We looked around the room, and not seeing any thing to sleep upon,
curiosity led us to ask him where he slept.

"The jail allows us a blanket-that's mine in the corner: I spread it
at night when I wants to go to bed," he answered, quite contentedly. We
left the poor wretch, for our feelings could withstand it no longer. The
state of society that would thus reduce a human being, needed more pity
than the calloused bones reduced to such a bed. His name was Bergen.

The other was a young Irishman, who had been dragged to jail in his
shirt, pantaloons, and hat, on suspicion of having stolen seven dollars
from a comrade. He had been in jail very near four months, and in regard
to filth and vermin was a counterpart of the other. A death-like smell,
so offensive that we stopped upon the threshold, escaped from the room
as soon as the door opened, enough to destroy a common constitution,
which his emaciated limbs bore the strongest evidence of.

The prisoners upon the second story were allowed the privilege of the
yard during certain hours in the day, and the debtors at all hours in
the day; yet, all were subjected to the same fare. In the yard were a
number of very close cells, which, as we have said before, were kept
for negroes, refractory criminals, and those condemned to capital
punishment. These cells seemed to be held as a terror over the
criminals, and well they might, for we never witnessed any thing more
dismal for the tenement of man.

CHAPTER XIII. HOW IT IS.

IT is our object to show the reader how many gross abuses of power exist
in Charleston, and to point him to the source. In doing this, the task
becomes a delicate one, for there are so many things we could wish were
not so, because we know there are many good men in the community whose
feelings are enlisted in the right, but their power is not coequal; and
if it were, it is checked by an opposite influence.

The more intelligent of the lower classes look upon the subject of
politics in its proper light--they see the crashing effect the doctrine
of nullification has upon their interests; yet, though their numbers
are not few, their voice is small, and cannot sound through the channels
that make popular influence. Thus all castes of society are governed by
impracticable abstractions.

The jail belongs to the county--the municipal authorities have no voice
in it; and the State, in its legislative benevolence, has provided
thirty cents a day for