The four Matrons took the evening watch, alone in prison, in rotation. It was a rule that one of them was to be always there, when the prisoners were in. They were not to be left by themselves a moment.

The one who had charge was to be alone; the other three were at liberty, one to go about the buildings or grounds, two to go out of the prison confines, if they liked. It was my turn to be alone in prison.

Immediately after they had been locked into their cells, and the other Matrons had left, Haggerton began to complain of her coffee.

"What is the matter with your coffee?" I asked.

"It is cold," she replied.

"I am sorry; but I can't help it now."

Upon that she began to fret. "I haven't eaten any breakfast, nor any dinner, and I've worked hard all day, and staid an hour later,"—some of them had staid till eight o'clock that night in the shop—"and now I can't eat any supper because my coffee is cold. I'll tell the Master, and he'll make an awful fuss."

Of course I could not allow such talk as that, and I told her to stop.

"I have done the best for you that I could. You had the same chance to eat that the rest had, and the same breakfast and dinner provided for you. I am not allowed to provide anything else. If you haven't eaten, it is your own fault."

"I can't eat brown bread, and I can't eat soup, nor I can't drink cold coffee. The Master will be awful mad, and make an awful fuss, for me to have cold coffee."

"Not another word, Haggerton! If you don't like the fare, you ought not to take board here," I said. I thought, if the Master would feel so bad that your coffee is cold, why don't his compassion lead him to provide something that you can eat.

Upon that she went on to cry and sob, and make a great disturbance in the prison.

I told her she must stop; but she kept on. I had not the heart to scold and threaten the girl. I had no doubt that she was tired and hungry, and I pitied her. I went for the Deputy, to see what I should do. He was out. I stepped into the officers' dining-room to find some one to direct me.

Mrs. Hardhack, the Shop Matron, was eating her supper. The Supervisor sat there, talking with her. I stated the case to her. Before I had got half through with it, she motioned me away, and exclaimed, in great agitation,—

"You mustn't leave the prison alone a moment! You mustn't leave the prison alone a moment!"

Mrs. Hardhack rushed past me as though every prisoner had got loose, and was running away.

I thought they would probably be safe if she arrived without accident, and followed at my usual gait.

When I entered the prison she was leaving Haggerton's cell door, and from the second division saluted me with,—

"It's no wonder the girl cries! her coffee is cold! I went to the kettle and tasted it myself! She hasn't eaten a mouthful to-day; and now, to have cold coffee given her for her supper, it's too bad! The Master shall know it, and he'll make an awful fuss."

I made no reply to her; but the next morning, I had several questions to ask the Deputy.

"It is a rule, is it, that the prisoners are not to be left alone a moment at night, after they are locked in?"

"Yes."

"Then how am I to leave the prison, go across the kitchen, and pass out my keys? Sometimes it will be ten or fifteen minutes before I can make the prison officer hear my rap."

"Of course you must do that."

"Then I must leave the prison alone. Have the Board of Directors approved both those rules?"

He smiled.

"The reason why I asked was, because the Supervisor and Shop Matron thought I had committed a great violation of the rules, to leave the prison a moment to find you, to ask you a question, when I was in difficulty last night."

"Did you have any difficulty last night?"

I told him the story of Haggerton, and Mrs. Hardhack's management in the case.

"You can judge that such conduct is calculated to produce disorder, and it did. It was nearly half an hour before I got the women quiet again."

"Mrs. Hardhack has been here many years—she ought to know better than to behave in that way. If she don't, I can teach her."

I did not tell him what followed. I had been studying the "Rules and Regulations" of the Board of Directors, for myself, and intended to abide by them. I remarked carelessly,—

"The Board direct that the convicts shall work from sunrise to sunset. They were worked an hour later last night."

"They had some contract work that they wanted to finish."

"The order of the Board is to work from sunrise to sunset. There is no provision made for finishing contract work. The order to work over hours was submitted to the Board for approval last night, was it not?"

"You are sharp. I see you wish to do your own duty, and you wish others to do the same."

"Yes, I like to do my duty if I can find out what it is. In this particular case, I am indifferent whether others do theirs or not. But, if I find them following me up to make me perform mine accurately, when they are involved in the same, it is perfectly natural for me to turn and observe their manner of doing theirs."

"I am trying to do mine."

"I see that you are, and I am glad that you have a better opportunity to find out what it is, than I do."

The moment that Mrs. Hardhack was out of the prison, that night, the convicts commenced hooting and whistling. If she did not put Haggerton up, directly, to play off on me, which I strongly suspected, her behavior was calculated to encourage their conduct.

I was a new Matron, this was my first night alone, and they would try me, to see what stuff I was made of.

If Mrs. Hardhack had instigated their conduct, the punishment would come upon them, not her. It was my business to suppress the noise, and to detect those who were engaged in making it.

I drew my feet from my slippers, and commenced my search for the culprits.

It was made a short one by the assistance of one of the sweeps who hated Mrs. Hardhack, and would do anything to thwart her—even betray a fellow-prisoner.

She pointed me to one of the doors from whence the whistling came. I crept softly along, in the shade, and stood by the next door a moment. The girl, unconscious that I was near, gave another shrill call.

"That is you, is it, Kate Connolly?" I said, close to her ear.

She burst into tears at the sound of my voice. Her imagination at once brought before her the long aching induced by solitary confinement. It was far from an agreeable prospect to look forward to.

"I'm sorry! indeed I am!"

"Sorry for what,—that you made disturbance, or that I found you out?"

"For both. Indeed I am; I knew better—I knew the rules; I've been here before, and it'll go hard with me."

"You thought I was a stranger and wouldn't know them, did you?"

"Yes, ma'am; but I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry for you, Kate, that you should be so ill-disposed as to make a noise, purposely to disturb me; and that you should be so mean as to try to impose upon a stranger. In future it will be well for you to know who you are playing off on before you begin. Now, Kate Connolly, remember—if ever I catch you in another such a trick, I shall have you punished!"

"And you won't now? I thank you! I never will trouble you so again!"

I never had occasion to reprove her afterwards for any bad conduct while she was in the prison.

She thought it was through my kindness that she escaped punishment. I had been reading the "Rules and Regulations," which directed me to "admonish" once; and then, report for punishment. By following those Rules, I had silenced the noise, and restored order without resorting to punishment. I had also secured the future good behavior of the girl.

When one was detected, the others became quiet.

There are good and noble qualities still existing in those prisoners, if the right management only be applied to rouse, and bring them into action. The rule to admonish was a wise one, and was adopted to that end. That the officers did not follow out the rule was wherein the fault lay. And that they overlooked it, or failed to obey it, caused untold suffering to the prisoners.

No instance came under my observation where the offense was repeated, after a prisoner had been admonished.

After quiet was restored, I sat down to think, and rest. I was tired of the ceaseless surveillance, the turning of keys, the grating of bars, the driving of the prisoners at their tasks, the compelling to pleasant manners while under such severe exactions of toil.

I sat thinking it over and asking myself if it would be possible for me, driven, urged to work with no alternative but the solitary cell, and the bread and water diet, with no motive but fear of punishment, to be gentle and patient.

The exhausted flesh and the wearied spirit would express their agony in some form of complaint. Human nature might restrain its indignation at such a dreary lot from breaking forth, in fear of a greater punishment. The prisoner might work on in silence till she fell, and was carried to the Hospital. I was told that it had been so, and I could not doubt it.

My orders verified the statement. I was to keep them at work. If they complained they were to see the Doctor, and he was to decide whether they were unfit for labor. In that case they were to go into the Hospital.

I had asked, "Shall their whole task be exacted of them?"

"Yes,—if you listen to their complaints, they will all play sick, and we shall get no work done."

I had said, "They might do something, and by not being driven so hard, made useful, and their health spared."

"We have no such rules," was the reply.

"But any Matron, after she is acquainted with her women, can judge so that they will not impose upon her very much."

"They will all cheat, and lie, and shirk, if they can."

That might be so generally; but I knew that I had women who would rather work reasonably than be idle, because time passed faster when they were employed, if from no other motive.

If they would all lie, and cheat, and shirk, the discipline that was applied to them did not work any reformation in their characters.

The treatment meted out to them was hard, unremitting toil, enforced by harsh words and punishment.

Implicit obedience to arbitrary rules was exacted, with no reasons given why they were enforced, and no explanations for their necessity. The hard work, the solitary cell, the meagre food, the damp stone prison, the narrow cells, and the crawling vermin, all went in revision before me.

Can such discipline soften the heart, and turn its stern purposes to commit crime into the ways of virtue? Must not the hearts of these poor things inevitably grow harder under such influences, till they become the human fiends which they sometimes manifest themselves?

I looked along the whitewashed floor. Rats and mice were running fearlessly about, holding gay revel over the crumbs that had been scattered to them by the prisoners in their rooms.

I looked up at the cells. Human faces stared down upon me, through the bars, made ghastly by the flickering gas-light. There were human hearts, alive with all human emotions, beating beneath those horrid faces.

Directly in front of me, with no light, save one narrow, stinted ray, which glimmered through the key-hole, with no bed but the stone floor, no seat but the wooden bucket, nothing to lean against but the bare brick walls, lay a girl "in solitary."

No human being has life enough to stir up those cold stones to warmth, no change can soften them to comfort. Whichever way she turns, the hard, chilling granite is her resting-place. She lies there with no covering but her usual clothing, and that has been dealt out to her with the spare hand of public rigor. No discretionary mercy has interposed to provide a plank or a blanket to break the chill.

Like a flash the thought crossed my brain, If that were my child! It sent a pang through my heart that stopped and wrung there till I gasped for breath.

I looked up at the cells. The faces that glared down upon me were the sweet faces of my own daughters transformed to human demons by the vile impress of crime, and its compeer, punishment.

Was I putting my hand to the work to help on the hardening of human hearts, and the degradation of human beings! I would flee the place, and leave the work with the morning light. I could not flee the thoughts. Wretched, wretched employment!

I was half frenzied. I started up and rushed around the prison. I laid my head against the iron bars of the grated doors. I leaned against the cold stone walls. I could have lain down upon them in bitter penance for the part which I had taken.

The eight o'clock bell rung for inspection. It was a relief.

Humbly I took my lantern, and crept softly round to examine the locks. Many of the women were in bed, some of them were up reading.

One of the girls looked up to me with a smile, and said,—I wondered that she could smile at all,—

"See how nicely I keep the rats out."

She had taken off the cover of her box, and braced it, by the box, against the lower part of the door.

Every room is furnished with a box which has a drawer in it. This box serves for table and pantry. It contains a spoon, knife and fork, salt and pepper boxes.

"Can't they jump over that?"

"They don't try; but run along to another room. There hasn't been one in here since I put it up."

I sat down and busied myself reading till the nine o'clock locking came. When that was accomplished, I went up, up, up the stone stairs to my cell in the roof of the prison.

I laid me down, and from sheer exhaustion fell into a kind of slumber; but my short sleep, if it were sleep, was rank with nightmare, or haunted with the ghosts of my abode. No sooner did I become unconscious, than I was falling from my eyrie to the rocky floor below, or was strapped upon the iron bars that held the prisoners' beds. Visions appeared to my dream-sight that roused me with a start and scream to wakefulness again.

Even such disturbed slumber had hardly got possession of my faculties when a volley of oaths came rolling through my door, and roused me to distinct consciousness.

I sprang from my bed, ran to the door, and called,—

"What is the matter?"

"That bloody Smith snores so that we can't sleep!"

"Where is she? I will go down and wake her."

"On the third division, south side, almost to the foot."

I put my feet into my slippers, wrapped a shawl around me, and ran down to Smith's door.

"Smith, turn over! You are snoring so loud that the other women can't sleep."

"O! how you scared me."

"Do you know that you are snoring so loud that the women can't sleep? Turn over on your side!"

"Yes, ma'am."

I went back to my bed, but no sooner had I settled myself to sleep than the clamor of complaint was renewed.

"That bloody Smith is at her snoring again!"

Again I started for the second division, south side.

"Smith! you are snoring again!"

"I can't help it, ma'am! don't have me punished."

Punished! How the idea haunted them, even in their sleep. "I know you can't help it, only by turning over. Turn on your face, and try that. The women must sleep, they are tired, and they are obliged to work to-morrow."

"I'll try not to snore, ma'am!" She turned on her face as I directed her.

At last I attained to that state of repose which the renowned Sancho Panza has so felicitously eulogized, and successfully immortalized; but my enjoyment was not of long duration.

It was but a short distance that reached into the middle of the dark, dismal night, and time had travelled it when I slowly awoke. Shivers of terror, from some undefined cause, crept over me. Gradually I came to a knowledge of what was passing. My hair, which was thrown loosely over the pillow, was moving as though trodden by some nocturnal agent of locomotion. What moved it? there was no draft of air in the room.

I put my hand to the "crowning ornament by Nature given" to my head, and imprisoned a mammoth mouse, or scarce grown rat.

I was fast getting initiated into the mysteries of prison life, and inured to its peculiarities. Unmoved, I might allow my hair to become a bed for rats and mice; but I could not spare the sleep.

I threw the creature from me, in a fret at being disturbed, and issued a peremptory order, independent of the Master, and without the approval of the Board, for all rats and mice to pay respect to my person, and my apartments, and trouble me no more. Then I turned over, and went to sleep again.

Adverse fate, or some other mysterious personage was on my track that night. Before I had time to close my eyes, a shrill shriek of horror resounded through the building, starting the echoes from every side.

It sounded in my ears like the despairing cry of one doomed to eternal death. Imagination supplied the cause, and brought me to my feet with one bound.

Some pent up prisoner was dying alone in his cell. I sprang to the rail and called,—

"What is the matter?"

"I think I had the nightmare. I do have it sometimes."

"Was that you, Mary McCullum?"

"I think it was, ma'am. I'm sorry I waked you! Never mind me, ma'am!"

Poor Mary McCullum! In a moment I remembered all about her. They had told me a sad tale about her incarceration for the murder of her rival.

Mary's husband had left her, taking her three little girls away, and married another woman. Mary, in a fit of jealous madness, had ground up a knife, enticed the woman to drink with her, and murdered her in her cellar. A policeman had detected her in the act. God pity, and judge her! She had been sentenced to ten years of hard labor in the Penitentiary for the crime.

Five years had been worked out. Her health was gone, her nervous system had become a wreck. The damp rooms, the chilling stones, the ceaseless toil, were the slow torture that had undermined her constitution, and consumed her vitality.

Her narrow cell had become, to her imagination, the home of demons who haunted her with her crime.

The other women had told me that the ghost of the murdered woman came to Mary McCullum every night, all in her bloody garments, and set her shrieking in her dreams.

Should such a criminal go unpunished? The halter could bring no surer death than what was slowly creeping upon her. Restrained of her liberty she should be, and from the power to do further harm. Labor for her own support should be required of her. Connected with it, a sufficient amount of rest to secure health, a place to sleep free from the damp and noisome air of a stone prison.

A plenty of wholesome food should be allowed her; time and space for repentance given, time to think upon the error of her ways, and instruction that would teach her how to do it.

That worrisome night was to meet with one more "thrilling adventure" before it passed away into the light of the following day.

I lay, tossing from side to side, after I returned to my bed. Sleep was out of the question. I lay, tossing thoughts about the circumstances that surrounded me to and fro in my mind, trying to analyze, to distinctness, the mixed up conclusions that arose from them.

Another unearthly cry rung out on the air, and startled me from my perplexed meditations. It was more like the shriek of an animal in distress, than a human sound.

Wail followed wail, in quick succession. Can it be a human being? I asked myself, as I hurried on some clothing. It must be, there is nothing else here that can make such a noise.

I stopped to listen, as I went to search it out. It came from one quarter, and then, from another. If it were made in one cell, it possessed a wonderful power of ventriloquism.

I remembered the hooting and whistling of the night before, and immediately inferred that the same mischievous girls, who made the disturbance in the evening, had set up this cry and echoed it around from division to division, in order to make a night of it.

Quick as the thought entered my mind, my patience gave way. I vowed, in my heart, that I would have them punished if I could catch them. My own aroused temper certainly suggested the punishment that I contemplated. Even with the thought which suggested punishment arose the query—Is it not a just indignation that I feel, and do they not deserve punishment for willfully making this unreasonable disturbance? Is it my anger that seeks revenge for the annoyance they are inflicting?

Although half way down into the prison, I ran back to my room, and left my slippers, in order to avoid the tap, tapping of the leather soles on the walks, which would announce my approach to the culprits, and warn them in season to avoid detection.

Again I traversed flat after flat in my stockings. Quickly, and noiselessly, I threaded the walks towards the spot from whence the sound appeared to proceed. But when I reached it, all was silent there, and the wail came shrieking around another corner.

I grew more and more angry as chills crept up my limbs, and set my teeth chattering. I raised my thinly clad feet from the cold stones only to set them down in a still colder track—a practical test, it now occurs to me, of the experience of the woman on the stones "in solitary,"—but my determination to ferret out the offenders never faltered.

I was benumbed; but I persevered till I had traversed the five flats, and listened at the door of nearly a hundred cells. The wails had grown to howls, and filled the prison with their noise as the thunder fills the air with its reverberations, but eluded my search.

I gathered my shawl around me, and sat down by the stove to listen; and determine my future course. When I became stationary, the sounds changed their course, and instead of receding approached me. Nearer, and nearer they came. In a moment they were issuing from the floor at my side. I shook with a vague dread. Were those shrieking wails from some prisoner confined in the dungeon vaults below the prison, insane or dying? Involuntarily I looked down. There stood the cat, uttering piteous cries on account of separation from her kittens in the kitchen, and pleading to be let out to them.

Quickly I ran over the stairs to get my keys, nor did I feel the chill of the cold stone walks, as I ran back to appease the distress of the mother cat by opening the way to her little ones.

I did not regret that I lost the opportunity to execute the mentally threatened punishment of my women.