The warden, who is a very just man, rebuked the keepers severely for their carelessness in putting such temptation in the way of any prisoner. He bade them take the offending convict down to the dark cell and keep him there until he could find a rhyme for “sidewalk.”
“And remember,” he called after them, “in future see that no dialect of any kind is issued to the prisoners until it is thoroughly boiled.”
The visitors then made their way to the shops, where they found gangs of convicts at work under the supervision of keepers. The prison choir was practising some new hymns and, at the warden’s request, rendered a beautiful new song composed not long ago by the Rev. Gideon Shackles, the prison chaplain, and entitled “Shall We Gather Up the River?”
They had just finished, when the tramp of heavy feet was heard, and in a moment there came around the corner a line of men in prison dress walking, single file, in lock-step. Under the leadership of two trusties they made their way to a long table, seated themselves at it, and began to write with great diligence.
“Who are those men?” inquired Mr. McClure, with some interest. “I hope you are not putting any of your gangs on Washington or Lincoln or Grant this winter, for that would throw a great many of my writers out of employment.”
“No,” replied the warden, “that is simply the regular eight-hour shift of Cuban war correspondents, and very busy we keep them, too. You see, a number of newspaper editors are finding out that we can furnish just as good an article of Cuban news here in Sing Sing as they can get from Key West, where the bulk of the work has been done heretofore.”
There was silence for a moment, and then Mr. McClure remarked in a very low voice, “I’ll take the names of some of those fellows down. One of these days they’ll be good for reminiscences of ‘How I Freed Cuba,’ or ‘The True Story of the Great Conflict at Our Very Gates,’ or something of that sort.”