One could only lie and think and think.

And I was a lifer, and it seemed certain, if I did not do a miracle, make thirty-five pounds of dynamite out of nothing, that all the years of my life would be spent in the silent dark.
My bed was a thin and rotten tick of straw spread on the cell floor.

One thin and filthy blanket constituted the covering.

There was no chair, no table--nothing but the tick of straw and the thin, aged blanket.

I was ever a short sleeper and ever a busy-brained man.