The official explanation of this device would appear quite reasonable. It is said that if people could open their doors and come out of their cells, they would visit each other all night. One or two convivial spirits might, perhaps, drift into the corridor, but for the most part the casual is so dog-tired that any such spirit of enterprise is knocked out. But even were every casual to emerge, an attendant on night duty could shoo them back with the warning that if they came out again they would be shut in. It is as I have said, the Guardians do not desire to extend hospitality too often. Therefore, they inflict slight penalties upon the body and the soul, which, in the aggregate, make up a sum sufficiently imposing to make a night in the ward a thing most strenuously to be avoided.

I had always known that the Guardians deliberately adopt this regime, that their chief intent is to keep casuals “out,” not to welcome them in. But to know a thing and to experience it is widely different. I wish some of the guardians could be “destitute” and try their own wards.