He was facing the problem of bare existence.
Although the day was so hot, it was late summer;
soon would come the frost and the winter. He wished
to live to enjoy his freedom, and all he had for assets
was that freedom; which was paradoxical, for it
did not signify the ability to obtain work, which
was the power of life. Outside the stone wall of the
prison he was now inclosed by a subtle, intangible,
yet infinitely more unyielding one -- the prejudice
of his kind against the released prisoner. He was
to all intents and purposes a prisoner still, for all his
spurts of swagger and the youthful leap of his pulses,
and while he did not admit that to himself, yet
always, since he had the hard sense of the land of
his birth -- New England -- he pondered that problem
of existence. He felt instinctively that it would be
a useless proceeding for him to approach any human
being for employment. He knew that even the
freedom, which he realized through all his senses
like an essential perfume, could not yet overpower
the reek of the prison. As he walked through the
clogging dust he thought of one after another whom
he had known before he had gone out of the world
of free men and had bent his back under the hand of
the law. There were, of course, people in his little
native village, people who had been friends and
neighbors, but there were none who had ever loved
him sufficiently for him to conquer his resolve to
never ask aid of them.
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