The first and the last week seem longest in the term of imprisonment.
During the rest of the time the hours pass in swift succession, as the
work and the regular hours help to shorten the time; there is a spirit
of patience, and the mind becomes more and more introspective and
philosophical.
But in the last week all the thoughts, the plans, the ambitions, the
discoveries of a new future, seem to be concentrated. The minutes drag
by with a laborious and torpid slowness, and there is an intensity of
time which seems to crowd sixty hours into one single hour by the clock.
The ordinary patient, often of a cheerful habit of mind, is of a sudden
transformed into a cranky, impatient, unruly, violent attitude.
During that last week I very nearly got into trouble, for the first time
in my ten months of imprisonment "with good behaviour;" and this when an
impertinent answer might have kept me two months longer within this
barred prison.
A keeper known and hated for his brutal and insulting attitude towards
the prisoners was relieving our own hospital keeper during the lunch
hour. He was watching the prisoners file into the room at the opposite
end of the hospital to wait for the arrival of the dentist. A belated
man came in holding a handkerchief close to his mouth as if he were
suffering from an agonizing toothache.