r the sound of their tramping to
the sanctuary. While they were engaged there I read a chapter of Gibbon;
after which I heard the "miserable sinners" return from the chapel to
their cells.

At twelve o'clock came mv second instalment of Christmas fare: six
ounces of potatoes, eight ounces of bread and a mutton chop. Being
on hospital diet, I had this trinity for my dinner every day for nine
months, and words cannot describe the nauseous monotony of the _menu_.
The other prisoners had the regular Sunday's diet: bread, potatoes and
suet-pudding. After dinner I went for another short hour's tramp in the
yard. The officers seemed to relax their usual rigor, and many of the
prisoners exchanged greetings. "How did yer like the figgy duff?" "Did
the beef stick in yer stomach?" Such were the flowers of conversation
that afternoon. From the talk around me, I gathered that under the old
management, before the Government took over the prison, all the inmates
had a "blow out" on Christmas-day, consisting of beef, vegetables,
plum-pudding and a pint of beer. Some of the "old hands" bitterly
bewailed the decadence in prison hospitality. Their lamentations were
worthy of a Conservative orator at a rural meeting. The present was a
poor thing compared with the past, and they sighed for "the tender grace
of a day that is dead."

After exercise I went to chapel. The schoolmaster, who was a very
pleasant gentleman, had drilled the singing class into a fair state
of efficiency, and they sang one or two Christmas hymns in pretty good
style; but the effect of their efforts was considerably marred by the
rest of the congregation, whose unmusical voices, bad sense of time, and
ignorance of the tune, more than once nearly brought the performance
to an untimely end. Parson Playford followed with a seasonable sermon,
which would have been more heartily relished on a fuller stomach. He
told us what a blessed time Christmas was, and how people did well to be
joyous on the anniversary of their Savior's birth; after which I presume
he returned to the bosom of his family, and celebrated the birth of
Christ with liberal doses of turkey, goose, beef, pudding, and communion
wine. Before dismissing us with his blessing to our "little rooms,"
which was his habitual euphemism for our cells, he said that he could
not wish us a happy Christmas in our unhappy condition, but would wish
us a peaceful Christmas; and he ventured to promise us that boon, if
after