ds." They gave a unanimous vote, and laughed heartily when I said, "I
do wish you could all go to the polls in November and that we could lock
our opponents up here until after the election." I felt satisfied that
they had had one happy hour, and that I had said nothing to hurt the
feelings of the most unfortunate. As they filed off to their respective
workshops my faith and hope for brighter days went with them. Then I
went all through the prison. Everything looked clean and comfortable on
the surface, but I met a few days after a man, just set free, who had
been there five years for forgery. He told me the true inwardness of the
system; of the wretched, dreary life they suffered, and the brutality of
the keepers. He said the prison was infested with mice and vermin, and
that, during the five years he was there, he had never lain down one
night to undisturbed slumber. The sufferings endured in summer for want
of air, he said, were indescribable. In this prison the cells were in
the center of the building, the corridors running all around by the
windows, so the prisoners had no outlook and no direct contact with the
air. Hence, if a careless keeper forgot to open the windows after a
storm, the poor prisoners panted for air in their cells, like fish out
of water. My informant worked in the mattress department, over the room
where prisoners were punished. He said he could hear the lash and the
screams of the victims from morning till night. "Hard as the work is all
day," said he, "it is a blessed relief to get out of our cells to march
across the yard and get one glimpse of the heavens above, and one breath
of pure air, and to be in contact with other human souls in the
workshops, for, although we could never speak to each other, yet there
was a hidden current of sympathy conveyed by look that made us one in
our misery."

Though the press of the State was largely in our favor, yet there were
some editors who, having no arguments, exercised the little wit they did
possess in low ridicule. It was in this campaign that an editor in a
Kalamazoo journal said: "That ancient daughter of Methuselah, Susan B.
Anthony, passed through our city yesterday, on her way to the Plainwell
meeting, with a bonnet on her head looking as if it had recently
descended from Noah's ark." Miss Anthony often referred to this
description of herself, and said, "Had I represented twenty thousand
voters in Michigan, that political editor would not have k