A Motley Author:John Galsworthy Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE PRISONER ON a fine day of early summer in a London garden, before the birds had lost their Spring song, or the trees dropped their last blossoms, our frie... more »nd said suddenly: "Why! there's a goldfinch!" Blackbirds there were, and thrushes, and tits in plenty, an owl at night, and a Christopher Columbus of a cuckoo, who solemnly, once a year, mistook this green island of trees for the main lands of Kent and Surrey, but a goldfinch—never! "I hear it—over there!" he said again, and, getting up, he walked towards the house. When he came back, our friend sat down again, and observed: "I didn't know that you kept a cage-bird!" We admitted that our cook had a canary. "A mule!" he remarked, very shortly. Some strong feeling had evidently been aroused in him that neither of us could understand. Suddenly he burst out: "I can't bear things in cages; animals, birds, or men. I hate to see or think of them." And looking at us angrily, as though we had taken an advantage in drawing from him this confession, he went on quickly: "I was staying in a German town some years ago, with a friend who was making inquiries into social matters. He asked me one day to go over a prison with him. I had never seen one, then, and I agreed. It was just such a day as this—a perfectly clear sky, and there was that cool, dancing sparkle on everything that you only see in some parts of Germany. This prison, which stood in the middle of the town, was one of those shaped like a star, that have been built over there on the plan of Pen- tonville. The system, they told us, was the same that you might have seen working here many years ago. The Germans were then, and still, no doubt, are, infatuated with the idea of muring their prisoners up in complete solitude. But it was a new toy to them t...« less