But he would not hear of it.
"Oh, no, Frank," he cried, "never; my experiences in prison were too horrible, too painful to be used.

I simply blotted them out altogether and refused to recall them." "What about the verse ?" I asked: "We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones, We turned the dusty drill: We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns, And sweated on the mill: And in the heart of every man Terror was lying still." "Characteristic details, Frank, merely the _decor_ of prison life, not its reality; that no one could paint, not even Dante, who had to turn away his eyes from lesser suffering." It may be worth while to notice here, as an example of the hatred with which Oscar Wilde's name and work were regarded, that even after he had paid the penalty for his crime the publisher and editor, alike in England and America, put anything but a high price on his best work.
They would have bought a play readily enough because they would have known that it would make them money, but a ballad from his pen nobody seemed to want.

The highest price offered in America for "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" was one hundred dollars.

Oscar found difficulty in getting even L20 for the English rights from the friend who published it; yet it has sold since by hundreds of thousands and is certain always to sell.
I must insert here part of another letter from Oscar Wilde which appeared in _The Daily Chronicle_, 24th March, 1898, on the cruelties of the English prison system; it was headed, "Don't read this if you want to be happy to-day," and was signed by "The Author of 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol.'" It was manifestly a direct outcome of his prison experiences.

The letter was simple and affecting; but it had little or no influence on the English conscience.