you would not take your rations better." He replied, "I purposed to obey
the prison rules, but did not feel myself bound to eat what I could not
relish." One who was sick in his cell with a dispeptic difficulty, said
he could not take brown bread as it soured on his stomach, but could eat
white bread, for which he had asked, but to no purpose. I mentioned the
matter to the steward, asking if he could not have the white bread. He
answered, "No. They indulged him in that under the former administration
and he thinks he must continue to have it, but now every one is to fare
alike, so he must take his chance with the rest."

But the reader will ask, "Did not this warden allow the men who chose,
to take anything extra?" Certainly. The former custom had been to place
brown bread, cut in slices, near the rations, each man having the
privilege of taking as many slices extra as he might choose. Or, he
would convey dishes with extra rations to certain cells afternoons if
requested, or when the occupants were to work extra evenings. This
warden allowed any, desiring, to take of the brown bread extra, but only
one slice each. I would now, also, though very seldom, see dishes of
cracked wheat setting on the beds as extra rations, or basins of
hash-skins.--The reader understands that, in making hash, more or less
will dry, or burn upon the sides of the kettle, leaving a thick skin
when all the eatable part is removed.--This skin, scraped from the
kettle, composed these hash-skins, perfectly dry as husks. This was to
save everything and have nothing wasted.--The reader will understand
again, that when distributing books to the cells, and looking after the
books, I could not avoid seeing these things.

With the failing flesh also went the strength to work. A man described
the effect on himself, thus: "On first going into the shop after eating,
I feel quite vigorous for my task, but soon a peculiar goneness comes
on, and finally becomes so that what I do is through fairly driving my
system." He had been very vigorous, able to go through almost anything,
but what he had passed here proved sufficiently powerful to bring him
down.

An overseer told me, that the men in his division became so weak that it
required great effort on his part to keep some of them at their task,
they being hardly able to stand up by their machines. But his duty
forced him to keep them there as long as they could do anything, though
a part became unable to accom