Nor all her looks dressed up for show,
But something more than craft or smiles
Has won a heart from me, I trow.”
William Duthie.
The Poor Man’s Kitchen.
Not long ago, it was discovered that our prisons are palaces, that the treadmill is as pleasant as waltzing, that picking oakum is not more difficult than potichomanie, and that if any one desires to fare luxuriously every day, without expense to himself, he has only to turn thief, and be sentenced to two years’ confinement. Unfortunately, the life of a prison is attended with a few disadvantages. We are not all fitted for a life of monastic seclusion; silence is not always agreeable; restraint very soon becomes irksome. In spite of these drawbacks, however—which those who have long battled with the world, and whose spirits are drooping under the fell influence of adversity, might well be content to endure for the sake of peace and plenty—the condemned cell seemed a blessed refuge for the distressed, a pretty little chamber in the Castle of Indolence and Many Delights. In one point, especially, the House of Correction, it was supposed, might inspire all prisoners to sing with Dr. Watts—
“I have been there, and still would go;
’Tis like a little heaven below.”
for the larder seemed worthy of an abbey in the rare old time in which