"
The story so impressed me that I could not for days lose sight of the
picture it raised; the double walls of iron grating; the cruel,
inexorable, empty space between them,--empty, yet crowded with words and
looks; the lines of anxious, yearning faces on either side. But presently
I said to myself, It is, after all, not so unlike the life we all live.
Who of us is not in prison? Who of us is not living out his time of
punishment? Law holds us all in its merciless fulfilment of penalty for
sin; disease, danger, work separate us, wall us, bury us. That we are not
numbered with the number of a cell, clothed in the uniform of a prison,
locked up at night, and counted in the morning, is only an apparent
difference, and not so real a one. Our jailers do not know us; but we know
them. There is no fixed day gleaming for us in the future when our term of
sentence will expire and we shall regain freedom. It may be to-morrow; but
it may be threescore years away. Meantime, we bear ourselves as if we were
not in prison. We profess that we choose, we keep our fetters out of
sight, we smile, we sing, we contrive to be glad of being alive, and we
take great interest in the changing of our jails.
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