns them to hopeless and useless servitude, they accept it as at least legal and incident to the game as played. But they do not believe that the government has condemned them to starvation, or to poisoning (and the condition in which food often comes to the convicts' table is practically poisonous). They know that no such punishment is included in the statutes; and they can only conclude, therefore, that it is an arbitrary and illegal piece of cruelty or neglect on the part of the warden or commissary officer. They are p.r.o.ne to think that these persons profit financially by cutting down their supplies; and that they are careful to conceal the fact in their reports to the Department, or to disguise it as a meritorious economy.

At the same time, they are conscious that there is no regular channel through which they can make their injury known to the authorities, and that nothing is more readily denied, or more easily concealed from inspectors, than is this very abuse.

But the suffering which it occasions is constant and c.u.mulative. They are still required to perform their labor, as if in full physical vigor.

They are punished if physical weakness causes them to fall short in their tasks. They feel their vitality ebbing, they find themselves ever less able to resist the inroads of disease, their appeals to the doctors are often met with sneers and even animosity; and what marvel is it that stoicism and patience at last give way, and they break out in some wild and savage excess which justifies the resort by their masters to the dungeon and the bullet? But death may well seem to the rebels preferable to the lingering pains of the alternative fate.

The under nourishment and malnourishment of convicts is, in fact, one of the worst crimes of the many which their despots perpetrate upon them.

From any point of view, it is barbarous and wicked--the crime of a Weyler upon the defenseless Cuban revolutionists, which, as much as the destruction of the Maine, impelled this country to declare war. Yet, knowing as we do that it is perpetrated upon the human beings in our prisons, we sit supine and acquiescent, and thereby make the crime our own.

Have you not imagination enough to put yourself for a moment in the predicament of the prisoner? There you sit in the narrow gloom of your cell, or you toil in the stifling confinement of your work room, and such is not only your state to-day, but for years to come it will be unchanged. You are isolated from sight of and a.s.sociation with every man and woman in the world who cares for you or thinks kindly of you; silence and rigid obedience are imposed upon you; you meet no looks that are not harsh, and hear no words but sharp commands or angry menaces.

Your very toil is idle and unpaid, and its diligent performance brings you no credit or hope, except treacherous promises of a good constantly delayed. And then picture yourself when, after wearisome hours, the whistle blows that means intermission of labor and the renewal of strength by food. Yet that summons, instead of cheering you, does but make the burden of your misery heavier.

Sullenly and heavily, in the endless line, you tramp into the huge, comfortless hall, with its hideous tables and benches, and as you pa.s.s up the aisles you glance abhorrently at the dirty sc.r.a.ps and ma.s.ses of provender dumped carelessly out of noisome buckets by the filthy hands of the servers upon plates still rough and foul with the hardened grease of foregoing meals. You are faint for lack of nourishment, yet the sight of what is provided, and the unclean smell of it, nauseate instead of inviting you. Eat you must, if you would live and have strength to work, yet if you eat you invite sickness and suffering, and if you could eat all, and a.s.similate it, you would still leave the table but half fed.

Every tyro in physiology knows the effect upon the general organism of dejection and resentment at meals. Prisoners more than men in any other condition need abundance to eat and good cheer while eating; but the food they get, and the circ.u.mstances in which they get it, causes them to degenerate physically, and the body affects the mind. Physical disease breeds the disease of evil thoughts and impulses. Criminals might be generated by prison food alone, without taking account of their previous records and future prospects.

We of Atlanta penitentiary used to hear occasionally of the bills-of-fare of our repasts in the prison that were daily forwarded to Was.h.i.+ngton, by way of rea.s.suring the Department of Justice, and whom else it might concern, as to the substance and excellence of our nourishment. These alimentary doc.u.ments might be compared with like lists at Delmonico's and the Waldorf, and the names of the viands would be found to be identical. The inference, to the legal mind, not to speak of the penological one, was plain: the convicts at the penitentiary fared as sumptuously as do the banqueters of the Four Hundred--at no cost, moreover, to themselves, not even waiters' tips.

For here were rich soups and gravies, substantial roast beef, succulent steaks and chops, the renowned baked beans of legend, comforting hashes, pies and puddings, fresh vegetables, including the famous sweet potato of the South in its pride; and long draughts of milk from the tranquil cows of the pasture, together with tea and coffee from the Orient, sugar, mustard, salt and pepper and vinegar, enough to beguile the most squeamish appet.i.te, and, to top off with, fruits in their season, led by the incomparable Georgia watermelon. I may have inadvertently omitted some items from this toothsome list, but it is enough as it stands to make an epicure's mouth water. And if any skeptic were still unconvinced, a photographer would be admitted with his undeniable camera at certain seasons--Christmas and Fourth of July, for example--who would place a picture of the revelry and the revelers on the everlasting records, with garlands and festive decorations, and actual dishes of some sort on the groaning boards, and serried rows of plump felons ready to fall to.

The fame of all this went forth into the world, and Atlanta Penitentiary, its warden, its guards, and its cooks s.h.i.+ne in penal annals as the acme and ideal of modern humanitarian ideas upon the reclamation of convicts through gentleness and love, and a full stomach.

I found opportunity to study some of these historic scrolls, and was so much impressed by them that I caused a suggestion to be conveyed to the warden. Instead of sending all the menus to Was.h.i.+ngton, and to admiring friends in the Atlanta neighborhood, let one or two of them be placed at each meal upon the tables of the diners, to the end that they might be stimulated, by the perusal of these literary masterpieces, to choke down their gullets the actual garbage which was furnished in the name thereof. But the warden's views seem not to have been in harmony with mine on this occasion. I am glad to learn, however, from certain graduates of the inst.i.tution since my own departure from it, that the food has greatly improved in quant.i.ty and somewhat even in quality, since these chapters began to appear in newspapers.

I need not attempt to fathom the reason. If it were incomparable before, why or how better it?

It could hardly have been done at the instance of the old and warm personal friend of the warden and the Attorney-General who was sent to Atlanta recently in the guise of a Spartan inspector of the alleged abuses; because, for one thing, the improvement had set in long before he made his investigation, and the investigator, in his report, appears to have discovered no room for improvement anywhere. It must have just happened--one of those miracles in the way of gilding refined gold and painting the lily which are so common nowhere else as in our model penal inst.i.tutions.

I had ample opportunity to study the subject personally while a guest at the prison table, and to compare my impressions with those of my fellow prisoners, as well as to enlarge them by conferences with persons employed in the kitchen and commissary department. Men who had served in other prisons--and their combined experiences covered a great many--were unanimous and emphatic in declaring that the table at Atlanta was the worst they had ever known, not only as to scantness of supply, but as to the unwholesomeness or positively poisonous quality of the food furnished. But let me tell a little of what I saw and knew myself.

When the change was made from long tables and benches to tables seating eight and chairs, it was announced that table cloths would also be supplied, and napkins. That was two or three years ago, but table cloths have not yet appeared, and the eaters still wipe their mouths on the backs of their hands in the good old way. Pepper and salt were on the table, and a bottle of something that looked like beer and was supposed to be vinegar, but was sampled only by the more reckless or inexperienced convicts. Sugar was not provided except on rare occasions, and to "diet" prisoners--men who were restricted to bread and milk and oatmeal. Some beverage that dishonored the name of tea was served about once a fortnight; a brown, semi-transparent rinsing of dirty kettles, sugarless, thin and bitter, called coffee, came every day; but if your stomach rejected either of these, you could fill up on plain water.

The latter, however, like the "diet" milk and oatmeal and the drinkables generally, had to be taken out of metal mugs covered with white enamel, minute particles of which chipped off and mingled with what you drank.

These particles were hard and sharp, like pure gla.s.s, and they cut and lodged in the intestines, causing, with other things, an excessive predisposition to appendicitis--a frequent disease in the penitentiary.

This was also promoted by the bread, which was made of the poorest grade of white flour, without nouris.h.i.+ng quality, the value per loaf being about two cents; the flour was ground in steel mills, and microscopic particles of steel were rubbed off into it--this fact I had from a physician who had examined it. The flour, when received at the prison, was frequently full of weevils, most of which but not all were sifted out before it was used. The bread was tasteless and light; it was baked in large quant.i.ties, and what was not consumed by the prisoners was sold outside.

It is not provided in the prison regulations that officials shall be fed at the expense of the prisoners. Nevertheless, a separate and superior grade of flour is purchased at government expense, and is used to make bread which is given to the officials; the loaves are placed in the outer corridor, and are taken away by guards and others every day.

Separate cooks are also a.s.signed to prepare the officials' food on the prison ranges; the meats and vegetables are of a grade much better than is supplied to prisoners; but some favored prisoners partic.i.p.ate in their consumption. The higher officials have the best food the market affords and in such ample abundance that certain prison pets, usually negroes, get their main subsistence from the surplus.

The beef given to prisoners was of the third grade--the worst on the market--it is cow or bull beef, never heifer or steer, and often it is rotten, and must be treated chemically before being offered even to prisoners. It used to come on the table in gristly and bony gobbets, after having lain on the kitchen ranges for hours, until it was reduced to a hardness which resisted all but the most efficient and vigorous teeth (which, except with negroes, are rare in prison). I used to compare these "steaks" and other pieces with old blackened boot heels; they were hardly less eatable and nouris.h.i.+ng. Often it smelt so that nature rebelled against it; but complaints were liable to be met by committal to the solitary cells.

But groups of visitors used to appear in the dining room occasionally; they were lined up along the wall adjoining the door, and were not allowed to walk between the tables, so that the only food they could see was what was put on the tables nearest the door; and this was always of a quality superior to the rest, and there was more of it per man. It was one of the little tricks employed to maintain the entente cordiale, by which the prisoners who sat at those tables benefited, and the visitors went forth to sing the praises of our warm hearted warden. On the days when the bread was sour or the meat stank, visitors were headed away from the dining room, and their attention directed to more important matters.

The hash, which often made the breakfast, was composed of fragments of gristle and refuse left on the prisoners' plates after dinner, mixed with potatoes and rancid grease; this, and the soups and gravies, which had a similar origin, gave out a most nauseating smell. The men would gulp it down--it was that, or starve--trying to help it on its way with all the condiments they could lay hands on; but the effect of it, and of the food generally, upon the digestive tract was so disastrous in most cases that they might better have left it alone. I myself retired from the enterprise in my second or third week, and would have literally died of inanition had not the doctor, moved by I know not what suggestion (not mine), put me on the milk and oatmeal diet during the remainder of my sojourn. This applied for breakfast and supper; I sat at dinner, but satisfied myself with nibbling bread crusts, and witnessing the forlorn and perilous efforts of my friends to walk the line between starvation and acute indigestion. Not many were successful.

For vegetables we had Irish and sweet potatoes, turnip tops (uneatable), black-eyed beans, bitter and greasy, and once a month, perhaps, a tomato. The b.u.t.ter was made of an inferior quality of lard, and cottonseed oil--a substance which entered into many other of our viands, and of which, with grease, it was calculated by an expert in the kitchen, we were offered as much as one pound per man every day. It produced a calamitous effect upon the digestive tract, inasmuch as there was hardly a white man in the prison who did not suffer chronically from stomach troubles--constant suffering, often becoming acute. The strongest digestions would resist for a while, but finally succ.u.mb.

There was a poultry farm on the grounds, donated by outside benefactors specifically and exclusively for the benefit of prisoners, beginning with the tuberculous patients. After it got going, there may have been an average of six hundred fowls on the place. Of these, not one ever appeared on the prison tables. With the exception of a possible few that were stolen by prisoners having access to the yard, all were appropriated by higher officials, and the eggs as well.

One official gave frequent dinner parties to his friends, and was said to use as many as five or six chickens a day, though I cannot vouch for that--it seems excessive. He certainly, sometimes, commandeered as many as fourteen or more at one time. There was a story of a great cake which he had made for some festival, into the composition of which entered one hundred and four eggs from our farm. To neither chickens nor eggs had he, of course, any t.i.tle more legitimate than have you who read these lines. He had a large and hungry household, and many guests--among them, commonly, such government inspectors as were sent down from Was.h.i.+ngton, to see whether he and his fellow officials were honestly discharging their functions.

As for the tuberculous patients, I was never able to find any of them who had eaten chicken from the farm, or any part of one. Some chicken soup was at one time ordered for a patient by the doctor; a prisoner (a famous physician), a deputy of the doctor, happened to be at the tuberculosis camp when the soup arrived from the kitchen. It consisted of some warm water with the shank--not the drumstick, but the shank and foot--of a fowl in it. This aroused his interest, and twice again he was present when a chicken soup prescribed appeared at the camp. On both occasions--he stands ready so to testify under oath--he found the same foot and shank in it, but nothing else recalling chicken. The foot was identified by an imperfection in one of its toes.

Eggs were indeed provided for the hospital prisoners (never for the general ma.s.s), but they were cold storage eggs, the cheapest grade that could be bought in the market, and that is saying much for this sort of product nowadays. Out of one mess of eight that were served in the hospital, and of which I gained authentic news from the prisoner physician already referred to, six were bad. I am informed that these notes and comments of mine are not permitted to be read by the prisoners; but perhaps the original donors of the poultry farm may see them, and be prompted to inquire into their accuracy. Let us return to the dining room.

Sweet potatoes abound in the South, and subsistence upon them exclusively would reduce the cost of living; the only trouble is that the human stomach refuses to cooperate in this economy. Sweet potatoes were served at Atlanta during the season three times a day, baked, boiled and in pies; the men were hungry enough, and the supply of potatoes was adequate; but had they been of the finest instead of the worst quality in the market, the experiment would have failed; starvation proved preferable; we could not get them down. That soft, slimy sweetness, foul with dirt and often tainted with decay, reappearing day after day at every meal for weeks on end, outdid endurance, nor could we be stimulated by the argument that the Government was saving money by it. Had the sweet potato season lasted the year round, the warden would have lost his job from mere dearth of prisoners to earn his salary on.

I do not forget the corn, either; it was of the brand fed to farm animals; but this enumeration becomes monotonous. We had apple pies once a week or so; and I was told by an employee in the kitchen, who had been a farmer in his time, that the apples were such as could be bought at a dollar a barrel, and that the charge appearing in bills submitted to the Government was five dollars. The quality of the apples in the pies supports my informant's contention. As for the watermelons--a benefactor of the prisoners bought a consignment of them sufficient for the prison population, to be eaten on the Fourth of July, 1913. The contract was for the best melons obtainable; and Georgia is famous for good melons. A day or two before the Fourth, the benefactor called at the prison, and asked to see the melons, which had been delivered some time before.

Examination showed them to be of an inferior grade, such as farmers used for cattle and poultry. It was too late, however, to get a fresh supply, and the benefactor had the mortification of seeing the kindly meant gift dishonored. It is pertinent, here, that there is said to be an individual in Atlanta not officially connected with the penitentiary who is commissioned to make all purchases for the prison--food, tobacco, and other supplies. He buys the stuff, and hands in his bills; but the bills he pays are not submitted. It is conceivable that there may be a discrepancy between the two amounts, and it might be interesting to learn whether he alone benefits by it.

Guards walk up and down the aisles between the tables, during meals, to keep order and also to attend to complaints or requests from prisoners.

There is also the man in the window with the loaded magazine rifle, ready to settle any complaints that become too insistent. The common protest is against the badness of a specific piece of food, or against some example of dirt. The former seldom get relief; in the latter case, the dish or cup is sometimes changed.

A prisoner at my table called the guard's attention to a quid of tobacco which had got into his soup. The guard, who was of a humorous turn, replied, smiling, "Well, you use tobacco, don't you?" and pa.s.sed on.

This was the same guard who a.s.saulted and clubbed a prisoner whom he was taking downstairs, as described in a previous chapter. On another occasion, a prisoner complained that there was a beetle in his hash. An examination was made; but whether the beetle was alive and got away, or whether the prisoner himself had "bugs," as the slang is, at any rate the examiners reported no beetle. The matter was then brought before the authorities, who ordered the complainant to the dark hole.

Another day, following some months of constant deterioration in the food, and diminution in the quant.i.ty of it, a dinner of hash and bread was served, and both bread and hash were sour. The air of the room was full of the sour smell; the captain came down the aisle near mine, and a prisoner had the boldness to stop him and hold up his plate. "It's sour, Captain!" said he. The captain looked the man in the eye and replied sternly, "It is not sour!" "But, Captain--" "I say it is not sour!" the other repeated with a threatening look. It was either submit, or the hole; the man sat down.