ning. The centipedes,
however, are not nearly as plentiful as the bedbugs and roaches. Then there
is the little ant. Your wife may divorce you, and your best girl go back on
you, while you lie in prison at Lancaster, but your ant - never. I should have
said ants for there are many of all sizes and colors. There is the little red
one, the large brown one, and still a very large black one. If you
have sugar and sweet things in your cell, the ants will camp there
forever. These latter, however, disappear during the cold months,
while the other three are with you all the time. Like the imps of
hades, so are these uninvited guests at Lancaster - one everlasting
pest and scource (sic) of misery and pain.
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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
PETS IN THE PEN
The big
prison has its pets as well as its pests. Men in prison, finding themselves
cut away from their parents, wives or children, look in there for some pet
on which to lavish their affection.' Canary birds are very popular, especially
among the life timers, but somehow the change in temperature of the
cell building did not agree with the birds and they are all dead
and gone. One life-timer raised many of these little sweet singers,
and they were all the world to him. Shame on a certain prison official
who, when his office expired and before leaving Lincoln, went to
the life-timer and took his birds. "I will send you a check
soon," he
said to the life-timer. Several years have passed and the check
has not come yet, and it never will. I have known some mean men.
We once had a fellow serving a year for entering a dwelling house
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