" . . . In point of fact, Robbie, prison life makes
one see people and things as they really are. That is why it turns one
to stone. It is the people outside who are deceived by the illusions of
a life in constant motion. They revolve with life and contribute to its
unreality. We who are immobile both see and know. Whether or not the
letter does good to narrow natures and hectic brains, to me it has done
good. I have "cleansed my bosom of much perilous stuff"; to borrow a
phrase from the poet whom you and I once thought of rescuing from the
Philistines. I need not remind you that mere expression is to an artist
the supreme and only mode of life. It is by utterance that we live. Of
the many, many things for which I have to thank the Governor there is
none for which I am more grateful than for his permission to write fully
and at as great a length as I desire. For nearly two years I had within
a growing burden of bitterness, of much of which I have now got rid. On
the other side of the prison wall there are some poor black
soot-besmirched trees that are just breaking out into buds of an almost
shrill green.
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