desk, I fought through the Spanish-American War.

So it was not because I was a fighter, but because I was a thinker, that
I was enraged by the motion-wastage of the loom-rooms and was persecuted
by the guards into becoming an "incorrigible." One's brain worked and I
was punished for its working. As I told Warden Atherton, when my
incorrigibility had become so notorious that he had me in on the carpet
in his private office to plead with me; as I told him then:

"It is so absurd, my dear Warden, to think that your rat-throttlers of
guards can shake out of my brain the things that are clear and definite
in my brain. The whole organization of this prison is stupid. You are a
politician. You can weave the political pull of San Francisco saloon-men
and ward heelers into a position of graft such as this one you occupy;
but you can't weave jute. Your loom-rooms are fifty years behind the
times. . . ."

But why continue the tirade?--for tirade it was. I showed him what a
fool he was, and as a result he decided that I was a hopeless
incorrigible.

Give a dog a bad name--you know the saw. Very well. Warden Atherton
gave the final sanction to the badness of my name. I was fair game. More
than one convict's dereliction was shunted off on me, and was paid for by
me in the dungeon on bread and water, or in being triced up by the thumbs
on my tip-toes for long hours, each hour of which was longer than any
life I have ever lived.

Intelligent men are cruel. Stupid men are monstrously cruel. The guards
and the men over me, from the Warden down, were stupid monsters. Listen,