On the Duty of Civil Disobedience | Page 9

said, "Come, boys, it is time to
lock up"; and so they dispersed, and I heard the sound of their steps
returning into the hollow apartments. My room-mate was introduced to
me by the jailer as "a first-rate fellow and clever man." When the door
was locked, he showed me where to hang my hat, and how he managed
matters there. The rooms were whitewashed once a month; and this one,
at least, was the whitest, most simply furnished, and probably neatest
apartment in town. He naturally wanted to know where I came from,

and what brought me there; and, when I had told him, I asked him in
my turn how he came there, presuming him to be an honest an, of
course; and as the world goes, I believe he was. "Why," said he, "they
accuse me of burning a barn; but I never did it." As near as I could
discover, he had probably gone to bed in a barn when drunk, and
smoked his pipe there; and so a barn was burnt. He had the reputation
of being a clever man, had been there some three months waiting for
his trial to come on, and would have to wait as much longer; but he was
quite domesticated and contented, since he got his board for nothing,
and thought that he was well treated.
He occupied one window, and I the other; and I saw that if one stayed
there long, his principal business would be to look out the window. I
had soon read all the tracts that were left there, and examined where
former prisoners had broken out, and where a grate had been sawed off,
and heard the history of the various occupants of that room; for I found
that even there there was a history and a gossip which never circulated
beyond the walls of the jail. Probably this is the only house in the town
where verses are composed, which are afterward printed in a circular
form, but not published. I was shown quite a long list of young men
who had been detected in an attempt to escape, who avenged
themselves by singing them.
I pumped my fellow-prisoner as dry as I could, for fear I should never
see him again; but at length he showed me which was my bed, and left
me to blow out the lamp.
It was like travelling into a far country, such as I had never expected to
behold, to lie there for one night. It seemed to me that I never had heard
the town clock strike before, not the evening sounds of the village; for
we slept with the windows open, which were inside the grating. It was
to see my native village in the light of the Middle Ages, and our
Concord was turned into a Rhine stream, and visions of knights and
castles passed before me. They were the voices of old burghers that I
heard in the streets. I was an involuntary spectator and auditor of
whatever was done and said in the kitchen of the adjacent village inn--a
wholly new and rare experience to me. It was a closer view of my

native town. I was fairly inside of it. I never had seen its institutions
before. This is one of its peculiar institutions; for it is a shire town. I
began to comprehend what its inhabitants were about.
In the morning, our breakfasts were put through the hole in the door, in
small oblong-square tin pans, made to fit, and holding a pint of
chocolate, with brown bread, and an iron spoon. When they called for
the vessels again, I was green enough to return what bread I had left,
but my comrade seized it, and said that I should lay that up for lunch or
dinner. Soon after he was let out to work at haying in a neighboring
field, whither he went every day, and would not be back till noon; so he
bade me good day, saying that he doubted if he should see me again.
When I came out of prison--for some one interfered, and paid that
tax--I did not perceive that great changes had taken place on the
common, such as he observed who went in a youth and emerged a
gray-headed man; and yet a change had come to my eyes come over the
scene--the town, and State, and country, greater than any that mere time
could effect. I saw yet more distinctly the State in which I lived. I saw
to what extent the people among whom I lived could be trusted as good
neighbors and friends; that their friendship was for summer weather
only; that they did not greatly propose to do right; that they were a
distinct race from me by