Another unexpected privilege had been carefully planned so that the joy of it was spread over several days. The Freedom League prisoners were soon to be released. We schemed a jollification to take place on the Sunday evening before their departure. The Sabbath day reflected national customs in prison as outside. The morning was characterised by clean clothing and an unusual rigidity of behaviour, but towards the latter half of the afternoon the air of solemnity wore away, some of the officers had an afternoon off, bringing back with them an indefinable sense of the outer world, and the evening hours sometimes produced an atmosphere almost of amiability. Much would depend on whether a lovable wardress, who often did duty in our ward and had shown herself invariably friendly towards us, should be “on” or “off.” The patients, who had increased to nine, were all of them now out of bed during part of the day. We were to gather round the fire, and to tell yarns, stories or poems, as if we were in camp in the free world. A sense of excitement and expectancy pervaded the ward all day. I felt as children do before a self-schemed escapade into the dominions of forbidden joys, my delight only slightly marred by the prospect of having to contribute to the recitations, a performance not at all in my line. I spent the spare moments of the day trying to remember and write down on my slate Coventry Patmore’s poem “The Toys.” Parts of it had constantly floated into my mind while in Holloway from the striking resemblance between prisoners and children. I treasured more especially the actual list of toys which the child, a seven times breaker of the law, when punished and dismissed “with hard words and unkiss’d,” had put beside his bed:--
“A box of counters and a red-vein’d stone, A piece of glass abraded by the beach, And six or seven shells, A bottle with bluebells, And two French copper coins, ranged there with careful art To comfort his sad heart.”