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
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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
th
e 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
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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
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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
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 wh
o 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
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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