The unanimous good-will of instructors in the prison shops made the daintiest materials easily attainable to the poor fellow, and his ivory charms, his mother-of-pearl crosses, and inlaid satin-wood boxes, found, outside the prison, a ready market, and a price which enabled him, probably for the first time in his whole life, to become the possessor of money honestly earned. In the hospital it was that Neilson evolved, with fanciful ingenuity, for my poor self, the most remarkable of inkstands. The design embraced a camel standing on a platform wreathed with carven forget-me-nots, and inscribed with a Latin motto, having some enigmatical reference to the foresighted habit of the creature. Unfortunately, the platform, the camel, with his two humps, the motto, and the forget-me-nots, made so large a figure in Neilson's design, that its main feature, the inkstand, had, virtually, to be omitted; and could only be hinted at by a shallow vessel, holding about one good thimbleful, and perched perilously upon the camel's irregular back. From time to time I was permitted to watch the progress of this remarkable creation, and was called upon for a pictured camel and some real forget-me-nots, as models.
The somewhat crotchety custodian of the hospital, from day to day, contemptuously taking note of the advancement of my inkstand, on its final completion grimly assured me that, "If Neilson had been paid by the day for his labour on _that thing_, it would have cost about two hundred dollars!" Poor, patient fellow, it was almost his last work! He had now become too weak to crawl down the hospital stairs for his daily sun-bath. And by and by his seat in the saloon, where the men, who were able to be about, gathered on Mondays to listen to my reading, was empty. He lay now on his cot informally clad in a faded print shirt and patched trousers, both of which he wore with a dignity peculiarly his own. His head was adorned with a towering cotton nightcap. Whatever else he might lack, Neilson always stood out firmly for a nightcap. It was to him a sort of insignia of respectability. To his last hour he never for a moment lost that superiority of mien which distinguished him even amid the coarse and degrading surroundings of a prison. At the last he suffered great pain, but, as the end approached, his mind became wonderfully clear, and he listened intelligently to reading, and enjoyed conversation.