what respect the man was the nobler animal of the two.
There was an English thief, who had been there but a few days out
of seven years: a villainous, low-browed, thin-lipped fellow, with
a white face; who had as yet no relish for visitors, and who, but
for the additional penalty, would have gladly stabbed me with his
shoemaker’s knife. There was another German who had entered the
jail but yesterday, and who started from his bed when we looked in,
and pleaded, in his broken English, very hard for work. There was
a poet, who after doing two days’ work in every four-and-twenty
hours, one for himself and one for the prison, wrote verses about
ships (he was by trade a mariner), and ‘the maddening wine-cup,’
and his friends at home. There were very many of them. Some
reddened at the sight of visitors, and some turned very pale. Some
two or three had prisoner nurses with them, for they were very
sick; and one, a fat old negro whose leg had been taken off within
the jail, had for his attendant a classical scholar and an
accomplished surgeon, himself a prisoner likewise. Sitting upon
the stairs, engaged in some slight work, was a pretty coloured boy.
‘Is there no refuge for young criminals in Philadelphia, then?’
said I. ‘Yes, but only for white children.’ Noble aristocracy in
crime
There was a sailor who had been there upwards of eleven years, and
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who in a few months’ time would be free. Eleven years of solitary
confinement!
‘I am very glad to hear your time is nearly out.’ What does he
say? Nothing. Why does he stare at his hands, and pick the flesh
upon his fingers, and raise his eyes for an instant, every now and
then, to those bare walls which have seen his head turn grey? It
is a way he has sometimes.
Does he never look men in the face, and does he always pluck at
those hands of his, as though he were bent on parting skin and
bone? It is his humour: nothing more.
It is his humour too, to say that he does not look forward to going
out; that he is not glad the time is drawing near; that he did look
forward to it once, but that was very long ago; that he has lost
all care for everything. It is his humour to be a helpless,
crushed, and broken man. And, Heaven be his witness that he has
his humour thoroughly gratified!
There were three young women in adjoining cells, all convicted at
the same time of a conspiracy to rob their prosecutor. In the
silence and solitude of their lives they had grown to be quite
beautiful. Their looks were very sad, and might have moved the
sternest visitor to tears, but not to that kind of sorrow which the
contemplation of the men awakens. One was a young girl; not
twenty, as I recollect; whose snow-white room was hung with the
work of some former prisoner, and upon whose downcast face the sun
in all its splendour shone down through the high chink in the wall,
where one narrow strip of bright blue sky was visible. She was
very penitent and quiet; had come to be resigned, she said (and I
believe her); and had a mind at peace. ‘In a word, you are happy
here?’ said one of my companions. She struggled – she did struggle
very hard – to answer, Yes; but raising her eyes, and meeting that
glimpse of freedom overhead, she burst into tears, and said, ‘She
tried to be; she uttered no complaint; but it was natural that she
should sometimes long to go out of that one cell: she could not
help THAT,’ she sobbed, poor thing!
I went from cell to cell that day; and every face I saw, or word I
heard, or incident I noted, is present to my mind in all its
painfulness. But let me pass them by, for one, more pleasant,
glance of a prison on the same plan which I afterwards saw at
Pittsburg.
When I had gone over that, in the same manner, I asked the governor