The Financier a novel by Theodore Dreiser

 
 

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Chapter LIII 
The Eastern District Penitentiary of Pennsylvania, standing at Fairmount 
Avenue and Twenty-first Street in Philadelphia, where Cowperwood was now 
to serve his sentence of four years and three months, was a large, gray-stone 
structure, solemn and momentous in its mien, not at all unlike the palace of 
Sforzas at Milan, although not so distinguished. It stretched its gray length 
for several blocks along four different streets, and looked as lonely and 
forbidding as a prison should. The wall which inclosed its great area 
extending over ten acres and gave it so much of its solemn dignity was 
thirty-five feet high and some seven feet thick. The prison proper, which was 
not visible from the outside, consisted of seven arms or corridors, ranged 
octopus-like around a central room or court, and occupying in their 
sprawling length about two-thirds of the yard inclosed within the walls, so 
that there was but little space for the charm of lawn or sward. The corridors, 
forty-two feet wide from outer wall to outer wall, were one hundred and 
eighty feet in length, and in four instances two stories high, and extended in 
their long reach in every direction. There were no windows in the corridors, 
only narrow slits of skylights, three and one-half feet long by perhaps eight 
inches wide, let in the roof; and the ground-floor cells were accompanied in 
some instances by a small yard ten by sixteen—the same size as the cells 
proper—which was surrounded by a high brick wall in every instance. The 
cells and floors and roofs were made of stone, and the corridors, which were 
only ten feet wide between the cells, and in the case of the single-story 
portion only fifteen feet high, were paved with stone. If you stood in the 
central room, or rotunda, and looked down the long stretches which 
departed from you in every direction, you had a sense of narrowness and 
confinement not compatible with their length. The iron doors, with their 
outer accompaniment of solid wooden ones, the latter used at times to shut 
the prisoner from all sight and sound, were grim and unpleasing to behold. 
The halls were light enough, being whitewashed frequently and set with the 
narrow skylights, which were closed with frosted glass in winter; but they 
were, as are all such matter-of-fact arrangements for incarceration, bare—
wearisome to look upon. Life enough there was in all conscience, seeing that 
there were four hundred prisoners here at that time, and that nearly every 
cell was occupied; but it was a life of which no one individual was essentially 
aware as a spectacle. He was of it; but he was not. Some of the prisoners, 
after long service, were used as "trusties" or "runners," as they were locally 
called; but not many. There was a bakery, a machine-shop, a carpenter-
shop, a store-room, a flour-mill, and a series of gardens, or truck patches; 
but the manipulation of these did not require the services of a large number. 
The prison proper dated from 1822, and it had grown, wing by wing, until 
its present considerable size had been reached. Its population consisted of 

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individuals of all degrees of intelligence and crime, from murderers to minor 
practitioners of larceny. It had what was known as the "Pennsylvania 
System" of regulation for its inmates, which was nothing more nor less than 
solitary confinement for all concerned—a life of absolute silence and 
separate labor in separate cells. 
Barring his comparatively recent experience in the county jail, which after 
all was far from typical, Cowperwood had never been in a prison in his life. 
Once, when a boy, in one of his perambulations through several of the 
surrounding towns, he had passed a village "lock-up," as the town prisons 
were then called—a small, square, gray building with long iron-barred 
windows, and he had seen, at one of these rather depressing apertures on 
the second floor, a none too prepossessing drunkard or town ne'er-do-well 
who looked down on him with bleary eyes, unkempt hair, and a sodden, 
waxy, pallid face, and called—for it was summer and the jail window was 
open: 
"Hey, sonny, get me a plug of tobacco, will you?" 
Cowperwood, who had looked up, shocked and disturbed by the man's 
disheveled appearance, had called back, quite without stopping to think: 
"Naw, I can't." 
"Look out you don't get locked up yourself sometime, you little runt," the 
man had replied, savagely, only half recovered from his debauch of the day 
before. 
He had not thought of this particular scene in years, but now suddenly it 
came back to him. Here he was on his way to be locked up in this dull, 
somber prison, and it was snowing, and he was being cut out of human 
affairs as much as it was possible for him to be cut out. 
No friends were permitted to accompany him beyond the outer gate—not 
even Steger for the time being, though he might visit him later in the day. 
This was an inviolable rule. Zanders being known to the gate-keeper, and 
bearing his commitment paper, was admitted at once. The others turned 
solemnly away. They bade a gloomy if affectionate farewell to Cowperwood, 
who, on his part, attempted to give it all an air of inconsequence—as, in part 
and even here, it had for him. 
"Well, good-by for the present," he said, shaking hands. "I'll be all right and 
I'll get out soon. Wait and see. Tell Lillian not to worry." 
He stepped inside, and the gate clanked solemnly behind him. Zanders led 
the way through a dark, somber hall, wide and high-ceiled, to a farther gate, 
where a second gateman, trifling with a large key, unlocked a barred door at 
his bidding. Once inside the prison yard, Zanders turned to the left into a 

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small office, presenting his prisoner before a small, chest-high desk, where 
stood a prison officer in uniform of blue. The latter, the receiving overseer of 
the prison—a thin, practical, executive-looking person with narrow gray eyes 
and light hair, took the paper which the sheriff's deputy handed him and 
read it. This was his authority for receiving Cowperwood. In his turn he 
handed Zanders a slip, showing that he had so received the prisoner; and 
then Zanders left, receiving gratefully the tip which Cowperwood pressed in 
his hand. 
"Well, good-by, Mr. Cowperwood," he said, with a peculiar twist of his 
detective-like head. "I'm sorry. I hope you won't find it so bad here." 
He wanted to impress the receiving overseer with his familiarity with this 
distinguished prisoner, and Cowperwood, true to his policy of make-believe, 
shook hands with him cordially. 
"I'm much obliged to you for your courtesy, Mr. Zanders," he said, then 
turned to his new master with the air of a man who is determined to make a 
good impression. He was now in the hands of petty officials, he knew, who 
could modify or increase his comfort at will. He wanted to impress this man 
with his utter willingness to comply and obey—his sense of respect for his 
authority—without in any way demeaning himself. He was depressed but 
efficient, even here in the clutch of that eventual machine of the law, the 
State penitentiary, which he had been struggling so hard to evade. 
The receiving overseer, Roger Kendall, though thin and clerical, was a rather 
capable man, as prison officials go—shrewd, not particularly well educated, 
not over-intelligent naturally, not over-industrious, but sufficiently energetic 
to hold his position. He knew something about convicts—considerable—for 
he had been dealing with them for nearly twenty-six years. His attitude 
toward them was cold, cynical, critical. 
He did not permit any of them to come into personal contact with him, but 
he saw to it that underlings in his presence carried out the requirements of 
the law. 
When Cowperwood entered, dressed in his very good clothing—a dark gray-
blue twill suit of pure wool, a light, well-made gray overcoat, a black derby 
hat of the latest shape, his shoes new and of good leather, his tie of the best 
silk, heavy and conservatively colored, his hair and mustache showing the 
attention of an intelligent barber, and his hands well manicured—the 
receiving overseer saw at once that he was in the presence of some one of 
superior intelligence and force, such a man as the fortune of his trade rarely 
brought into his net. 
Cowperwood stood in the middle of the room without apparently looking at 
any one or anything, though he saw all. "Convict number 3633," Kendall 

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called to a clerk, handing him at the same time a yellow slip of paper on 
which was written Cowperwood's full name and his record number, counting 
from the beginning of the penitentiary itself. 
The underling, a convict, took it and entered it in a book, reserving the slip 
at the same time for the penitentiary "runner" or "trusty," who would 
eventually take Cowperwood to the "manners" gallery. 
"You will have to take off your clothes and take a bath," said Kendall to 
Cowperwood, eyeing him curiously. "I don't suppose you need one, but it's 
the rule." 
"Thank you," replied Cowperwood, pleased that his personality was counting 
for something even here. "Whatever the rules are, I want to obey." 
When he started to take off his coat, however, Kendall put up his hand 
delayingly and tapped a bell. There now issued from an adjoining room an 
assistant, a prison servitor, a weird-looking specimen of the genus "trusty." 
He was a small, dark, lopsided individual, one leg being slightly shorter, and 
therefore one shoulder lower, than the other. He was hollow-chested, squint-
eyed, and rather shambling, but spry enough withal. He was dressed in a 
thin, poorly made, baggy suit of striped jeans, the prison stripes of the 
place, showing a soft roll-collar shirt underneath, and wearing a large, wide-
striped cap, peculiarly offensive in its size and shape to Cowperwood. He 
could not help thinking how uncanny the man's squint eyes looked under 
its straight outstanding visor. The trusty had a silly, sycophantic manner of 
raising one hand in salute. He was a professional "second-story man," "up" 
for ten years, but by dint of good behavior he had attained to the honor of 
working about this office without the degrading hood customary for 
prisoners to wear over the cap. For this he was properly grateful. He now 
considered his superior with nervous dog-like eyes, and looked at 
Cowperwood with a certain cunning appreciation of his lot and a show of 
initial mistrust. 
One prisoner is as good as another to the average convict; as a matter of 
fact, it is their only consolation in their degradation that all who come here 
are no better than they. The world may have misused them; but they misuse 
their confreres in their thoughts. The "holier than thou" attitude, intentional 
or otherwise, is quite the last and most deadly offense within prison walls. 
This particular "trusty" could no more understand Cowperwood than could a 
fly the motions of a fly-wheel; but with the cocky superiority of the underling 
of the world he did not hesitate to think that he could. A crook was a crook 
to him—Cowperwood no less than the shabbiest pickpocket. His one feeling 
was that he would like to demean him, to pull him down to his own level. 

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"You will have to take everything you have out of your pockets," Kendall now 
informed Cowperwood. Ordinarily he would have said, "Search the prisoner." 
Cowperwood stepped forward and laid out a purse with twenty-five dollars in 
it, a pen-knife, a lead-pencil, a small note-book, and a little ivory elephant 
which Aileen had given him once, "for luck," and which he treasured solely 
because she gave it to him. Kendall looked at the latter curiously. "Now you 
can go on," he said to the "trusty," referring to the undressing and bathing 
process which was to follow. 
"This way," said the latter, addressing Cowperwood, and preceding him into 
an adjoining room, where three closets held three old-fashioned, iron-
bodied, wooden-top bath-tubs, with their attendant shelves for rough crash 
towels, yellow soap, and the like, and hooks for clothes. 
"Get in there," said the trusty, whose name was Thomas Kuby, pointing to 
one of the tubs. 
Cowperwood realized that this was the beginning of petty official 
supervision; but he deemed it wise to appear friendly even here. 
"I see," he said. "I will." 
"That's right," replied the attendant, somewhat placated. "What did you 
bring?" 
Cowperwood looked at him quizzically. He did not understand. The prison 
attendant realized that this man did not know the lingo of the place. "What 
did you bring?" he repeated. "How many years did you get?" 
"Oh!" exclaimed Cowperwood, comprehendingly. "I understand. Four and 
three months." 
He decided to humor the man. It would probably be better so. 
"What for?" inquired Kuby, familiarly. 
Cowperwood's blood chilled slightly. "Larceny," he said. 
"Yuh got off easy," commented Kuby. "I'm up for ten. A rube judge did that 
to me." 
Kuby had never heard of Cowperwood's crime. He would not have 
understood its subtleties if he had. Cowperwood did not want to talk to this 
man; he did not know how. He wished he would go away; but that was not 
likely. He wanted to be put in his cell and let alone. 
"That's too bad," he answered; and the convict realized clearly that this man 
was really not one of them, or he would not have said anything like that. 
Kuby went to the two hydrants opening into the bath-tub and turned them 
on. Cowperwood had been undressing the while, and now stood naked, but 
not ashamed, in front of this eighth-rate intelligence. 

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"Don't forget to wash your head, too," said Kuby, and went away. 
Cowperwood stood there while the water ran, meditating on his fate. It was 
strange how life had dealt with him of late—so severely. Unlike most men in 
his position, he was not suffering from a consciousness of evil. He did not 
think he was evil. As he saw it, he was merely unfortunate. To think that he 
should be actually in this great, silent penitentiary, a convict, waiting here 
beside this cheap iron bathtub, not very sweet or hygienic to contemplate, 
with this crackbrained criminal to watch over him! 
He stepped into the tub and washed himself briskly with the biting yellow 
soap, drying himself on one of the rough, only partially bleached towels. He 
looked for his underwear, but there was none. At this point the attendant 
looked in again. "Out here," he said, inconsiderately. 
Cowperwood followed, naked. He was led through the receiving overseer's 
office into a room, where were scales, implements of measurement, a record-
book, etc. The attendant who stood guard at the door now came over, and 
the clerk who sat in a corner automatically took down a record-blank. 
Kendall surveyed Cowperwood's decidedly graceful figure, already inclining 
to a slight thickening around the waist, and approved of it as superior to 
that of most who came here. His skin, as he particularly noted, was 
especially white. 
"Step on the scale," said the attendant, brusquely. 
Cowperwood did so, The former adjusted the weights and scanned the 
record carefully. 
"Weight, one hundred and seventy-five," he called. "Now step over here." 
He indicated a spot in the side wall where was fastened in a thin slat—which 
ran from the floor to about seven and one half feet above, perpendicularly—a 
small movable wooden indicator, which, when a man was standing under it, 
could be pressed down on his head. At the side of the slat were the total 
inches of height, laid off in halves, quarters, eighths, and so on, and to the 
right a length measurement for the arm. Cowperwood understood what was 
wanted and stepped under the indicator, standing quite straight. 
"Feet level, back to the wall," urged the attendant. "So. Height, five feet nine 
and ten-sixteenths," he called. The clerk in the corner noted it. He now 
produced a tape-measure and began measuring Cowperwood's arms, legs, 
chest, waist, hips, etc. He called out the color of his eyes, his hair, his 
mustache, and, looking into his mouth, exclaimed, "Teeth, all sound." 
After Cowperwood had once more given his address, age, profession, 
whether he knew any trade, etc.—which he did not—he was allowed to 
return to the bathroom, and put on the clothing which the prison provided 

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for him—first the rough, prickly underwear, then the cheap soft roll-collar, 
white-cotton shirt, then the thick bluish-gray cotton socks of a quality such 
as he had never worn in his life, and over these a pair of indescribable 
rough-leather clogs, which felt to his feet as though they were made of wood 
or iron—oily and heavy. He then drew on the shapeless, baggy trousers with 
their telltale stripes, and over his arms and chest the loose-cut shapeless 
coat and waistcoat. He felt and knew of course that he looked very strange, 
wretched. And as he stepped out into the overseer's room again he 
experienced a peculiar sense of depression, a gone feeling which before this 
had not assailed him and which now he did his best to conceal. This, then, 
was what society did to the criminal, he thought to himself. It took him and 
tore away from his body and his life the habiliments of his proper state and 
left him these. He felt sad and grim, and, try as he would—he could not help 
showing it for a moment. It was always his business and his intention to 
conceal his real feelings, but now it was not quite possible. He felt degraded, 
impossible, in these clothes, and he knew that he looked it. Nevertheless, he 
did his best to pull himself together and look unconcerned, willing, obedient, 
considerate of those above him. After all, he said to himself, it was all a play 
of sorts, a dream even, if one chose to view it so, a miasma even, from 
which, in the course of time and with a little luck one might emerge safely 
enough. He hoped so. It could not last. He was only acting a strange, 
unfamiliar part on the stage, this stage of life that he knew so well. 
Kendall did not waste any time looking at him, however. He merely said to 
his assistant, "See if you can find a cap for him," and the latter, going to a 
closet containing numbered shelves, took down a cap—a high-crowned, 
straight-visored, shabby, striped affair which Cowperwood was asked to try 
on. It fitted well enough, slipping down close over his ears, and he thought 
that now his indignities must be about complete. What could be added? 
There could be no more of these disconcerting accoutrements. But he was 
mistaken. "Now, Kuby, you take him to Mr. Chapin," said Kendall. 
Kuby understood. He went back into the wash-room and produced what 
Cowperwood had heard of but never before seen—a blue-and-white-striped 
cotton bag about half the length of an ordinary pillow-case and half again as 
wide, which Kuby now unfolded and shook out as he came toward him. It 
was a custom. The use of this hood, dating from the earliest days of the 
prison, was intended to prevent a sense of location and direction and 
thereby obviate any attempt to escape. Thereafter during all his stay he was 
not supposed to walk with or talk to or see another prisoner—not even to 
converse with his superiors, unless addressed. It was a grim theory, and yet 
one definitely enforced here, although as he was to learn later even this 
could be modified here. 

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"You'll have to put this on," Kuby said, and opened it in such a way that it 
could be put over Cowperwood's head. 
Cowperwood understood. He had heard of it in some way, in times past. He 
was a little shocked—looked at it first with a touch of real surprise, but a 
moment after lifted his hands and helped pull it down. 
"Never mind," cautioned the guard, "put your hands down. I'll get it over." 
Cowperwood dropped his arms. When it was fully on, it came to about his 
chest, giving him little means of seeing anything. He felt very strange, very 
humiliated, very downcast. This simple thing of a blue-and-white striped 
bag over his head almost cost him his sense of self-possession. Why could 
not they have spared him this last indignity, he thought? 
"This way," said his attendant, and he was led out to where he could not 
say. 
"If you hold it out in front you can see to walk," said his guide; and 
Cowperwood pulled it out, thus being able to discern his feet and a portion 
of the floor below. He was thus conducted—seeing nothing in his transit—
down a short walk, then through a long corridor, then through a room of 
uniformed guards, and finally up a narrow flight of iron steps, leading to the 
overseer's office on the second floor of one of the two-tier blocks. There, he 
heard the voice of Kuby saying: "Mr. Chapin, here's another prisoner for you 
from Mr. Kendall." 
"I'll be there in a minute," came a peculiarly pleasant voice from the 
distance. Presently a big, heavy hand closed about his arm, and he was 
conducted still further. 
"You hain't got far to go now," the voice said, "and then I'll take that bag off," 
and Cowperwood felt for some reason a sense of sympathy, perhaps—as 
though he would choke. The further steps were not many. 
A cell door was reached and unlocked by the inserting of a great iron key. It 
was swung open, and the same big hand guided him through. A moment 
later the bag was pulled easily from his head, and he saw that he was in a 
narrow, whitewashed cell, rather dim, windowless, but lighted from the top 
by a small skylight of frosted glass three and one half feet long by four 
inches wide. For a night light there was a tin-bodied lamp swinging from a 
hook near the middle of one of the side walls. A rough iron cot, furnished 
with a straw mattress and two pairs of dark blue, probably unwashed 
blankets, stood in one corner. There was a hydrant and small sink in 
another. A small shelf occupied the wall opposite the bed. A plain wooden 
chair with a homely round back stood at the foot of the bed, and a fairly 
serviceable broom was standing in one corner. There was an iron stool or 
pot for excreta, giving, as he could see, into a large drain-pipe which ran 

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along the inside wall, and which was obviously flushed by buckets of water 
being poured into it. Rats and other vermin infested this, and it gave off an 
unpleasant odor which filled the cell. The floor was of stone. Cowperwood's 
clear-seeing eyes took it all in at a glance. He noted the hard cell door, 
which was barred and cross-barred with great round rods of steel, and 
fastened with a thick, highly polished lock. He saw also that beyond this 
was a heavy wooden door, which could shut him in even more completely 
than the iron one. There was no chance for any clear, purifying sunlight 
here. Cleanliness depended entirely on whitewash, soap and water and 
sweeping, which in turn depended on the prisoners themselves. 
He also took in Chapin, the homely, good-natured, cell overseer whom he 
now saw for the first time—a large, heavy, lumbering man, rather dusty and 
misshapen-looking, whose uniform did not fit him well, and whose manner 
of standing made him look as though he would much prefer to sit down. He 
was obviously bulky, but not strong, and his kindly face was covered with a 
short growth of grayish-brown whiskers. His hair was cut badly and stuck 
out in odd strings or wisps from underneath his big cap. Nevertheless, 
Cowperwood was not at all unfavorably impressed—quite the contrary—and 
he felt at once that this man might be more considerate of him than the 
others had been. He hoped so, anyhow. He did not know that he was in the 
presence of the overseer of the "manners squad," who would have him in 
charge for two weeks only, instructing him in the rules of the prison, and 
that he was only one of twenty-six, all told, who were in Chapin's care. 
That worthy, by way of easy introduction, now went over to the bed and 
seated himself on it. He pointed to the hard wooden chair, which 
Cowperwood drew out and sat on. 
"Well, now you're here, hain't yuh?" he asked, and answered himself quite 
genially, for he was an unlettered man, generously disposed, of long 
experience with criminals, and inclined to deal kindly with kindly 
temperament and a form of religious belief—Quakerism—had inclined him 
to be merciful, and yet his official duties, as Cowperwood later found out, 
seemed to have led him to the conclusion that most criminals were innately 
bad. Like Kendall, he regarded them as weaklings and ne'er-do-wells with 
evil streaks in them, and in the main he was not mistaken. Yet he could not 
help being what he was, a fatherly, kindly old man, having faith in those 
shibboleths of the weak and inexperienced mentally—human justice and 
human decency. 
"Yes, I'm here, Mr. Chapin," Cowperwood replied, simply, remembering his 
name from the attendant, and flattering the keeper by the use of it. 
To old Chapin the situation was more or less puzzling. This was the famous 
Frank A. Cowperwood whom he had read about, the noted banker and 

---

treasury-looter. He and his co-partner in crime, Stener, were destined to 
serve, as he had read, comparatively long terms here. Five hundred 
thousand dollars was a large sum of money in those days, much more than 
five million would have been forty years later. He was awed by the thought of 
what had become of it—how Cowperwood managed to do all the things the 
papers had said he had done. He had a little formula of questions which he 
usually went through with each new prisoner—asking him if he was sorry 
now for the crime he had committed, if he meant to do better with a new 
chance, if his father and mother were alive, etc.; and by the manner in 
which they answered these questions—simply, regretfully, defiantly, or 
otherwise—he judged whether they were being adequately punished or not. 
Yet he could not talk to Cowperwood as he now saw or as he would to the 
average second-story burglar, store-looter, pickpocket, and plain cheap thief 
and swindler. And yet he scarcely knew how else to talk. 
"Well, now," he went on, "I don't suppose you ever thought you'd get to a 
place like this, did you, Mr. Cowperwood?" 
"I never did," replied Frank, simply. "I wouldn't have believed it a few 
months ago, Mr. Chapin. I don't think I deserve to be here now, though of 
course there is no use of my telling you that." 
He saw that old Chapin wanted to moralize a little, and he was only too glad 
to fall in with his mood. He would soon be alone with no one to talk to 
perhaps, and if a sympathetic understanding could be reached with this 
man now, so much the better. Any port in a storm; any straw to a drowning 
man. 
"Well, no doubt all of us makes mistakes," continued Mr. Chapin, superiorly, 
with an amusing faith in his own value as a moral guide and reformer. "We 
can't just always tell how the plans we think so fine are coming out, can we? 
You're here now, an' I suppose you're sorry certain things didn't come out 
just as you thought; but if you had a chance I don't suppose you'd try to do 
just as you did before, now would yuh?" 
"No, Mr. Chapin, I wouldn't, exactly," said Cowperwood, truly enough, 
"though I believed I was right in everything I did. I don't think legal justice 
has really been done me." 
"Well, that's the way," continued Chapin, meditatively, scratching his 
grizzled head and looking genially about. "Sometimes, as I allers says to 
some of these here young fellers that comes in here, we don't know as much 
as we thinks we does. We forget that others are just as smart as we are, and 
that there are allers people that are watchin' us all the time. These here 
courts and jails and detectives—they're here all the time, and they get us. I 
gad"—Chapin's moral version of "by God"—"they do, if we don't behave." 

---

"Yes," Cowperwood replied, "that's true enough, Mr. Chapin." 
"Well," continued the old man after a time, after he had made a few more 
solemn, owl-like, and yet well-intentioned remarks, "now here's your bed, 
and there's your chair, and there's your wash-stand, and there's your water-
closet. Now keep 'em all clean and use 'em right." (You would have thought 
he was making Cowperwood a present of a fortune.) "You're the one's got to 
make up your bed every mornin' and keep your floor swept and your toilet 
flushed and your cell clean. There hain't anybody here'll do that for yuh. 
You want to do all them things the first thing in the mornin' when you get 
up, and afterward you'll get sumpin' to eat, about six-thirty. You're 
supposed to get up at five-thirty." 
"Yes, Mr. Chapin," Cowperwood said, politely. "You can depend on me to do 
all those things promptly." 
"There hain't so much more," added Chapin. "You're supposed to wash 
yourself all over once a week an' I'll give you a clean towel for that. Next you 
gotta wash this floor up every Friday mornin'." Cowperwood winced at that. 
"You kin have hot water for that if you want it. I'll have one of the runners 
bring it to you. An' as for your friends and relations"—he got up and shook 
himself like a big Newfoundland dog. "You gotta wife, hain't you?" 
"Yes," replied Cowperwood. 
"Well, the rules here are that your wife or your friends kin come to see you 
once in three months, and your lawyer—you gotta lawyer hain't yuh?" 
"Yes, sir," replied Cowperwood, amused. 
"Well, he kin come every week or so if he likes—every day, I guess—there 
hain't no rules about lawyers. But you kin only write one letter once in three 
months yourself, an' if you want anything like tobaccer or the like o' that, 
from the store-room, you gotta sign an order for it, if you got any money 
with the warden, an' then I can git it for you." 
The old man was really above taking small tips in the shape of money. He 
was a hold-over from a much more severe and honest regime, but 
subsequent presents or constant flattery were not amiss in making him 
kindly and generous. Cowperwood read him accurately. 
"Very well, Mr. Chapin; I understand," he said, getting up as the old man 
did. 
"Then when you have been here two weeks," added Chapin, rather 
ruminatively (he had forgot to state this to Cowperwood before), "the warden 
'll come and git yuh and give yuh yer regular cell summers down-stairs. Yuh 
kin make up yer mind by that time what y'u'd like tuh do, what y'u'd like to 

---

work at. If you behave yourself proper, more'n like they'll give yuh a cell with 
a yard. Yuh never can tell." 
He went out, locking the door with a solemn click; and Cowperwood stood 
there, a little more depressed than he had been, because of this latest 
intelligence. Only two weeks, and then he would be transferred from this 
kindly old man's care to another's, whom he did not know and with whom 
he might not fare so well. 
"If ever you want me for anything—if ye're sick or sumpin' like that," Chapin 
now returned to say, after he had walked a few paces away, "we have a 
signal here of our own. Just hang your towel out through these here bars. 
I'll see it, and I'll stop and find out what yuh want, when I'm passin'." 
Cowperwood, whose spirits had sunk, revived for the moment. 
"Yes, sir," he replied; "thank you, Mr. Chapin." 
The old man walked away, and Cowperwood heard his steps dying down the 
cement-paved hall. He stood and listened, his ears being greeted 
occasionally by a distant cough, a faint scraping of some one's feet, the hum 
or whir of a machine, or the iron scratch of a key in a lock. None of the 
noises was loud. Rather they were all faint and far away. He went over and 
looked at the bed, which was not very clean and without linen, and anything 
but wide or soft, and felt it curiously. So here was where he was to sleep 
from now on—he who so craved and appreciated luxury and refinement. If 
Aileen or some of his rich friends should see him here. Worse, he was 
sickened by the thought of possible vermin. How could he tell? How would 
he do? The one chair was abominable. The skylight was weak. He tried to 
think of himself as becoming accustomed to the situation, but he re-
discovered the offal pot in one corner, and that discouraged him. It was 
possible that rats might come up here—it looked that way. No pictures, no 
books, no scene, no person, no space to walk—just the four bare walls and 
silence, which he would be shut into at night by the thick door. What a 
horrible fate! 
He sat down and contemplated his situation. So here he was at last in the 
Eastern Penitentiary, and doomed, according to the judgment of the 
politicians (Butler among others), to remain here four long years and longer. 
Stener, it suddenly occurred to him, was probably being put through the 
same process he had just gone through. Poor old Stener! What a fool he had 
made of himself. But because of his foolishness he deserved all he was now 
getting. But the difference between himself and Stener was that they would 
let Stener out. It was possible that already they were easing his punishment 
in some way that he, Cowperwood, did not know. He put his hand to his 
chin, thinking—his business, his house, his friends, his family, Aileen. He 

---

felt for his watch, but remembered that they had taken that. There was no 
way of telling the time. Neither had he any notebook, pen, or pencil with 
which to amuse or interest himself. Besides he had had nothing to eat since 
morning. Still, that mattered little. What did matter was that he was shut up 
here away from the world, quite alone, quite lonely, without knowing what 
time it was, and that he could not attend to any of the things he ought to be 
attending to—his business affairs, his future. True, Steger would probably 
come to see him after a while. That would help a little. But even so—think of 
his position, his prospects up to the day of the fire and his state now. He sat 
looking at his shoes; his suit. God! He got up and walked to and fro, to and 
fro, but his own steps and movements sounded so loud. He walked to the 
cell door and looked out through the thick bars, but there was nothing to 
see—nothing save a portion of two cell doors opposite, something like his 
own. He came back and sat in his single chair, meditating, but, getting 
weary of that finally, stretched himself on the dirty prison bed to try it. It 
was not uncomfortable entirely. He got up after a while, however, and sat, 
then walked, then sat. What a narrow place to walk, he thought. This was 
horrible—something like a living tomb. And to think he should be here now, 
day after day and day after day, until—until what? Until the Governor 
pardoned him or his time was up, or his fortune eaten away—or— 
So he cogitated while the hours slipped by. It was nearly five o'clock before 
Steger was able to return, and then only for a little while. He had been 
arranging for Cowperwood's appearance on the following Thursday, Friday, 
and Monday in his several court proceedings. When he was gone, however, 
and the night fell and Cowperwood had to trim his little, shabby oil-lamp 
and to drink the strong tea and eat the rough, poor bread made of bran and 
white flour, which was shoved to him through the small aperture in the door 
by the trencher trusty, who was accompanied by the overseer to see that it 
was done properly, he really felt very badly. And after that the center 
wooden door of his cell was presently closed and locked by a trusty who 
slammed it rudely and said no word. Nine o'clock would be sounded 
somewhere by a great bell, he understood, when his smoky oil-lamp would 
have to be put out promptly and he would have to undress and go to bed. 
There were punishments, no doubt, for infractions of these rules—reduced 
rations, the strait-jacket, perhaps stripes—he scarcely knew what. He felt 
disconsolate, grim, weary. He had put up such a long, unsatisfactory fight. 
After washing his heavy stone cup and tin plate at the hydrant, he took off 
the sickening uniform and shoes and even the drawers of the scratching 
underwear, and stretched himself wearily on the bed. The place was not any 
too warm, and he tried to make himself comfortable between the blankets—
but it was of little use. His soul was cold. 

---

"This will never do," he said to himself. "This will never do. I'm not sure 
whether I can stand much of this or not." Still he turned his face to the wall, 
and after several hours sleep eventually came.