"By all means."
"Come along, then!"
With this my new acquaintance wheeled his horse into the avenue leading up to the gate of the State Prison, whither, without another word, I followed him.
We were admitted, and courteously conducted through what appeared far more like a vast manufacturing establishment than a place of penal imprisonment; a manufactory, too, comprising almost every trade known to the necessities of civilization. I there saw hatters, tailors, shoemakers and carpenters; spinners and weavers, bakers and blacksmiths; all busy at their respective employments. Among the last-mentioned I saw the murderer Murrell—and through the coal grime on his face, I could see the countenance of a man that by no means belied his terrible reputation.
His history was given me on the spot. By trade, originally, a blacksmith—the calling to which, like Vulcan, he was now condemned—he had forsaken it for the more profitable profession of piracy—not upon the high seas, as the term might seem to imply, but upon the rivers of the Mississippi valley—especially the great stream itself—his prey, instead of ships, being the "keels" and flat-boats descending, cargo-laden, to New Orleans, or their crews, returning along the up-river roads, and carrying the cash obtained for their commodities.
Murrell had been hard to catch, and harder still to convict. His confederates could be counted by the score—among them merchants, planters, justices of the peace, and even clergymen! The result was that he was sentenced to ten years in the Penitentiary, against at least ten times the number of highway robberies, and perhaps twice the count in horrid assassinations!
I shall never forget the disgust with which I contemplated this fiend in human shape. Not for long. I was only too glad to get out of the blacksmiths' shop, and lay my leg once more over the saddle.
But in that visit to the Tennessee State Prison, I became acquainted with some facts that in part compensated for its unpleasantness.
I there learned that crime may become its own cure; that the industry proceeding from it may be so applied as to remove its cause, or at all events to release the State from taxation!
This fact, first discovered in the Tennessee Penitentiary, did not so much strike me at the time. I was then but a careless student in the science of political economy.