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I began to cry out, to yell, to scream, to howl, in a very madness of dying. The trouble was the pain that had arisen in my heart. It was a sharp, definite pain, similar to that of pleurisy.

To die is not a difficult thing, but to die in such slow and horrible fashion was maddening. I experienced ecstasies of fear, and yelled and howled until I realized that such vocal exercise merely consumed much of the little air in my lungs.

I lay quiet for a long time—an eternity it seemed then, though now I am confident that it could have been no longer than a quarter of an hour. Again I lost control of myself and set up a mad howling for help.

In the midst of this I heard a voice from the next dungeon.

“Shut up [25] ,” it shouted. “Shut up. You make me tired.”

“I’m dying,” I cried out.

“Forget it,” was the reply.

“But I am dying,” I insisted.

“Then why worry?” came the voice. “Go ahead, but don’t make so much noise about it. You’re interrupting my beauty sleep.”

I recovered self-control and was only groaning.

“How am I going to get some sleep?” my neighbour complained. “I’m not happier than you. My jacket’s just as tight as yours, and I want to sleep and forget it.”

“How long have you been in?” I asked, thinking him a new-comer compared to the centuries I had already suffered.

“Since day before yesterday,” was his answer.

“I mean in the jacket,” I amended.

“Since day before yesterday, brother.”

“My God!” I screamed.

“Yes, brother, fifty straight hours, and I don’t complain about it. They cinched me with their feet in my back. I am some tight, believe me. You haven’t been in an hour yet.”

“I’ve been in hours and hours,” I protested.

“Brother, you may think so, but it’s not true. I heard them lacing you.”

This was incredible. Already, in less than an hour, I had died a thousand deaths. And yet this neighbour, balanced and equable and calm-voiced had been in the jacket fifty hours!

“How much longer are they going to keep you in?” I asked.

“The Lord only knows. Captain Jamie won’t let me out until I’m about to die. Now, brother, I’m going to give you the tip. The only way is to forget it. Just remember every girl you ever knew.”

That man was a robber from Philadelphia. I lived through my twenty-four hours, and I have never been the same man since. Oh, I don’t mean physically, although next morning, when they unlaced me, I was semi-paralyzed. I was a changed man mentally, morally. The brute physical torture was humiliation and affront to my spirit and to my sense of justice. My God—when I think of the things men have done to me! Twenty-four hours in the jacket!

I write these lines today in 1913, and today men are lying in the jacket in the dungeons of San Quentin. I shall never forget my friend from Philadelphia. He had then been seventy-four hours in the jacket.

“Well, brother, you’re still alive,” he called to me, as I was dragged from my cell into the corridor of dungeons.

“Shut up, you,” the sergeant snarled at him.

“Forget it,” was the retort.

“I’ll get you [26] ,” the sergeant threatened.

“Think so?” the robber queried sweetly. “Why, you couldn’t get anything. You couldn’t get a free lunch, if it wasn’t your brother’s help.”

It was admirable—the spirit of man rising above the hurt.

“Well, so long, brother,” he told me. “So long. Be good, and love the Warden.”

In solitary, Warden Atherton and Captain Jamie began to ask me. Warden Atherton said to me:

“Standing, we know that the prisoners hide dynamite somewhere. Tell me everything that you know about it, or I’ll kill you in the jacket. You’ve got your choice—dynamite or a coffin.”

“Then I guess it is the coffin,” I answered, “because I don’t know of any dynamite.”

This irritated the Warden. “Lie down,” he commanded.

I obeyed. They laced me tightly, and gave me a hundred hours. Once each twenty-four hours they gave me some water. I had no desire for food, nor was food offered me. Toward the end of the hundred hours the prison doctor examined my physical condition several times.

But I got used to the jacket during my days. Naturally, it weakened me, took the life out of me; but I had learned muscular tricks for stealing a little space while they were lacing me. At the end of the first hundred hours’ bout I was worn and tired, but that was all. Then they gave one hundred and fifty hours. Much of this time I was physically numb and mentally delirious. Also, by an effort of will, I managed to sleep away long hours.

Then I was given irregular intervals of jacket and recuperation. I never knew when I was to go into the jacket.

And ever the eternal question was propounded to me: Where was the dynamite? Sometimes Warden Atherton was furious with me.

“These lean college guys would fool the devil,” Warden grumbled. “Standing, you hear me. I’m a man of my word. You’ve heard me say dynamite or a coffin. Well, take your choice.”

“Surely you don’t think I enjoy it?” I gasped. “There is nothing to confess. I don’t know about any dynamite.”

One compensation I learned. As one grows weaker one suffers less. The man already well weakened grows weaker more slowly. Unusually strong men suffer more severely from ordinary sicknesses than do women or invalids.

Morrell and Oppenheimer were sorry for me. Oppenheimer told me he had gone through it, and worse, and still lived.

“Don’t let them kill you,” he spelled with his knuckles. “Don’t let them kill you, for that would suit them. And don’t tell them anything.”

“But I don’t know anything,” I answered. “I don’t know anything about the damned dynamite.”

“That’s right,” Oppenheimer praised. “He’s the man, isn’t he, Ed?”

Jake Oppenheimer could only admire me for my fortitude.

During this first period of the jacket-inquisition I managed to sleep. My dreams were remarkable. Of course they were vivid and real, as most dreams are. What made them remarkable was their coherence and continuity. Often I was reading aloud to scientists carefully prepared papers on my researches. When I awakened my voice was still ringing in my ears.

Then there was a great farm, extending north and south for hundreds of miles, with a climate and flora and fauna largely resembling those of California. Not once, nor twice, but thousands of different times I journeyed through this dream-region.