Then there was the song about lice: 

  “There’s a lice in jail
  As big as a rail;
  When you lie down
  They’ll tickle your tail—­
  Hard times in jail, poor boy!...”

And another, more general: 

  “Along come the jailer
  About ’leven o’clock,
  Bunch o’ keys in his right hand,
  The jailhouse do’h was locked.... 
  ‘Cheer up, you pris’ners,’
  I heard that jailer say,
  ’You got to go to the cane-brakes
  Foh ninety yeahs to stay!’”

As you can guess, most of these jail songs and ballads of the underworld could only be printed in asterisks.  I was hoping, in the interests of folklore, to preserve them for some learned society’s private printing press.

* * * * *

A fresher green came to the stray branches of the trees that crossed our barred windows.  The world outside seemed to waken with bird-song.  It was spring, and time for the sitting of the grand jury that was to decide whether we were, each of us, to be held over for trial by petty jury ... days of fretful eagerness and discontent ... from the windows the yellow trusty-girl said she could see lines of buggies driving in to town.  It was the custom of farmers for miles around to drive in to their county seat during the court assizes ... a week or so of holidays like a continuous circus for them.

When the sheriff would have occasion to come into the room in which stood our big cage, the boys would crowd up to the bars, each one hoping for news favourable to his case ... the prevailing atmosphere was one of hope.

* * * * *

The negro who had murdered his wife and her sweetheart with a shotgun had already had his trial.  He was—­and had been—­but waiting the arrival of the prison contractor, as the latter went from county jail to county jail, gathering in his flock, and taking them away, chained together, to the penitentiary and the cane brakes ... “where only a big buck nigger can live,” the little pickpocket had told me, with fear in his voice....

He came ... the contractor ... to our jail at midnight.  All of us leaped from our mattresses to witness the dreary procession of neck-chained and be-manacled convicted men.  In the light of the swinging lanterns, a lurid spectacle.  Our man was taken out and chained in with the gang.  They clanked away down the stairs, leaving us who remained with heavy chains on our hope instead of on our necks and hands and legs ... because of the sight we had just seen.  For the passing day or so we were so depressed that we wandered about saying nothing to each other, like dumb men.

* * * * *

One after the other the men had true bills found against them, and little slips of folded paper were thrust in to them through the bars of their cells.  And shyster lawyers who fatten on the misfortunes of the prison-held being, began to hold whispered conversations (and conferences) from without, mainly to find out just how much each prisoner could raise for fees for defence....