A Cynic Looks at Life

After lying for more than a century dead I was revived, dowered with a new body, and restored to society.  The first thing of interest that I observed was an enormous building, covering a square mile of ground.  It was surrounded on all sides by a high, strong wall of hewn stone upon which armed sentinels paced to and fro.  In one face of the wall was a single gate of massive iron, strongly guarded.  While admiring the Cyclopean architecture of the “reverend pile” I was accosted by a man in uniform, evidently the warden, with a cheerful salutation.

“Colonel,” I said, “pray tell me what is this building.”

“This,” said he, “is the new state penitentiary.  It is one of twelve, all alike.”

“You surprise me,” I replied.  “Surely the criminal element must have increased enormously.”

“Yes, indeed,” he assented; “under the Reform régime, which began in your day, crime became so powerful, bold and fierce that arrests were no longer possible and the prisons then in existence were soon overcrowded.  The state was compelled to erect others of greater capacity.”

“But, Colonel,” I protested, “if the criminals were too bold and powerful to be taken into custody, of what use are the prisons?  And how are they crowded?”

He fixed upon me a look that I could not fail to interpret as expressing a doubt of my sanity.  “What!” he said, “is it possible that the modern penology is unknown to you?  Do you suppose we practice the antiquated and ineffective method of shutting up the rascals?  Sir, the growth of the criminal element has, as I said, compelled the erection of more and larger prisons.  We have enough to hold comfortably all the honest men and women of the state.  Within these protecting walls they carry on all the necessary vocations of life excepting commerce.  That is necessarily in the hands of the rogues, as before.”

“Venerated representative of Reform,” I exclaimed, wringing his hand with effusion, “you are Knowledge, you are History, you are the Higher Education!  We must talk further.  Come, let us enter this benign edifice; you shall show me your dominion and instruct me in the rules.  You shall propose me as an inmate.”

I walked rapidly to the gate.  When challenged by the sentinel, I turned to summon my instructor.  He was nowhere visible.  I turned again to look at the prison.  Nothing was there:  desolate and forbidding, as about the broken statue of Ozymandias.

The lone and level sands stretched far away.