He found Carter’s mind in a state of actual lethargy.  He got it out of that; he created an excitement and kept it up.  He got at his little bit of mind through his senses.  Honor to all the great arts!  The limit to their beauty and their usefulness has never yet been found and never will.  Painting was the golden key this thinker held to the Bramah lock of an imbecile’s understanding the ponderous wards were beginning to revolve—­when a blockhead came and did his best to hamper the lock.

In English, Eden was gradually making the biped a man:  comes Hawes and turns him a brute.  The whimpering moans of Carter were thoroughly animal, and the poor biped’s degradation as well as his suffering made Mr. Eden wretched.

To-day for the first time the chaplain saw a prisoner crucified without suffering that peculiar physical weakness which I have more than once noticed.  Poor soul, he was so pleased at this that he thanked Heaven for curing him of that contemptible infirmity, so he called it.  But he had to pay for this victory.  He never felt so sick at heart as now.  He turned for relief to the duties he had in his zeal added to a chaplain’s acknowledged routine.  He visited his rooms and all his rational work-people.

The sight of all the good he was doing by teaching the sweets of anti-theft was always a cordial to him.

Almost the last cell he visited was Thomas Robinson’s.  The man had been fretting and worrying himself to know why he did not come before.  As soon as the door was opened he took an eager step to meet him, then stopped irresolutely, and blushed and beamed with pleasure mixed with a certain confusion.  He looked volumes but waited out of respect for his reverence to address him.

Mr. Eden held out his hand to him with a frank manner and kind smile.  At this Robinson tried to speak but could only stammer; something seemed to rise in his throat and block up the exit of words.

“Come,” said Mr. Eden, “no more of that; be composed, and I will sit down, for I am tired.”

Robinson brought him his stool, and Mr. Eden sat down.

They conversed, and after some kind inquiries, Mr. Eden came to the grand purport of this visit, which, to the surprise and annoyance of Robinson, was to reprobate severely the curses and blasphemies he had uttered as they were dragging him to the dark cell.  And so threatening and severe was Mr. Eden, that at last poor Robinson whined out: 

“Sir, you will make me wish I was in the dark cell again, for then you took my part; now you are against me.”

“There is a time for everything under the sun.  When you were in the dark cell, consolation and indulgence were the best things for your soul, and I gave them you as well as I could.  You are not in the dark cell now, and, out of the same love for you, I tell you that if God took you this night the curses you uttered yesterday would destroy you to all eternity.”