and were only permitted to go out at certain hours to breathe a
little air in the yard. Little deaf and dumb used to come under my
window, smiled, and made his obeisance to me. I threw him a piece
of bread; he took it, and gave a leap of joy, then ran to his
companions, divided it, and returned to eat his own share under the
window. The others gave me a wistful look from a distance, but
ventured no nearer, while the deaf and dumb boy expressed a sympathy
for me; not, I found, affected, out of mere selfishness. Sometimes
he was at a loss what to do with the bread I gave him, and made
signs that he had eaten enough, as also his companions. When he saw
one of the under-jailers going into my room, he would give him what
he had got from me, in order to restore it to me. Yet he continued
to haunt my window, and seemed rejoiced whenever I deigned to notice
him. One day the jailer permitted him to enter my prison, when he
instantly ran to embrace my knees, actually uttering a cry of joy.
I took him up in my arms, and he threw his little hands about my
neck, and lavished on me the tenderest caresses. How much affection
in his smile and manner! how eagerly I longed to have him to
educate, raise him from his abject condition, and snatch him,
perhaps, from utter ruin. I never even learnt his name; he did not
himself know that he had one. He seemed always happy, and I never
saw him weep except once, and that was on being beaten, I know not
why, by the jailer. Strange that he should be thus happy in a
receptacle of so much pain and sorrow; yet he was light-hearted as
the son of a grandee. From him I learnt, at least, that the mind
need not depend on situation, but may be rendered independent of
external things. Govern the imagination, and we shall be well,
wheresoever we happen to be placed. A day is soon over, and if at
night we can retire to rest without actual pain and hunger, it
little matters whether it be within the walls of a prison, or of a