But Pilgrim ancestry does not insure saintliness in all its descendants, as I found upon visiting the county prison. Within its walls was pointed out to me a woman who had poisoned her husband, when sick and helpless on her hands. For thirteen long weary years she had never been outside those walls; and latterly had declined even walking in the little paved yard allowed the prisoners. She was a large, powerfully built woman, with a skin like the parchments I had been looking at in the Record Office drawn tightly over her high cheek-bones. She sat sewing at her grated window as we entered; and when asked "if she were not warm," as the day was very hot, answered petulantly, "No—I am most always cold; there can't be circulation where there's no exercise." Outside was bloom and sunlight, and song of birds, and merry voices, and blue skies, and pleasant hum of labor, and the faint dirge of the sea. She merited her fate, but I turned away from her sick at heart, and thought, were it my case, how questionable were the mercy that abolished hanging for such slow-dropping torture as this.

In the same room with her were three hard-featured women, placed there for violation of the liquor laws. Each in that room had a babe in her arms, or at her knee—poor little innocent victims of maternal misdoing. One baby was moaning with the teething process, so hard to endure and survive, even with all the appliances of out-door air and wholesome surroundings. Its little waxen face showed signs of severe suffering, and for three months more, if the little life were spun out that long, it must remain there—its only amusement rocking the rude box which was allowed for a cradle. The mother answered me roughly enough when I inquired the age of her baby, but God knows I forgive her any bitterness she might feel at the difference that bright day in our respective lots; but could she have read my heart, and seen how I longed to carry her little one out on the grass, and among the flowers, and see it smile, she would have known me for its friend.

I never saw a prison more clean, and neat, and well-ordered; and yet I could not help thinking there should be a nursery there, that the little children of these erring mothers need not be punished with them; but, in the graphic language of the Superintendent, "Its original intention was not a fancy boarding-house."

I wish here to place on record that Plymouth can make good bread. I had begun to fear, so long had I been fed on Cape Ann saleratus, that I might lose the taste of wholesome yeast and flour, just as the "marasmus" denizens of the Five Points learn to dislike pure air. A brief heaven of good city bread in blessed old Boston quite set me up; and its unexpected appearance in Plymouth was more than I dared to hope.

I presume to this I may attribute the number of hale-looking, cheerful old people in Plymouth. I have no doubt it has had its effect also on the religious liberality so prevalent here, as I find that nobody makes mouths at you for being a Unitarian, or an Episcopalian, or of any other denomination that happens to suit your complaint. Rev. Mr. Robinson, the minister of the church in Holland from which "the Mayflower" Christians came, inculcated upon his flock this bit of pure gospel, in his parting sermon to them, that, "there was a great deal of truth coming out ahead that they had not even dreamed of as yet;" and particularly warned them against that spiritual conceit which should close their eyes to the perception of it. Now that's what I call liberal Christianity. Ministers, deacons, and the religious world generally will please take notice.

Since I came here, Plymouth has distinguished itself by a storm of rain and wind, the like of which I never saw before. I began to think over my transgressions; but really there were so many of them, and the house rocked so, and the trees swirled round at such a furious rate, that I had no clear idea then, nor have I since, of their number or enormity. And the very next morning the sun shone out so brightly on uprooted trees and unroofed barns and tumble-down chimneys, and the flowers that from their lowliness had escaped the avenger, that I took heart of grace, and classed myself among the latter!