Alexander Berkman

“ The sight of a human being repels me, the sound of a voice is torture to me. I want to be alone, always alone, to have peace and quiet, to lead a simple life in close communion with nature. Ah, nature! That, too, I have tried, and found more impossible even than the turmoil of the city. The silence of the woods threatened to drive me mad, as did the solitude of the dungeon. A curse upon the thing that has incapacitated me for life, made solitude as hateful as the face of man, made life itself impossible to me! ”

“ The will to live is beginning to assert itself, growing more imperative as the days go by. I wonder that my mind dwells upon suicide more and more rarely, ever more cursorily. The thought of self-destruction fills me with dismay. Every possibility of escape must first be exhausted, I reassure my troubled conscience. Surely I have no fear of death—when the proper time arrives. But haste would be highly imprudent; worse, quite unnecessary. Indeed, it is my duty as a revolutionist to seize every opportunity for propaganda: escape would afford me many occasions to serve the Cause. ”

“ The sun is slowly nearing the blue patch of sky, visible from my cell in the western wing of the jail. I stand close to the bars to catch the cheering rays. They glide across my face with tender, soft caress, and I feel something melt within me. Closer I press to the door. I long for the precious embrace to surround me, to envelop me, to pour its soft balm into my aching soul. The last rays are fading away, and something out of my heart is departing with them.... But the lengthening shadows on the gray flagstones spread quiet. Gradually the clamor ceases, the sounds die out. ”

“ Why so much misery and strife? Sunshine, flowers, beautiful things are all around me. That is life! Joy and peace.... No! There can be no peace with such as Frick and these parasites in carriages riding on our backs, and sucking the blood of the workers. Fricks, vampires, all of them—I almost shout aloud—they are all one class. All in a cabal against my class, the toilers, the producers. An impersonal conspiracy, perhaps; but a conspiracy nevertheless. And the fine ladies on horseback smile and laugh. What is the misery of the People to them? ”

“ The sickly features, pale with the color of the prison whitewash, resemble a little child's. But the eyes look oldish in their wrinkled sockets, the head painfully out of proportion with the puny, stunted body. Now and again he turns his gaze on me, and in his face there is melancholy wonder, as if he is seeking something that has passed him by. Often I ponder, Is there a crime more appalling and heinous than the one Society has committed upon him, who is neither man nor youth and never was child? Crushed by the heel of brutality, this plant had never budded. ”

“ Here, all around me, a thousand unfortunates daily suffer the torture of Calvary, forsaken by God and man. They bleed and struggle and suicide, with the desperate cry for a little sunshine and life. How shall they be helped? How helped amid the injustice and brutality of a society whose chief monuments are prisons? And so we must suffer and suicide, and countless others after us, till the play of social forces shall transform human history into the history of true humanity,—and meanwhile our bones will bleach on the long, dreary road. ”

“ All night I toss sleeplessly on the cot, and pace the cell in nervous agitation, waiting for the dawn. With restless joy I watch the darkness melt, as the first rays herald the coming of the day. It is the 18th of May—my last day, my very last! A few more hours, and I shall walk through the gates, and drink in the warm sunshine and the balmy air, and be free to go and come as I please, after the nightmare of thirteen years and ten months in jail, penitentiary, and workhouse. ”

“ I join the ranks of the world's producers, and glory in the full manhood conferred by the dignity of labor. I resent the derision of my adopted country on the part of my family abroad,—resent it hotly. I feel wronged by the charge of having disgraced my parents' respected name by turning "a low, dirty workingman." I combat their snobbishness vehemently, and revenge the indignity to labor by challenging comparison between the Old and the New World. Behold the glory of liberty and prosperity, the handiwork of a nation that honors labor!... The loom of Time keeps weaving. ”

“ How insignificant it all is in the eye of reason, how small and puny life and all its pain and travail!... With eyes closed, I behold myself suspended by the neck from the upper bars of the cell. My body swings gently against the door, striking it softly, once, twice,—just like Pasquale, when he hanged himself in the cell next to mine, some months ago. A few twitches, and the last breath is gone. My face grows livid, my body rigid; slowly it cools. The night guard passes. "What's this, eh?" He rings the rotunda bell. ”

“ The sordid misery of my "greenhorn" days assumes a new aspect. Ah, the wretchedness of those first years in America!... And still Time's woof and warp unroll the tapestry of life in the New World, its joys and heart-throbs. I stand a lone stranger, bewildered by the flurry of Castle Garden, yet strong with hope and courage to carve my fate in freedom. The Tsar is far away, and the fear of his hated Cossacks is past. How inspiring is liberty! The very air breathes enthusiasm and strength, and with confident ardor I embrace the new life. ”

“ Ensnared by the gaming spirit of the time, the feeble creature of vitiating environment, his fate is sealed by a moment of weakness. Yet his deviation from the path of established ethics is but a faint reflection of the lives of the men that decreed his doom. The hypocrisy of organized Society! The very foundation of its existence rests upon the negation and defiance of every professed principle of right and justice. Every feature of its face is a caricature, a travesty upon the semblance of truth; the whole life of humanity a mockery of the very name. ”

“ My prison-house environment is but another manifestation of the Midas-hand, whose cursed touch turns everything to the brutal service of Mammon. Dullness fawns upon cruelty for advancement; with savage joy the shop foreman cracks his whip, for his meed of the gold-transmuted blood. The famished bodies in stripes, the agonized brains reeling in the dungeon night, the men buried in "basket" and solitary,—what human hand would turn the key upon a soul in utter darkness, but for the dread of a like fate, and the shadow it casts before? ”