forgotten.

A little farther on, a squalid-looking woman in a slovenly,
thick-bordered cap, with her arms muffled in a large red shawl, the
fringed ends of which straggled nearly to the bottom of a dirty white
apron, was communicating some instructions to _her_ visitor--her daughter
evidently. The girl was thinly clad, and shaking with the cold. Some
ordinary word of recognition passed between her and her mother when she
appeared at the grating, but neither hope, condolence, regret, nor
affection was expressed on either side. The mother whispered her
instructions, and the girl received them with her pinched-up,
half-starved features twisted into an expression of careful cunning. It
was some scheme for the woman's defence that she was disclosing, perhaps;
and a sullen smile came over the girl's face for an instant, as if she
were pleased: not so much at the probability of her mother's liberation,
as at the chance of her 'getting off' in spite of her prosecutors. The
dialogue was soon concluded; and with the same careless indifference with
which they had approached each other, the mother turned towards the inner
end of the yard, and the girl to the gate at which she had entered.

The girl belonged to a class--unhappily but too extensive--the very
existence of which, should make men's hearts bleed. Barely past her
childhood, it required but a glance to discover that she was one of those
children, born and bred in neglect and vice, who have never known what
childhood is: who have never been taught to love and court a parent's
smile, or to dread a parent's frown. The thousand nameless endearments
of childhood, its gaiety and its innocence, are alike unknown to them.
They have entered at once upon the stern realities and miseries of life,
and to their better nature it is almost hopeless to appeal in
after-times, by any of the references which will awaken, if it be only
for a moment, some good feeling in ordinary bosoms, however corrupt they
may have become. Talk to _them_ of parental solicitude, the happy days
of childhood, and the merry games of infancy! Tell them of hunger and
the streets, beggary and stripes, the gin-shop, the station-house, and
the pawnbroker's, and they will understand you.

Two or three women were standing at different parts of the grating,
conversing with their friends, but a very large proportion of the
prisoners appeared to have no friends at all, beyond such of their old
companions as mi