THE journey from New York to Philadelphia, is made by railroad,
and two ferries; and usually occupies between five and six hours. It was a fine
evening when we were passengers in the train: and watching the bright sunset
from a little window near the door by which we sat, my attention was attracted
to a remarkable appearance issuing from the windows of the gentleman's car
immediately in front of us, which I supposed for some time was occasioned by a
number of industrious persons inside, ripping open feather-beds, and giving the
feathers to the wind. At length it occurred to me that they were only spitting,
which was indeed the case; though how any number of passengers which it was
possible for that car to contain, could have maintained such a playful and
incessant shower of expectoration, I am still at a loss to understand:
notwithstanding the experience in all salivatory phenomena which I afterwards
acquired.
I made acquaintance, on this journey, with a mild and modest young quaker,
who opened the discourse by informing me, in a grave whisper, that his
grandfather was the inventor of cold-drawn castor oil. I mention the
circumstance here, thinking it probable that this is the first occasion on which
the valuable medicine in question was ever used as a conversational aperient.
We reached the city, late that night. Looking out of my chamber- window,
before going to bed, I saw, on the opposite side of the way, a handsome building
of white marble, which had a mournful ghost-like aspect, dreary to behold. I
attributed this to the sombre influence of the night, and on rising in the
morning looked out again, expecting to see its steps and portico thronged with
groups of people passing in and out. The door was still tight shut, however; the
same cold cheerless air prevailed: and the building looked as if the marble
statue of Don Guzman could alone have any business to transact within its gloomy
walls. I hastened to inquire its name and purpose, and then my surprise
vanished. It was the Tomb of many fortunes; the Great Catacomb of investment;
the memorable United States Bank.
The stoppage of this bank, with all its ruinous consequences, had cast (as I
was told on every side) a gloom on Philadelphia, under the depressing effect of
which it yet laboured. It certainly did seem rather dull and out of spirits.
It is a handsome city, but distractingly regular. After walking about it for
an hour or two, I felt that I would have given the world for a crooked street.
The collar of my coat appeared to stiffen, and the brim of my bat to expand,
beneath its quakery influence. My hair shrunk into a sleek short crop, my hands
folded themselves upon my breast of their own calm accord, and thoughts of
taking lodgings in Mark Lane over against the Market Place, and of making a
large fortune by speculations in corn, came over me involuntarily.
Philadelphia is most bountifully provided with fresh water, which is showered
and jerked about, and turned on, and poured off, everywhere. The Waterworks,
which are on a height near the city, are no less ornamental than useful, being
tastefully laid out as a public garden, and kept in the best and neatest order.
The river is dammed at this point, and forced by its own power into certain high
tanks or reservoirs, whence the whole city, to the top stories of the houses, is
supplied at a very trifling expense.
There are various public institutions. Among them a most excellent Hospital -
a quaker establishment, but not sectarian in the great benefits it confers; a
quiet, quaint old Library, named after Franklin; a handsome Exchange and Post
Office; and so forth. In connection with the quaker Hospital, there is a picture
by West, which is exhibited for the benefit of the funds of the institution. The
subject is, our Saviour healing the sick, and it is, perhaps, as favourable a
specimen of the master as can be seen anywhere. Whether this be high or low
praise, depends upon the reader's taste.
In the same room, there is a very characteristic and life-like portrait by
Mr. Sully, a distinguished American artist.
My stay in Philadelphia was very short, but what I saw of its society, I
greatly liked. Treating of its general characteristics, I should be disposed to
say that it is more provincial than Boston or New York, and that there is afloat
in the fair city, an assumption of taste and criticism, savouring rather of
those genteel discussions upon the same themes, in connection with Shakspeare
and the Musical Glasses, of which we read in the Vicar of Wakefield. Near the
city, is a most splendid unfinished marble structure for the Girard College,
founded by a deceased gentleman of that name and of enormous wealth, which, if
completed according to the original design, will be perhaps the richest edifice
of modern times. But the bequest is involved in legal disputes, and pending them
the work has stopped; so that like many other great undertakings in America,
even this is rather going to be done one of these days, than doing now.
In the outskirts, stands a great prison, called the Eastern Penitentiary:
conducted on a plan peculiar to the state of Pennsylvania. The system here, is
rigid, strict, and hopeless solitary confinement. I believe it, in its effects,
to be cruel and wrong.
In its intention, I am well convinced that it is kind, humane, and meant for
reformation; but I am persuaded that those who devised this system of Prison
Discipline, and those benevolent gentlemen who carry it into execution, do not
know what it is that they are doing. I believe that very few men are capable of
estimating the immense amount of torture and agony which this dreadful
punishment, prolonged for years, inflicts upon the sufferers; and in guessing at
it myself, and in reasoning from what I have seen written upon their faces, and
what to my certain knowledge they feel within, I am only the more convinced that
there is a depth of terrible endurance in it which none but the sufferers
themselves can fathom, and which no man has a right to inflict upon his
fellow-creature. I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the
brain, to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body: and because its
ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye and sense of touch as
scars upon the flesh; because its wounds are not upon the surface, and it
extorts few cries that human ears can hear; therefore I the more denounce it, as
a secret punishment which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay. I
hesitated once, debating with myself, whether, if I had the power of saying
'Yes' or 'No,' I would allow it to be tried in certain cases, where the terms of
imprisonment were short; but now, I solemnly declare, that with no rewards or
honours could I walk a happy man beneath the open sky by day, or lie me down
upon my bed at night, with the consciousness that one human creature, for any
length of time, no matter what, lay suffering this unknown punishment in his
silent cell, and I the cause, or I consenting to it in the least degree.
I was accompanied to this prison by two gentlemen officially connected with
its management, and passed the day in going from cell to cell, and talking with
the inmates. Every facility was afforded me, that the utmost courtesy could
suggest. Nothing was concealed or hidden from my view, and every piece of
information that I sought, was openly and frankly given. The perfect order of
the building cannot be praised too highly, and of the excellent motives of all
who are immediately concerned in the administration of the system, there can be
no kind of question.
Between the body of the prison and the outer wall, there is a spacious
garden. Entering it, by a wicket in the massive gate, we pursued the path before
us to its other termination, and passed into a large chamber, from which seven
long passages radiate. On either side of each, is a long, long row of low cell
doors, with a certain number over every one. Above, a gallery of cells like
those below, except that they have no narrow yard attached (as those in the
ground tier have), and are somewhat smaller. The possession of two of these, is
supposed to compensate for the absence of so much air and exercise as can be had
in the dull strip attached to each of the others, in an hour's time every day;
and therefore every prisoner in this upper story has two cells, adjoining and
communicating with, each other.
Standing at the central point, and looking down these dreary passages, the
dull repose and quiet that prevails, is awful. Occasionally, there is a drowsy
sound from some lone weaver's shuttle, or shoemaker's last, but it is stifled by
the thick walls and heavy dungeon-door, and only serves to make the general
stillness more profound. Over the head and face of every prisoner who comes into
this melancholy house, a black hood is drawn; and in this dark shroud, an emblem
of the curtain dropped between him and the living world, he is led to the cell
from which he never again comes forth, until his whole term of imprisonment has
expired. He never hears of wife and children; home or friends; the life or death
of any single creature. He sees the prison-officers, but with that exception he
never looks upon a human countenance, or hears a human voice. He is a man buried
alive; to be dug out in the slow round of years; and in the mean time dead to
everything but torturing anxieties and horrible despair.
His name, and crime, and term of suffering, are unknown, even to the officer
who delivers him his daily food. There is a number over his cell-door, and in a
book of which the governor of the prison has one copy, and the moral instructor
another: this is the index of his history. Beyond these pages the prison has no
record of his existence: and though he live to be in the same cell ten weary
years, he has no means of knowing, down to the very last hour, in which part of
the building it is situated; what kind of men there are about him; whether in
the long winter nights there are living people near, or he is in some lonely
corner of the great jail, with walls, and passages, and iron doors between him
and the nearest sharer in its solitary horrors.
Every cell has double doors: the outer one of sturdy oak, the other of grated
iron, wherein there is a trap through which his food is handed. He has a Bible,
and a slate and pencil, and, under certain restrictions, has sometimes other
books, provided for the purpose, and pen and ink and paper. His razor, plate,
and can, and basin, hang upon the wall, or shine upon the little shelf. Fresh
water is laid on in every cell, and he can draw it at his pleasure. During the
day, his bedstead turns up against the wall, and leaves more space for him to
work in. His loom, or bench, or wheel, is there; and there he labours, sleeps
and wakes, and counts the seasons as they change, and grows old.
The first man I saw, was seated at his loom, at work. He had been there six
years, and was to remain, I think, three more. He had been convicted as a
receiver of stolen goods, but even after his long imprisonment, denied his
guilt, and said he had been hardly dealt by. It was his second offence.
He stopped his work when we went in, took off his spectacles, and answered
freely to everything that was said to him, but always with a strange kind of
pause first, and in a low, thoughtful voice. He wore a paper hat of his own
making, and was pleased to have it noticed and commanded. He had very
ingeniously manufactured a sort of Dutch clock from some disregarded odds and
ends; and his
vinegar-bottle served for the pendulum. Seeing me interested in this
contrivance, he looked up at it with a great deal of pride, and said that he had
been thinking of improving it, and that he hoped the hammer and a little piece
of broken glass beside it 'would play music before long.' He had extracted some
colours from the yarn with which he worked, and painted a few poor figures on
the wall. One, of a female, over the door, he called 'The Lady of the Lake.'
He smiled as I looked at these contrivances to while away the time; but when
I looked from them to him, I saw that his lip trembled, and could have counted
the beating of his heart. I forget how it came about, but some allusion was made
to his having a wife. He shook his head at the word, turned aside, and covered
his face with his hands.
'But you are resigned now!' said one of the gentlemen after a short pause,
during which he had resumed his former manner. He answered with a sigh that
seemed quite reckless in its hopelessness, 'Oh yes, oh yes! I am resigned to
it.' 'And are a better man, you think?' 'Well, I hope so: I'm sure I hope I may
be.' 'And time goes pretty quickly?' 'Time is very long gentlemen, within these
four walls!'
He gazed about him - Heaven only knows how wearily! - as he said these words;
and in the act of doing so, fell into a strange stare as if he had forgotten
something. A moment afterwards he sighed heavily, put on his spectacles, and
went about his work again.
In another cell, there was a German, sentenced to five years' imprisonment
for larceny, two of which had just expired. With colours procured in the same
manner, he had painted every inch of the walls and ceiling quite beautifully. He
had laid out the few feet of ground, behind, with exquisite neatness, and had
made a little bed in the centre, that looked, by-the-bye, like a grave. The
taste and ingenuity he had displayed in everything were most extraordinary; and
yet a more dejected, heart-broken, wretched creature, it would be difficult to
imagine. I never saw such a picture of forlorn affliction and distress of mind.
My heart bled for him; and when the tears ran down his cheeks, and he took one
of the visitors aside, to ask, with his trembling hands nervously clutching at
his coat to detain him, whether there was no hope of his dismal sentence being
commuted, the spectacle was really too painful to witness. I never saw or heard
of any kind of misery that impressed me more than the wretchedness of this man.
In a third cell, was a tall, strong black, a burglar, working at his proper
trade of making screws and the like. His time was nearly out. He was not only a
very dexterous thief, but was notorious for his boldness and hardihood, and for
the number of his previous convictions. He entertained us with a long account of
his achievements, which he narrated with such infinite relish, that he actually
seemed to lick his lips as he told us racy anecdotes of stolen plate, and of old
ladies whom he had watched as they sat at windows in silver spectacles (he had
plainly had an eye to their metal even from the other side of the street) and
had afterwards robbed. This fellow, upon the slightest encouragement, would have
mingled with his professional recollections the most detestable cant; but I am
very much mistaken if he could have surpassed the unmitigated hypocrisy with
which he declared that he blessed the day on which he came into that prison, and
that he never would commit another robbery as long as he lived.
There was one man who was allowed, as an indulgence, to keep rabbits. His
room having rather a close smell in consequence, they called to him at the door
to come out into the passage. He complied of course, and stood shading his
haggard face in the unwonted sunlight of the great window, looking as wan and
unearthly as if he had been summoned from the grave. He had a white rabbit in
his breast; and when the little creature, getting down upon the ground, stole
back into the cell, and he, being dismissed, crept timidly after it, I thought
it would have been very hard to say in what respect the man was the nobler
animal of the two.
There was an English thief, who had been there but a few days out of seven
years: a villainous, low-browed, thin-lipped fellow, with a white face; who had
as yet no relish for visitors, and who, but for the additional penalty, would
have gladly stabbed me with his shoemaker's knife. There was another German who
had entered the jail but yesterday, and who started from his bed when we looked
in, and pleaded, in his broken English, very hard for work. There was a poet,
who after doing two days' work in every four-and-twenty hours, one for himself
and one for the prison, wrote verses about ships (he was by trade a mariner),
and 'the maddening wine-cup,' and his friends at home. There were very many of
them. Some reddened at the sight of visitors, and some turned very pale. Some
two or three had prisoner nurses with them, for they were very sick; and one, a
fat old negro whose leg had been taken off within the jail, had for his
attendant a classical scholar and an accomplished surgeon, himself a prisoner
likewise. Sitting upon the stairs, engaged in some slight work, was a pretty
coloured boy. 'Is there no refuge for young criminals in Philadelphia, then?'
said I. 'Yes, but only for white children.' Noble aristocracy in crime
There was a sailor who had been there upwards of eleven years, and who in a
few months' time would be free. Eleven years of solitary confinement!
'I am very glad to hear your time is nearly out.' What does he say? Nothing.
Why does he stare at his hands, and pick the flesh upon his fingers, and raise
his eyes for an instant, every now and then, to those bare walls which have seen
his head turn grey? It is a way he has sometimes.
Does he never look men in the face, and does he always pluck at those hands
of his, as though he were bent on parting skin and bone? It is his humour:
nothing more.
It is his humour too, to say that he does not look forward to going out; that
he is not glad the time is drawing near; that he did look forward to it once,
but that was very long ago; that he has lost all care for everything. It is his
humour to be a helpless, crushed, and broken man. And, Heaven be his witness
that he has his humour thoroughly gratified!
There were three young women in adjoining cells, all convicted at the same
time of a conspiracy to rob their prosecutor. In the silence and solitude of
their lives they had grown to be quite beautiful. Their looks were very sad, and
might have moved the sternest visitor to tears, but not to that kind of sorrow
which the contemplation of the men awakens. One was a young girl; not twenty, as
I recollect; whose snow-white room was hung with the work of some former
prisoner, and upon whose downcast face the sun in all its splendour shone down
through the high chink in the wall, where one narrow strip of bright blue sky
was visible. She was very penitent and quiet; had come to be resigned, she said
(and I believe her); and had a mind at peace. 'In a word, you are happy here?'
said one of my companions. She struggled - she did struggle very hard - to
answer, Yes; but raising her eyes, and meeting that glimpse of freedom overhead,
she burst into tears, and said, 'She tried to be; she uttered no complaint; but
it was natural that she should sometimes long to go out of that one cell: she
could not help THAT,' she sobbed, poor thing!
I went from cell to cell that day; and every face I saw, or word I heard, or
incident I noted, is present to my mind in all its painfulness. But let me pass
them by, for one, more pleasant, glance of a prison on the same plan which I
afterwards saw at Pittsburg.
When I had gone over that, in the same manner, I asked the governor if he had
any person in his charge who was shortly going out. He had one, he said, whose
time was up next day; but he had only been a prisoner two years.
Two years! I looked back through two years of my own life - out of jail,
prosperous, happy, surrounded by blessings, comforts, good fortune - and thought
how wide a gap it was, and how long those two years passed in solitary captivity
would have been. I have the face of this man, who was going to be released next
day, before me now. It is almost more memorable in its happiness than the other
faces in their misery. How easy and how natural it was for him to say that the
system was a good one; and that the time went 'pretty quick - considering;' and
that when a man once felt that he had offended the law, and must satisfy it, 'he
got along, somehow:' and so forth!
'What did he call you back to say to you, in that strange flutter?' I asked
of my conductor, when he had locked the door and joined me in the passage.
'Oh! That he was afraid the soles of his boots were not fit for walking, as
they were a good deal worn when he came in; and that he would thank me very much
to have them mended, ready.'
Those boots had been taken off his feet, and put away with the rest of his
clothes, two years before!
I took that opportunity of inquiring how they conducted themselves
immediately before going out; adding that I presumed they trembled very much.
'Well, it's not so much a trembling,' was the answer - 'though they do quiver
- as a complete derangement of the nervous system. They can't sign their names
to the book; sometimes can't even hold the pen; look about 'em without appearing
to know why, or where they are; and sometimes get up and sit down again, twenty
times in a minute. This is when they're in the office, where they are taken with
the hood on, as they were brought in. When they get outside the gate, they stop,
and look first one way and then the other; not knowing which to take. Sometimes
they stagger as if they were drunk, and sometimes are forced to lean against the
fence, they're so bad:- but they clear off in course of time.'
As I walked among these solitary cells, and looked at the faces of the men
within them, I tried to picture to myself the thoughts and feelings natural to
their condition. I imagined the hood just taken off, and the scene of their
captivity disclosed to them in all its dismal monotony.
At first, the man is stunned. His confinement is a hideous vision; and his
old life a reality. He throws himself upon his bed, and lies there abandoned to
despair. By degrees the insupportable solitude and barrenness of the place
rouses him from this stupor, and when the trap in his grated door is opened, he
humbly begs and prays for work. 'Give me some work to do, or I shall go raving
mad!'
He has it; and by fits and starts applies himself to labour; but every now
and then there comes upon him a burning sense of the years that must be wasted
in that stone coffin, and an agony so piercing in the recollection of those who
are hidden from his view and knowledge, that he starts from his seat, and
striding up and down the narrow room with both hands clasped on his uplifted
head, hears spirits tempting him to beat his brains out on the wall.
Again he falls upon his bed, and lies there, moaning. Suddenly he starts up,
wondering whether any other man is near; whether there is another cell like that
on either side of him: and listens keenly.
There is no sound, but other prisoners may be near for all that. He remembers
to have heard once, when he little thought of coming here himself, that the
cells were so constructed that the prisoners could not hear each other, though
the officers could hear them.
Where is the nearest man - upon the right, or on the left? or is there one in
both directions? Where is he sitting now - with his face to the light? or is he
walking to and fro? How is he dressed? Has he been here long? Is he much worn
away? Is he very white and spectre-like? Does HE think of his neighbour too?
Scarcely venturing to breathe, and listening while he thinks, he conjures up
a figure with his back towards him, and imagines it moving about in this next
cell. He has no idea of the face, but he is certain of the dark form of a
stooping man. In the cell upon the other side, he puts another figure, whose
face is hidden from him also. Day after day, and often when he wakes up in the
middle of the night, he thinks of these two men until he is almost distracted.
He never changes them. There they are always as he first imagined them - an old
man on the right; a younger man upon the left - whose hidden features torture
him to death, and have a mystery that makes him tremble.
The weary days pass on with solemn pace, like mourners at a funeral; and
slowly he begins to feel that the white walls of the cell have something
dreadful in them: that their colour is horrible: that their smooth surface
chills his blood: that there is one hateful corner which torments him. Every
morning when he wakes, he hides his head beneath the coverlet, and shudders to
see the ghastly ceiling looking down upon him. The blessed light of day itself
peeps in, an ugly phantom face, through the unchangeable crevice which is his
prison window.
By slow but sure degrees, the terrors of that hateful corner swell until they
beset him at all times; invade his rest, make his dreams hideous, and his nights
dreadful. At first, he took a strange dislike to it; feeling as though it gave
birth in his brain to something of corresponding shape, which ought not to be
there, and racked his head with pains. Then he began to fear it, then to dream
of it, and of men whispering its name and pointing to it. Then he could not bear
to look at it, nor yet to turn his back upon it. Now, it is every night the
lurking-place of a ghost: a shadow:- a silent something, horrible to see, but
whether bird, or beast, or muffled human shape, he cannot tell.
When he is in his cell by day, he fears the little yard without. When he is
in the yard, he dreads to re-enter the cell. When night comes, there stands the
phantom in the corner. If he have the courage to stand in its place, and drive
it out (he had once: being desperate), it broods upon his bed. In the twilight,
and always at the same hour, a voice calls to him by name; as the darkness
thickens, his Loom begins to live; and even that, his comfort, is a hideous
figure, watching him till daybreak.
Again, by slow degrees, these horrible fancies depart from him one by one:
returning sometimes, unexpectedly, but at longer intervals, and in less alarming
shapes. He has talked upon religious matters with the gentleman who visits him,
and has read his Bible, and has written a prayer upon his slate, and hung it up
as a kind of protection, and an assurance of Heavenly companionship. He dreams
now, sometimes, of his children or his wife, but is sure that they are dead, or
have deserted him. He is easily moved to tears; is gentle, submissive, and
broken-spirited. Occasionally, the old agony comes back: a very little thing
will revive it; even a familiar sound, or the scent of summer flowers in the
air; but it does not last long, now: for the world without, has come to be the
vision, and this solitary life, the sad reality.
If his term of imprisonment be short - I mean comparatively, for short it
cannot be - the last half year is almost worse than all; for then he thinks the
prison will take fire and he be burnt in the ruins, or that he is doomed to die
within the walls, or that he will be detained on some false charge and sentenced
for another term: or that something, no matter what, must happen to prevent his
going at large. And this is natural, and impossible to be reasoned against,
because, after his long separation from human life, and his great suffering, any
event will appear to him more probable in the contemplation, than the being
restored to liberty and his fellow-creatures.
If his period of confinement have been very long, the prospect of release
bewilders and confuses him. His broken heart may flutter for a moment, when he
thinks of the world outside, and what it might have been to him in all those
lonely years, but that is all. The cell-door has been closed too long on all its
hopes and cares. Better to have hanged him in the beginning than bring him to
this pass, and send him forth to mingle with his kind, who are his kind no more.
On the haggard face of every man among these prisoners, the same expression
sat. I know not what to liken it to. It had something of that strained attention
which we see upon the faces of the blind and deaf, mingled with a kind of
horror, as though they had all been secretly terrified. In every little chamber
that I entered, and at every grate through which I looked, I seemed to see the
same appalling countenance. It lives in my memory, with the fascination of a
remarkable picture. Parade before my eyes, a hundred men, with one among them
newly released from this solitary suffering, and I would point him out.
The faces of the women, as I have said, it humanises and refines. Whether
this be because of their better nature, which is elicited in solitude, or
because of their being gentler creatures, of greater patience and longer
suffering, I do not know; but so it is. That the punishment is nevertheless, to
my thinking, fully as cruel and as wrong in their case, as in that of the men, I
need scarcely add.
My firm conviction is that, independent of the mental anguish it occasions -
an anguish so acute and so tremendous, that all imagination of it must fall far
short of the reality - it wears the mind into a morbid state, which renders it
unfit for the rough contact and busy action of the world. It is my fixed opinion
that those who have undergone this punishment, MUST pass into society again
morally unhealthy and diseased. There are many instances on record, of men who
have chosen, or have been condemned, to lives of perfect solitude, but I
scarcely remember one, even among sages of strong and vigorous intellect, where
its effect has not become apparent, in some disordered train of thought, or some
gloomy hallucination. What monstrous phantoms, bred of despondency and doubt,
and born and reared in solitude, have stalked upon the earth, making creation
ugly, and darkening the face of Heaven!
Suicides are rare among these prisoners: are almost, indeed, unknown. But no
argument in favour of the system, can reasonably be deduced from this
circumstance, although it is very often urged. All men who have made diseases of
the mind their study, know perfectly well that such extreme depression and
despair as will change the whole character, and beat down all its powers of
elasticity and self-resistance, may be at work within a man, and yet stop short
of self-destruction. This is a common case.
That it makes the senses dull, and by degrees impairs the bodily faculties, I
am quite sure. I remarked to those who were with me in this very establishment
at Philadelphia, that the criminals who had been there long, were deaf. They,
who were in the habit of seeing these men constantly, were perfectly amazed at
the idea, which they regarded as groundless and fanciful. And yet the very first
prisoner to whom they appealed - one of their own selection confirmed my
impression (which was unknown to him) instantly, and said, with a genuine air it
was impossible to doubt, that he couldn't think how it happened, but he WAS
growing very dull of hearing.
That it is a singularly unequal punishment, and affects the worst man least,
there is no doubt. In its superior efficiency as a means of reformation,
compared with that other code of regulations which allows the prisoners to work
in company without communicating together, I have not the smallest faith. All
the instances of reformation that were mentioned to me, were of a kind that
might have been - and I have no doubt whatever, in my own mind, would have been
- equally well brought about by the Silent System. With regard to such men as
the negro burglar and the English thief, even the most enthusiastic have
scarcely any hope of their conversion.
It seems to me that the objection that nothing wholesome or good has ever had
its growth in such unnatural solitude, and that even a dog or any of the more
intelligent among beasts, would pine, and mope, and rust away, beneath its
influence, would be in itself a sufficient argument against this system. But
when we recollect, in addition, how very cruel and severe it is, and that a
solitary life is always liable to peculiar and distinct objections of a most
deplorable nature, which have arisen here, and call to mind, moreover, that the
choice is not between this system, and a bad or ill-considered one, but between
it and another which has worked well, and is, in its whole design and practice,
excellent; there is surely more than sufficient reason for abandoning a mode of
punishment attended by so little hope or promise, and fraught, beyond dispute,
with such a host of evils.
As a relief to its contemplation, I will close this chapter with a curious
story arising out of the same theme, which was related to me, on the occasion of
this visit, by some of the gentlemen concerned.
At one of the periodical meetings of the inspectors of this prison, a working
man of Philadelphia presented himself before the Board, and earnestly requested
to be placed in solitary confinement. On being asked what motive could possibly
prompt him to make this strange demand, he answered that he had an irresistible
propensity to get drunk; that he was constantly indulging it, to his great
misery and ruin; that he had no power of resistance; that he wished to be put
beyond the reach of temptation; and that he could think of no better way than
this. It was pointed out to him, in reply, that the prison was for criminals who
had been tried and sentenced by the law, and could not be made available for any
such fanciful purposes; he was exhorted to abstain from intoxicating drinks, as
he surely might if he would; and received other very good advice, with which he
retired, exceedingly dissatisfied with the result of his application.
He came again, and again, and again, and was so very earnest and importunate,
that at last they took counsel together, and said, 'He will certainly qualify
himself for admission, if we reject him any more. Let us shut him up. He will
soon be glad to go away, and then we shall get rid of him.' So they made him
sign a statement which would prevent his ever sustaining an action for false
imprisonment, to the effect that his incarceration was voluntary, and of his own
seeking; they requested him to take notice that the officer in attendance had
orders to release him at any hour of the day or night, when he might knock upon
his door for that purpose; but desired him to understand, that once going out,
he would not be admitted any more. These conditions agreed upon, and he still
remaining in the same mind, he was conducted to the prison, and shut up in one
of the cells.
In this cell, the man, who had not the firmness to leave a glass of liquor
standing untasted on a table before him - in this cell, in solitary confinement,
and working every day at his trade of shoemaking, this man remained nearly two
years. His health beginning to fail at the expiration of that time, the surgeon
recommended that he should work occasionally in the garden; and as he liked the
notion very much, he went about this new occupation with great cheerfulness.
He was digging here, one summer day, very industriously, when the wicket in
the outer gate chanced to be left open: showing, beyond, the well-remembered
dusty road and sunburnt fields. The way was as free to him as to any man living,
but he no sooner raised his head and caught sight of it, all shining in the
light, than, with the involuntary instinct of a prisoner, he cast away his
spade, scampered off as fast as his legs would carry him, and never once looked
back.
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