They called Jake Oppenheimer the “Human Tiger.”  Some cub reporter coined the phrase that will long outlive the man to whom it was applied.  And yet I ever found in Jake Oppenheimer all the cardinal traits of right humanness.  He was faithful and loyal.  I know of the times he has taken punishment in preference to informing on a comrade.  He was brave.  He was patient.  He was capable of self-sacrifice—I could tell a story of this, but shall not take the time.  And justice, with him, was a passion.  The prison-killings done by him were due entirely to this extreme sense of justice.  And he had a splendid mind.  A lifetime in prison, ten years of it in solitary, had not dimmed his brain.

Morrell, ever a true comrade, too had a splendid brain.  In fact, and I who am about to die have the right to say it without incurring the charge of immodesty, the three best minds in San Quentin from the Warden down were the three that rotted there together in solitary.  And here at the end of my days, reviewing all that I have known of life, I am compelled to the conclusion that strong minds are never docile.  The stupid men, the fearful men, the men ungifted with passionate rightness and fearless championship—these are the men who make model prisoners.  I thank all gods that Jake Oppenheimer, Ed Morrell, and I were not model prisoners.

CHAPTER VI

There is more than the germ of truth in things erroneous in the child’s definition of memory as the thing one forgets with.  To be able to forget means sanity.  Incessantly to remember, means obsession, lunacy.  So the problem I faced in solitary, where incessant remembering strove for possession of me, was the problem of forgetting.  When I gamed with flies, or played chess with myself, or talked with my knuckles, I partially forgot.  What I desired was entirely to forget.