The steward, a fat man in a green "wide-awake" hat, who was incarcerated
on remand for the damages in an action for breach of promise of marriage,
introduced me to the cook (who was going up next week to the Insolvent
Court, having filed his schedule as a beer-shop keeper). He told me, that
if I chose to purchase any thing at a species of every-thing-shop in the
yard, the cook would dress it; or, if I did not choose to be at the
trouble of providing myself, I might breakfast, dine, and sup at his, the
steward's, table, "for a consideration," as Mr. Trapbois has it. I acceded
to the latter proposition, receiving the intelligence that turkey and
oyster-sauce were to be ready at two precisely, with melancholy
indifference. Turkey had no charms for me now.

I sauntered forth into the yard, and passed fifty or sixty
fellow-unfortunates, sauntering as listlessly as myself. Strolling about,
I came to a large grating, somewhat similar to Mr. Blowman's bird-cage, in
which was a heavy gate called the "lock," and which communicated with the
corridors leading to the exterior of the prison. Here sat, calmly
surveying his caged birds within, a turnkey--not a repulsive, gruff-voiced
monster, with a red neckerchief and top boots, and a bunch of keys, as
turnkeys are popularly supposed to be--but a pleasant, jovial man enough,
in sleek black. He had a little lodge behind, where a bright fire burned,
and where Mrs. Turnkey, and the little Turnkeys lived. (I found a direful
resemblance between the name of his office, and that of the Christmas
bird.) His Christmas dinner hung to the iron bars above him, in the shape
of a magnificent piece of beef. Happy turnkey, to be able to eat it on the
outer side of that dreadful grating! In another part of the yard hung a
large black board, inscribed in half-effaced characters, with the
enumerations of divers donations, made in former times by charitable
persons, for the benefit in perpetuity of poor prisoners. To-day, so much
beef and so much strong beer was allotted to each prisoner.

But what were beef and beer, what was unlimited tobacco, or even the
plum-pudding, when made from prison plums, boiled in a prison copper, and
eaten in a prison dining-room? What though surreptitious gin were carried
in, in bladders, beneath the under garments of the fairer portion of
creation; what though brandy were smuggled into the wards, disguised as
black draughts, or extract of sarsaparilla? A pretty Christmas ma