h the generations and sexes melting together and moving in
a loose harmonious band. The party must have been less numerous than by
the romantic tradition or confused notation of my youth, and what I
mainly remember of it beyond my sense of our being at once an attendant
train to my aged and gentle and in general most unadventurous
grandmother, and a chorus of curiosity and amusement roundabout the
vivid Gussy, is our collective impression that State prisons were on the
whole delightful places, vast, bright and breezy, with a gay, free
circulation in corridors and on stairs, a pleasant prevalence of hot
soup and fresh crusty rolls, in tins, of which visitors admiringly
partook, and for the latter, in chance corners and on sunny landings,
much interesting light brush of gentlemen remarkable but for gentlemanly
crimes--that is defalcations and malversations to striking and
impressive amounts.

I recall our coming on such a figure at the foot of a staircase and his
having been announced to us by our conductor or friend in charge as
likely to be there; and what a charm I found in his cool loose uniform
of shining white (as I was afterwards to figure it,) as well as in his
generally refined and distinguished appearance and in the fact that he
was engaged, while exposed to our attention, in the commendable act of
paring his nails with a smart penknife and that he didn't allow us to
interrupt him. One of my companions, I forget which, had advised me that
in these contacts with illustrious misfortune I was to be careful not to
stare; and present to me at this moment is the wonder of whether he
would think it staring to note that _he_ quite stared, and also that his
hands were fine and fair and one of them adorned with a signet ring. I
was to have later in life a glimpse of two or three dismal
penitentiaries, places affecting me as sordid, as dark and dreadful; but
if the revelation of Sing-Sing had involved the idea of a timely warning
to the young mind my small sensibility at least was not reached by the
lesson. I envied the bold-eyed celebrity in the array of a planter at
his ease--we might have been _his_ slaves--quite as much as I envied
Gussy; in connection with which I may remark here that though in that
early time I seem to have been constantly eager to exchange my lot for
that of somebody else, on the assumed certainty of gaining by the
bargain, I fail to remember feeling jealous of such happier persons--in
the measure o