fficulty, so that towards its close he was really sick, and,
as he remarked, solicited the warden for the privilege of laying off and
doctoring a little, with the answer, "I know what the matter is with
you, you wish to get rid of work; you can go to the shop;" and he was
given no respite, nor was anything done for him while there. He went
home so used up, that, as his father asserted, it did not seem that he
could have lived at the prison but a few weeks longer. He revived,
however, with home air and home treatment, worked considerably through
the summer, but, as fall came on, had a return of the rheumatic trouble
contracted in prison, with which he suffered many months, and died. A
number of others, too, on their leaving, I found completely broken down,
who were sent away to friends, or places of their usual abode, to be
maintained by relatives or at public expense. A man, when leaving, said
that he had there sometimes been forced to work, when so sick that five
dollars a day would have been no temptation to him for thus laboring.
One was reported to me as having been kept to his machine till fainting,
and then carried to the hospital. One, with a consumptive difficulty,
not able to work in the shop, was put in the cook-room to do what he
could there, and kept at his task till, one Sabbath eve, he was taken to
the hospital where he died the next Tuesday morning.

But why pursue this dark recital? All such management, of course, made
the prison sickness appear less in the physician's account than the
reality. It seemed fortunate to the men that the term of sentence to
many so expired as to leave them under this rule but a comparatively
short time.

In conversation with an overseer here, who had large experience, the
idea was started as to how long time would be required for the system
reigning at the prison this year to use up completely the number it
commenced with, could all have been kept truly under its influence, with
no respite or mitigation. His conclusion was some two years. Nor could I
think he was much out of the way, that is, take the case as it bore on a
large share.

The system left its legitimate effects on the minds of the inmates,
aside from driving to insanity and idiocy, namely, irritability, angry
feeling, or moroseness. Under the former rule, the men, when leaving,
would generally express much gratitude towards officers and friends for
the interest taken in their welfare, apparently filled with a