After lying for more than a century dead I was revived, given a new
body, and restored to society. This was in the year 2015. The first
thing of interest that I observed was an enormous building, covering a
square mile of ground. It was surrounded on all sides by a high, strong
wall of hewn stone upon which armed sentinels paced to and fro. In one
face of the wall was a single gate of massive iron, strongly guarded.
While admiring the cyclopean architecture of the "reverend pile" I was
accosted by a man in uniform, evidently The Warden, with a cheerful
salutation.
"Colonel," I said, pressing his hand, "it gives me pleasure to find some
one that I can believe. Pray tell me what is this building."
"That," said the colonel, "is the new State penitentiary. It is one of
twelve, all alike."
"You surprise me," I replied. "Surely the criminal element must have
increased enormously."
"Yes, indeed," he assented; "under the Reform _régime_, which began in
your day, it became so powerful, bold and fierce that arrests were no
longer possible and the prisons then in existence were soon overcrowded.
The State was compelled to erect others of greater capacity."
"But, Colonel," I protested, "if the criminals were too bold and
powerful to be taken into custody, of what use are the prisons! And how
are they crowded?"
He fixed upon me a look that I could not fail to interpret as expressing
a doubt of my sanity. "What?" he said, "is it possible that the modern
Penology is unknown to you? Do you suppose we practise the antiquated
and ineffective method of shutting up the rascals? Sir, the growth of
the criminal element has, as I said, compelled the erection of more and
larger prisons. We have enough to hold comfortably all the honest men
and women of the State. Within these protecting walls they carry on all
the necessary vocations of life excepting commerce. That is necessarily
in the hands of the rogues as before."
"Venerated representative of Reform," I exclaimed, wringing his hand
with effusion, "you are Knowledge, you are History, you are the Higher
Education! We must talk further. Come, let us enter this benign edifice;
you shall show me your dominion and instruct me in the rules. You shall
propose me as an inmate."
I walked rapidly to the gate. When challenged by the sentinel, I
turned to summon my instructor. He was nowhere visible: desolate and
forbidding, as about the broken statue of Ozymandias,
"The lone and level sands stretched far away."