There are a thousand details in this one matter alone that I shall not bore you with, although these details did serve to keep me from being bored too utterly during that first period in solitary.

But one thing I must tell you.

To me it is most memorable--the time when the one with a grouch, who never played, alighted in a moment of absent-mindedness within the taboo precinct and was immediately captured in my hand.

Do you know, he sulked for an hour afterward.
And the hours were very long in solitary; nor could I sleep them all away; nor could I while them away with house-flies, no matter how intelligent.

For house-flies are house-flies, and I was a man, with a man's brain; and my brain was trained and active, stuffed with culture and science, and always geared to a high tension of eagerness to do.