She settled herself at her father's, and after a while drooped in spirits, and was sure something would happen. When bad news came she cried, "There! I knew it!" As the turnkey passed her husband's cell one day he heard some noise and looked in. The young man was just falling from his loom in a fit of apoplexy. There was no delay in doing all that can be done in such cases; but in a few hours he died. There is no reason to suppose that his imprisonment had anything to do with the attack. It was probably a constitutional tendency, aggravated by anxiety of mind.
The prison must be tried some years longer before a complete comparison of it with others can be made; but it appears at present, that if there be some few diseases which may possibly be aggravated by the silence and thoughtfulness attendant on solitary confinement (which I do not know to be the case), there are many more which disappear under the regularity of temperature and of hours, and the good diet of the establishment. There was certainly less sallowness and anxiety in the faces of the inmates than struck me in the other prisons. One man amazed me by calling the four years he had passed here the most comfortable he had ever known; but when he told me the wretchedness of his previous life, I fully believed him.
I found, on visiting the elder of the brothers, how complete is the secrecy preserved in the prison. I had been repeatedly told that these brothers came in together, and, therefore, had no hesitation in mentioning the one to the other. I was thunderstruck with the vehemence with which the elder turned upon me with the question, "Is my brother in this prison?" "I was told you came in together," replied I. "Then they put him in just after me," cried he. "What did they find him guilty of? What part of the prison is he in? What work does he do?" and a number of other questions; none of which, of course, I would answer. I was not very sorry that he was accidentally made acquainted with what he had led his young brother into. I fear he could bear it only too well. When I told the warden the mistake I had made, I found that the younger brother came in three weeks after the elder.
The cases I became acquainted with were not all hopeful. Some of the convicts were so stupid as not to be relied upon, more or less. Others canted so detestably, and were (always in connexion with their cant) so certain that they should never sin more, that I have every expectation that they will find themselves in prison again some day. One fellow, a sailor, notorious for having taken more lives than probably any man in the United States, was quite confident that he should be perfectly virtuous henceforth. He should never touch anything stronger than tea, or lift his hand against money or life. I told him I thought he could not be sure of all this till he was within sight of money and the smell of strong liquors; and that he was more confident than I should like to be. He shook his shock of red hair at me, and glared with his one ferocious eye, as he said he knew all about it, as he had been the worst of men, and Christ had had mercy on his poor soul. When I had got him away from his cant, and upon subjects on which he could talk with some simplicity, I found that even this man preferred this prison to others that he had been in. It so happened that no conviction for murder had ever been procurable against him; his imprisonments were all for theft. His account of the old Walnut-street prison was dreadful. He there daily heard stories of crimes, from four in the winter afternoons till daylight. "Poor boasting! for the crimes they bragged of were never done." I asked him how he got into that prison. "For a couple o' larcenies, a grand and a little," said he, with the most business-like nonchalance. He was waylaid by two old burglars on his coming out, and on the spot agreed upon an enterprise for the next night. His mother died in his arms; he went and committed the burglary, was caught, and before midnight was in prison again. His accounts of his deeds were too scientific for my understanding; but I made out enough to be ready when he asked my advice what to do when he came out. I answered as if he were in earnest, advising him to leave Philadelphia and all towns, and settle in the woods, out of the way of grogshops, bad company, and other people's property. But his keepers expect that he will end his days with them, and this is the hope of that part of society which fears his ferocity.
As the system of solitary imprisonment gains ground, I trust that the practice of prison-visiting will gain ground too. It is most desirable that it should not be left wholly in the hands of proselyting religionists, but be shared by those who better understand human nature and command a greater variety of influences. For the sake of religion itself this is desirable, to rescue it from becoming a mere prison solace; an excitement seized when no other can be had, and to be laid aside when old pursuits offer themselves for resumption. Kind-hearted persons will have an opportunity of doing extensive and unquestionable good by keeping up the social affections of the prisoners, giving them new ideas, making them cheerful, and investing with pleasant associations whatever things are honest, pure, lovely, and of good report.
In other prisons much might thus be done, though not, I think, with such extraordinary effect as under the system of solitary confinement. I was struck with something I saw at the Charlestown prison (Massachusetts). Several convicts, black and white, who had behaved well, were practising singing, which is allowed as an indulgence. It seemed strange to hear "The heavens are telling" from such lips; but I listened to it with more pleasure than in some far finer places. Any kind person who can introduce a new innocent pursuit into a prison as a solace to its inmates cannot fail to be doing an important good.
This reminds me that a service may be rendered, not so much to the convicts as to society, by any persons who can supply the prisons where stonecutting is going on with a good set of epitaphs. At Auburn they are wanted, and much more at Nashville (Tennessee), where the stonecutting department is superintended by an honest Englishman, whose stock of epitaphs is small and of miserable quality. We half undertook to prepare and collect some for him, but found it a less easy task than we had supposed. We got out our pencils at three o'clock one summer morning, when our stage had broken down on a bad Tennessee road; but one of our party observing that this was the first time he had ever heard of making epitaphs for amusement, there was an end of the attempt; and the Nashville prison remains unsupplied, unless somebody else has done better than we.
I suspect the fault lies in the supposition that epitaphs of general application cannot be made at all. An epitaph should be the breathing of emotion arising out of a particular case; and none made for stonecutters' use can have much life or truth. Still, they may have grammar and general propriety, so as to be an advantageous substitute for some at present in use, if only persons can be found to compose them on such considerations.
I saw at the Charlestown prison a sight more impressive to me than all else that the walls contained; a man of might, but whose power has taken a wrong direction; his hand being against every man, and every man's against him. He is a prison-breaker so formidable as to be regarded and treated as if he were of Satanic race, and not as made up of flesh and blood, and emotions that may be roused, and affections subject to the touch. He seems, indeed, to have become somewhat of the Satanic kind, for he is now piqued to do all the harm he can. His pride is in for it; his reputation stands upon it. I was shown an enormous block of stone which he had displaced by the aid of a "gentleman" outside, who, for fear of the prison-breaker's blabbing, committed suicide on his recapture. The strong man was heavily fettered, confined in a different cell every night, and conducted to it by a procession of turnkeys. As we stood aside in the echoing passage to let the array go by, there was something really grand in the air of the man who had virtually said to himself, "Evil, be thou my good!" He stepped slowly, clanking his chains, and looking us full in the face as he passed. He cannot but have a calm sense of power when he nightly sees the irons, the bars and locks, and the six fellow-men, all in requisition to keep him from working his will. As we saw him slowly turn into his cell, and heard lock after lock shot behind him, I could not help thinking that there was much true monarchical feeling within those four narrow walls.