I asked the doctor if a smaller tube could not be used for the feeding. He answered, “If I fed you through the nose it would be with a smaller tube.” I suggested that the smaller tube should be used through the mouth, if he thought that process the easiest. He said, “Well, that might be,” but the tube was never changed to a smaller one. As to my suggestion about omitting a meal, he also seemed to think it plausible, but he promised nothing, and fed me in the evening, saying that I had again lost weight, so that he could not leave me without food. Of course, this quite ignored my argument that until I began to keep down the food I could not profit by it or gain in weight.
My limbs, hands and feet, were stiff with cold at all times. I was allowed flannel underclothes and an extra blanket. In spite of continued reproof from the wardresses I kept on my nightdress in the day time, the only under-garment with long sleeves, and I passed the night in all my day-clothes. At last I was able to do this without comment from the authorities. They also, as a great favour, allowed me yet another blanket when I asked for it after some days; I then had three. I was allowed to keep the cape, usually only for out-door use, in my cell. But it was like trying to warm a stone by clothing it. Hot water was allowed in a pail once a day after the evening feeding.
Most of my friends had been fed by the doctor standing at the back of the patient, whereas this doctor adjusted the tube and fed me from the front, a process which he carried out by sitting across my knees. By this time I could not feel my legs and arms, except just by the joints where I felt the pain of the cold. At night I used to get up and walk from time to time to prevent them from becoming useless. But on Thursday night, my sixth in prison, I fell really asleep and when I awoke I had an unexpected feeling of ease and freedom from pain or fear. I was unconscious of my nearly rigid limbs, the beat of my heart was scarcely perceptible; I supposed I had only a little while to live. The prospect of release was inexpressibly welcome. Presently I heard, as distinctly as if the wall of my cell had a mouth and had spoken, the words which Mrs. Leigh has made glorious in connection with our cause: “No surrender.” They beat upon my brain with a new meaning; not only to a repressive Government, not only to heedless laws and their attendant punishments, but to the temptations of our inabilities, no surrender. What was I about, to abdicate my job in this ease-loving way? I rubbed the painful life back into my feet, hands and limbs, and forced myself to walk up and down my cell. Pictures succeeded each other rapidly in my mind of our fellow-prisoners in the “Black Maria,” of all undefended women, of children’s blighted lives, of down-trodden men and women, undeveloped or ill of body or mind, whose fate women, through their abject surrender of the woman’s part in the world’s jurisdiction, must to a certain extent have laid at their door. How misplaced, unrighteous and unwomanly did non-resistance appear to me then. With every throb of my returning pulses I seemed to feel the rhythm of the world’s soul calling to us women to uncramp our powers from the thraldom of long disuse. My whole being responded and I yearned to hand on the message as I myself had in spirit received it--“Women, you are wanted. Women, as women, because you are women, come out in all your womanliness, and whether or not victory is for your day, at least each one of you make sure that the one course impossible to you is surrender of your share in the struggle.” To you, dear, faithful Suffragettes at heart, whatever the handcuffs of circumstance which may limit your powers of visible service, I pass on this message.