me. You have no
business with these things." To my inquiry, "Am I to understand that
now, after speaking to you about the glasses, and putting them in the
deputy's hands, the man must speak to one of you himself, before they
can be returned?" he answered, "Certainly." Hence, on my next round, I
said to the owner, "Please speak to the warden or deputy about your
glasses, and they will return them, probably, all right," not giving him
the least hint as to how matters really stood, though I could but think,
"Here is red-tapeism with a vengeance; not permitted to speak of
anything in my own department." Waiting for a time, and thinking that
neither law nor gospel would object to my lending him my own, this I
did, which he used until liberated. True, after some weeks, glasses were
brought him, in which, however, he could not see.

Thus I was effectively taught my bounds, to touch nothing about the
prison but my books, to suggest no change any way, and to bring nothing
to the warden, or deputy, about a prisoner, which bounds I was ever
careful to observe.

There was an attendant rule to this red tapeism, as I understood it,
that bore hard on the prisoners,--that one must ask for a thing but
once. Some would ask me to help them to an article, when I would say,
"You must go with that to the deputy, or warden." They replied, "I have,
with the promise of it, but it does not come." Or, perhaps, "I ventured
to ask the second time, and received the stern reply, 'Don't you ever
mention that to me, again.'"

A forlorn condition this,--the State placing her wards helplessly under
a man who is not to be reminded of a request, which had slipped his
mind, perhaps, through the multiplicity of business. Surely, such a man
should be very considerate and particularly careful about attending to
the needs of his dependents.

The lessons taught me, the spirit manifested with all the surroundings,
gave me to understand that I must walk in everything with the utmost
circumspection or be mercilessly dealt with. True, I had ever labored to
do all things in my prison management just as I should, ever acting with
an eye single to the best prison order; but circumstances now evidently
demanded of me a double care, that my every step should not only be
right but appear right, and no shadow of grounds for complaint be any
way found.

9. _Prisoners' Aid Association._ In the spring of '70, a company of
ladies and gentlemen organized under the N