Mr.
Gerald Massey, then on a visit to England, was churlishly refused a visiting order from the Home Office, but he sent me his two magnificent volumes on "Natural Genesis," and a note to the interim editor of the _Freethinker_, requesting him to tell me that I had his sympathy.

"I fight the same battle as himself," said Mr.Massey, "although with a somewhat different weapon." I was also favored with a presentation copy of verses by the one writer I most admire, whose genius I reverenced long before the public and its critics discovered it.

It would gratify my vanity rather than my prudence to reveal his name.
Agreeably to the proverb that if you give some men an inch they will take an ell, I induced the Governor to let me pursue my study of Italian.

First he allowed me a Grammar, then a Conversation Book, then a Dictionary, then a Prose Reading Book, and then a Poetical Anthology.
These volumes, being an addition to the two ordinary ones, gave my little domicile a civilised appearance.

Cleaners sometimes, when my door was opened, looked in from the corridor with an expression of awe.
"Why," I heard one say, "he's got a cell like a bookshop." With my books, my Italian, and my Colenso, I managed to kill the time; and although the snake-like days were still long, they were less venomous.