United States or Tonga ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It might be, that, for the first time, she was asking herself outright if this prison-life was to serve Elizabeth as it had served the wife of Laval, but not for the first time was she now visited by a foreboding that pointed to this fear. "It is the prison," said she. "Elizabeth, is it so?
Their sympathies would hardly have survived the trial. Dreary as the days were here, yet we did not surrender ourselves to gloomy forebodings and vain lamentings over our misfortunes. Although the fate of our companions seemed suspended over our heads by a single hair, yet we shunned despondency, and labored to provide such amusements as would relieve us of the heavy tedium of our prison-life.
Thus even there we enjoyed many pleasant moments, which will ever be remembered as a green oasis in the parched desert of prison-life. While here, the Confederates wanted some of us to enlist in their army. They tried particularly hard to get the regulars, Wells declaring that he would rather have the two, than any half dozen of his own men.
But our time for freedom had not yet come. The weeks rolled on. Few things occurred worthy of note. That same monotony which makes prison-life so dreary, robs it of interest when recorded.
One application may not accomplish the desired result, because of failure to reach all portions of the plant with it, but a second or a third application will do the work. By way of conclusion I want to urge women with "nerves" to take the gardening treatment. Many housewives are martyrs to a prison-life.
Man may be a civilized being, accustomed to the artificial restraints and laws he has laid upon himself, but there remains within him still that primitive nature that knows nothing, and never will learn anything of those laws, and which leaps up suddenly after years of its prison-life in overpowering revolt, and says, "Joy is my birthright. I will have it!"
So little of the flawless teeth, which surely those fangs never were! fangs that told a tale of the place in which they had been left to decay; for such was prison-life three-quarters of a century since. It was strange, but Aunt M'riar, though she knew that it was he, felt sick at heart that he should be so unlike himself. He was the first to speak. "You'll know me again, mistress," he said.
The stranger continued: "Some time since, in order to dispel the tediousness of his prison-life, he began to engrave poems and figures upon his tin cup with a nail which he had found in the earth while making his last attempt to undermine the floor of his cell.
Thoughts of home, of friends and kindred, flooded the minds of all; and even strong men, whom the hardships of prison-life had not broken down, seemed to give way all at once to tears of joy. But the delays of official action, "red-tape," and the sluggishness of travel in that day, kept the poor fellows pent up for months after the treaty of peace had been announced to them.
He had not heard of our release, but described our parting, and gave a rumor which he had heard of our subsequent execution. In the dead sameness which now settled down again over our prison-life, we had a delightful daily oasis, in reading the newspapers.