The day commenced at odds. In the morning Mrs. Hardhack came flying into the kitchen, and demanded, from O'Brien, something for one of her girls to eat.

"She has fainted away for the want of food! She has had no breakfast! How did you dare to keep her breakfast from her!"

O'Brien kept her temper wonderfully. She answered very quietly,—

"I'm sure she had the same as the rest if she had been a mind to taken it."

"How do you dare to stand there and answer me in that way? I'll have you punished if you dare to open your mouth again."

O'Brien's face grew red, she opened her lips to retort just as I arrived to where they stood. I stepped between them.

"O'Brien, will you get a bucket of coal? I want more steam as soon as I can have it."

"Yes, ma'am," and she started away; but she looked up at me as she went as much to say, you have saved me.

I turned to Mrs. Hardhack.

"I'm sorry one of your girls couldn't eat her breakfast; you know it is impossible for me to get anything aside from the Master's orders, and what the rest have. I'll see if I can find her something."

"We have got so much contract work to get done to-night, and, if the women faint away, they can't do it."

"I should be glad to provide them a good, substantial breakfast to work on; but I can't have my way about it. It is very cruel to feed them as they are fed here; and then, to work them as they are worked."

I thought, as I went to look up something for her to take to the poor girl, of the remark John Randolph made to his lady neighbor, when he entered her house and found her at work for the Greeks, "The Greeks are at your door." He had entered the house through a little army of naked, ignorant servants.

Do not the ladies of the United States need to be reminded that the Greeks are at their door? Are they not in every prison in the land?

I went into the pantry. There was a skillet pan standing on the shelf with a bone in it. I took it out and inquired,—

"Whose bone is this?"

"It is mine," said Lissett.

"Will you give it to the woman in the shop who fainted this morning because she had no breakfast?"

"Yes, ma'am!"

"Bring a slice of bread, and quart of coffee to go with it."

Handing it to Mrs. Hardhack, I dispatched her as quickly as possible. I was glad when she departed. Her visits to the kitchen were very disagreeable. She always managed to use the "irritating language," forbidden by the Board in their "Rules and Regulations," which stirred up the angry feelings of my women, and it took time and argument to get them settled down into calmness and quiet again.

"If it hadn't been for you, I should have been in solitary again," said O'Brien, after she left. "How I hate that woman!"

"And so do I, and so do I!" was echoed round the room.

"If you hate such ways never copy them!"

"What's the use in scolding us! She knows we can't help the victuals. If she wants to scold anybody she'd better scold the Master."

"He'd sauce her back again; and then, both of 'em would get locked up. Wouldn't you like to see 'em both locked up?" said Lissett.

"Yes, that I should!" was echoed all around.

"I'd like to cut the bread for 'em," said O'Brien. "The slices would be thin."

"I would draw small quarts of water," said Lissett.

"Hush, girls! Don't you know that you are now indulging in the very temper that looks so hateful to you when you see it in others."

Scarcely was I relieved of Mrs. Hardhack's anti-benign influence, when the Receiving Matron made her appearance, and asked, although in a very different manner,—

"Why didn't the women bring over their clothes?"

"What clothes?"

"Their sheets to be washed. This is their day. They take them from their beds when they get up, and carry them to the wash-house as they go down to the shop. My women, and the four who were sent up from the shop to help them, have lost an hour by the delay. I don't mind about mine; but the shop women will be late back; and then, I shall be complained of that I did not drive them hard enough, and get the work out of them sooner."

"I didn't know anything about it. If you had told me last night I would have attended to it. Some of the women asked me if they should take out their sheets; but I didn't know what they meant, and told them I would see. I will send the sweeps to gather them up immediately, and send them over."

"I forgot to tell you last night. They won't blame you but me; there is the trouble. I hate to have the Master come around, and find fault."

"Are you afraid of him?"

"No! I'm not a prisoner; but I always feel uncomfortable where he is, don't you?"

"I have only seen him once or twice; and then I was very much inclined to laugh at the pompous airs he put on; but a sense of propriety restrained me."

"I had a great deal rather not see him, especially, when he comes to find fault."

"He ought not to find fault with you in this instance. You are under no obligation to teach me the duties of my department. If you attend to the work in your own you do your duty."

"I know that, but I can't help myself. He says I am here to do whatever he orders me, and that I must do it if I stay. I am a widow, and have a boy to support, so I try to do all I can."

"He knows that?"

"Yes, they all know it."

"And he takes advantage of it to compel you to do his wife's work while he gets the pay for it."

"That is the plain English of the whole thing."

"But you can get more pay outside for less work than you do here."

"Perhaps so, if I knew how to find it; but I never have been so fortunate as to find it before."

I had gone out into the prison as I was talking with her, and stood at the door a moment after she had passed out; but there was no chance for rest during my watch. There came the sound of scolding and contention after me, and recalled me to the kitchen. I hurried back. The fear that some of them would get into a quarrel, beyond my reach to control, always haunted me.

"What is the matter?" I called out at the door.

"The cook is so slow we shall never get this swill out, and I am trying to hurry her," said the sink woman. "She hinders me so I shall never get my work done."

"I can't do no faster than I can," called back the sink woman. "It is no use hurrying me."

"Stop! both of you! Lissett, you know Jennie is slow, and you must have patience with her. Do I not have patience with you? You only make matters worse by fretting. Jennie, you are slow. When you carry swill with Lissett, go as fast as you can, so as not to hinder her; then rest when you get through."

"Do come along!" fretted Lissett, "You are enough to fret a saint."

"That can't be you, Lissett. Haven't I told you, many a time, that you ought to help each other along, instead of scolding and fretting at each other."

"It is hard work to drag her, and the swill tub too."

"Then go a little slower, and give her a chance to do her part. There is one thing that I wish to do myself, and that is the scolding, and I don't wish to have you take it out of my hands."

"If you do it all there won't get much of it done."

"There will be enough. I do not need help. And I can suit myself much better in doing it than any one else can suit me. In future, Lissett, you and Annie O'Brien will carry the swill together. Then you can both work as fast as you please. Jennie, you and Allen may carry together; you can be as slow as you please. I wish to hear no more trouble over the swill."

I intended to arrange their work so as to avoid all collision; but I sometimes failed. When I had put those, whom I thought to be the best of friends, at work together, some little difference would arise and separate them.

Directly I had a call in the prison. Berry could not get on with her white-washing, because Maggie had not done her sweeping, and came to me with a complaint,—

"Maggie won't sweep, and that keeps me waiting. Won't you tell her to sweep so I can white-wash?"

"Maggie, why don't you sweep so that Berry can white-wash?"

"I am, ma'am, as fast as I can. I have got all of the rooms to do before I do the floor."

"You need not wait, Berry. Take a broom and help her."

That was something that Berry did not calculate upon.

"If Maggie would get up in season she could get her work done herself; she loves her bed too well."

"I have told you of a way to get your work done if you do not wish to wait."

"You favor Maggie too much, and the other Matrons all say so. You ought to get her up in the morning, they all say."

"Take a broom and sweep that platform! Don't bring any tales to me from the other Matrons! When I wish you to teach me how to treat the women, I will ask you."

Berry chose to consider herself a very much injured woman, and began to snivel and grumble.

"I am going down to the shop to work. Maggie is so saucy I can't get along with her." She dared not express her disaffection towards me.

"Well, Berry, when you find yourself so much your own mistress as to go where you please, I will give you 'a character,' and you may go to the shop to work."

"What kind of a character?" asked O'Brien, who happened along at that moment.

"A good one. You are a pretty good woman, Berry. There is one fault which I think might be corrected by going to the shop. You are very much disposed to tattle, and that sometimes makes mischief. If you go to the shop, where you are not allowed to speak at all, you can't do that kind of mischief. That would save me, if it did not yourself, a great deal of trouble."

I heard no more about going to the shop.

The kitchen was quiet after dinner and the work, before supper, done. I threw my head back, in the large chair in which I was resting, and drowsed.

The women sat buzzing, on low stools, just behind me. I had been too sleepy to notice what they were saying; finally a word or two that I heard attracted me to listen.

"Was you here, O'Brien?" asked Maggie; "when Ida Jones was pulled into the hospital by the hair of her head?"

"Yes, I was, and I saw it with my two eyes. The Master pulled her by the hair of her head, and kicked her as he went along the walk; and she a poor, half-witted thing too. That was six weeks ago, and she has been in the hospital ever since."

I was wide awake—thoroughly aroused when that story was completed.

"Maggie Murray, do you mean to say that you saw the Master pull Ida Jones along the walk, by the hair of her head, and kick her as he pulled her? You ought to be very careful how you tell such stories, unless they are true."

"It is the truth, ma'am!" said several of them in a breath.

"He took her by her pug, like this," and she took hold of the coil of hair on the back of O'Brien's head, "and dragged her along. We all saw it, and the Housekeeper saw it, and she said he ought to be reported to the Board. And that Matron, that skinny person, I forget her name, that was here, she saw it. There were a plenty that saw it. When you go down to the hospital, you can ask Ida what is the matter, and she will tell you so too."

"What did he do it for?"

"She said she was dead with work—she could not sit at it another minute—she was ready to fall; and Hardhack reported her; and the Master was so mad,—some of 'em said so drunk,—he dragged her himself out of the shop, all of the way to the Hospital."

My face must have expressed the horror that I felt.

"Indeed it is the truth, ma'am!" said O'Brien. "The Master was crazy to get a lot of work done that night, and it made him awful mad to lose a hand."

I asked myself if it were possible that that man would dare to abuse the trust reposed in him in that manner. Certainly! The whole system of secrecy upon which our prisons are managed is just calculated to screen such conduct, and to induce the practice of it, if there be a tendency, in the disposition of the man who has charge, to do it. If the testimony of prisoners is not to be relied upon, a Master could make it for the interest of his officers to remain silent. Some might look at it in the same light that he did, and feel perfectly satisfied.

Why should not a prisoner's testimony be taken in a matter where he is concerned? He has been tried and convicted of an offense. Is that fact a conviction in every other case where he may have difficulty with another person?

If prisoners are entirely unworthy of trust, how does it happen that such a man, once a convict himself, according to the traditions of that prison, has charge there, and the unlimited confidence of the Board?

I noticed, in making out the report of inmates, that there were not so many women as men in prison. There was satisfaction in obtaining that fact, because I had entertained the idea that women were more frequently punished for their offenses than men.

It was a mistake, except in the one crime of licentiousness. In that man goes comparatively free, and woman is the only sufferer in what is, to say the least, their mutual sin. I say, almost every woman will say, and with truth, for the sin that man leads her into.

Woman does not seek man, in that way, in the first instance. He draws her into the sin, and when she becomes abandoned, and the Penitentiary brings her up, she is no worse than he. She becomes a night-walker, and suffers for her violation of law. He is a night-walker also, as miserable and degraded a man as she is woman; but who prosecutes him, and gives him a sentence in the House of Correction! He continues a night-walker unmolested while she suffers for her sin.

He walks into the parlors of the intellectually cultivated, and socially refined,—I was about to say virtuous woman. There can be little virtue in such shaky morality. I can only say of the chaste woman, and she takes the hand of the night-walker, and greets him cordially, and makes him welcome, especially if he be rich,—the hand that leads her fellow woman to her social ruin if not to her eternal death.

If woman were to help make the laws, could she remedy this state of things,—would she? Would she take her husband, father, brother from his home to the Penitentiary? She must do that, in order to rid society of the pest of night-walking. She may do that now if she will. The law gives her the opportunity. Instead of lavishing her courtesies, as she now does, upon the male offender, she might extend her charity in kindly assistance to his victim, if she were disposed to do it.

To judge by the way she treats him now, if she were to assist in making laws would she not be still more unjust than she now is, to her own sex, and lenient to the other.

If man go unpunished, of human law, for this sin, justice will find him out sooner or later. God pity him when his retribution comes! The avenging of a guilty conscience will work him greater woe than the miseries of a prison can inflict.

As I sat in the prison this evening reviewing my day's work, I counted up my occupations.

I am Housekeeper, Engineer, Overseer, Jailer, Porter, Usher, Sentinel, and many others which I did not enumerate.

Irksome as was the handling of keys to me, it was quite an entertainment to see myself answering the knock of the gentlemen in striped uniform, letting them into my kitchen, and following them around, like a page after a prince; and then, letting them out. I hardly think they get such attendances in the outside world.

Rotation in duties, and reversion in offices was the order of the place. I was Usher to the prisoners; my sweeps were stationed on the stone stairs, when the prisoners were in their cells, and the kitchen door locked, to open it if there were a knock on the outside, and to lock it again after the officer who entered.

Sittings on the stone stairs could hardly have been comfortable accommodations. I was reminded of that fact this evening, by hearing Ellen whisper when she heard a knock,—

"I hate to get up,—I've just got my seat warm."

"Every back is fitted to its burden," is an old proverb. I wondered if those prisoners had been provided by a beneficent Providence, of some kind, with an extra amount of animal heat, in order to warm up the stones they lived on during their incarceration.