But I am wandering from my story. I was just saying why money never stayed long in a convict’s pocket. Apart from the difficulty of keeping it, life in prison was so dreary; a convict is a creature by nature so eager for freedom, and from his social position so careless and reckless that to “have his fling for all he is worth,” to spend all his fortune carousing with noise and music and so to forget his depression, if only for the moment, naturally attracts him. It was strange to see how some of them would work unceasingly, sometimes for several months, simply to spend all their earnings in one day, leaving nothing, and then to drudge away for months again, till the next outbreak. Many of them were very fond of getting new clothes, which were never of the regulation pattern: black trousers unlike the uniform, tunics, coats. Cotton shirts and belts studded with metal discs were also in great demand. They dressed up on holidays, and then always paraded through all the prison wards to show themselves to all the world. Their pleasure in fine clothes was quite childish, and in many things the convicts were perfect children. It is true that all these fine things soon vanished from the owner’s possession⁠—sometimes they pawned or sold them for next to nothing the same evening.