which it is usual for unprotected females to appear in the streets. Hurrying, then, to the ferry, she was rudely stopped by a policeman, who asked where she was going. With indignation and broken English she rapidly informed him she was going to Spuyten Duyvel.

The astute officer instantly adjudged that she was swearing, arrested her, and had her sent to the Island as a vagrant given to disorderly conduct. When my friend met her she was a most miserable woman; her wifely and motherly feelings were stirred to their inmost recesses; a husband and three children awaited in agonized ignorance her arrival at their fireside. He proved her case, and she was released from durance vile. The consummate hypocrisy of many inmates prevents, however, as a rule, credence to such tales. I may add, that my personal experience inclines me especially to be skeptical.

a

A fair-haired young Englishman, of some twenty-four years, being transferred from the Work-house to be assistant to the clerk of the Lunatic Asylum, was brought specially under my notice. His intelligence struck me, and his story won my sympathy. He was a civil engineer by profession, and, as he said, was connected with George Francis Train at the time that dignitary was engaged in city railroad affairs in London. He manifested the greatest admiration for the acuteness of his principal, and his anecdotes concerning his method of business were full of interest. A frolic of a rather extravagant nature had sent him to the Island. He had arrived in New York with pockets full of money, having just resigned situation as engineer on a Southern line of railroad, and, while looking for something to turn up, had yielded to the wild spirit of youth and become involved in dissipation. His abilities and manners won him many friends during the period of his incarceration. Upon its conclusion he went to the city for a day or two, having borrowed a few dollars, and returned saying he had secured a situation as civil engineer in a company about starting for Switzerland. The next day he again went to the city to settle some matters in connection with his proposed scheme, and the weather being somewhat cold he induced a gentleman resident in the Asylum to lend him a fine over-coat. He borrowed a few small articles of wearing apparel as well as money from other persons, and then, although he had stated he would come back to the Asylum that same evening, neither he nor his plunder was ever seen there again.

As I entered the female wards I was desirous of examining the dark cell so strongly presented to my imagination as I sat sketching in the Sewing-room. A keeper politely conducted ne to its location on the ground-floor of the building, and I descried some six of them side by side. They were merely empty stone apartments with heavy double doors, the outside one of which had the appearance, to a casual glance, of the door of the ordinary cell. Closer inspec

THE DARK CELL.

tion, however, showed that its grate-work was merely painted, and that it was thoroughly impenetrable by light. With both shut and bolted the blackest night must reign in the dungeon, and to an evil conscience given up to itself therein, with the attendant demons of ignorance, imagination, and superstition, it must indeed seem hideous.

"Is there any one confined here now?" I asked of the keeper.

"Yes, one. Would you like to take a sketch ?"

A clanging of iron and we were admitted into No. 80. What resembled a bundle of clothes lay on the floor in a corner, but as my eyes became accustomed to the dim light I recognized the crouching figure of a woman, her head between her knees, and her hands clasped about it.

"Get up there!" was harshly commanded.

The creature, throwing back her disheveled hair, shiveringly arose, and placing herself awkwardly against the wall, gazed upon us with frightened aspect.

The keeper regarded her with a cynical air of triumph; and if there had been aught of rebellion in her she was thoroughly masteredthere was no question about that. Compassion fairly stung me as I looked; I hastily turned away. Hard as were her features, depraved as had been her life, her complete humiliation was most pitiable.

"How long has she been there?" "About six hours."

"What was her offense ?"

"A matron had her shut up for insults and continual insolence."

I was now invited to see the women at dinner. The hour was fast approaching, and as I was absorbed in making a drawing of the interior of a cell with its occupants, two savagelooking Amazons, bearing between them a large tin vessel of soup, struck against me in their impetuous march, and considerably disturbed my equilibrium. I soon regained it and my sketcha

be rudely disrupted by-"Take care of yourself there; you'll get the dark cell, my lady!" in the harsh voice of the keeper.

On the narrow tables, scarcely a foot wide, were placed at regular and close intervals pans of soup, in addition to which each individual received a good-sized piece of bread meted out to her upon entrance by a prisoner selected for the purpose, who presided over a large box. The meal was eaten in perfect silence-the negro portion of the assemblage forming a select circle. Enough was provided, but I could see many would have eaten more; and when, as sometimes happened, a rather smaller piece of bread than usual was delivered, it was received with an enraged sniff. The two mess-rooms seated, I should judge, some four hundred. Upon the conclusion of the meal the keeper, who had all along manifested great interest in my drawings, proposed to add to my repertory two fine samples of the prisoners.

The first

of forty years, who acted much as would a little girl called from the nursery for the delectation of a grave visitor of her parents. Her tongue wriggled about her lips, and both hands were occasionally pressed upon her cheeks, the fin

They did indeed wear the saddest expression of any about me. Mortifying reflections seemed devouring each one; in dogged silence they sat, their eyes fixed on the floor. Their appearance afforded the utmost amusement to the hilarious prisoner who had answered me; but my occupation also interested her, and calling to a woman passing by she exclaimed:

"Hi, Sal! don't you want your dagrytype taken? Here's your chance; get it done cheap!" There raged a desire among

all the inmates to have every body's portrait taken except their own.

The dinner-bell sounded, and from the cells soon ap-. peared a large body of women, who, forming themselves into single file under the eye of a keeper, advanced with great decorum along the hall and up the narrow staircase to the mess-rooms. The different work rooms also sent forth their processions, which streamed along the various galleries. It was a novel and instructive sight; the discipline maintained was evidently most effectual. The sober air which pervaded all, the whitish uniform of the females, the long corridors, with other details, presented many of the features of a nunnery, and I was lost in an imaginative reverie to

VOL. XXXIII.-No. 198.-3 A

her seat, gazing now into my eyes with a scared and mystified smile, and then casting sideglances at her amused companions, while a giggle ever and anon shook her frame.

"She's crazy, isn't she?" I asked.

"She crazy? A more cunning creature never came to the institution."

"Well, she's silly, then ?" "Yes, sometimes."

While finishing her portrait I was confronted with the second sample, whom the keeper

INTERIOR OF A CELL.

duced the belief that my watch, not myself, was the attraction. The keeper now returning, she resumed her seat and made vigorous efforts to gain my admiration by apparently swallowing the tin clamps which lay about her in abundance. These were also used to administer to that feminine love of ornament, as noticeable and common in prisons as elsewhere. Her fellow - laborer

had

woven them into a net which glistening confined her back-hair.

My first sketch about the grounds of the Work-house was made in the middle of winter. A large party of men were engaged on a pond in cutting and transporting ice for the use of the institution. With spears they fished the sawn ice from the water and pushed it over the frozen surface to their fellows, who carried it on wooden barrows to the proper place of deposit. The Work-house spirit was seen every where. Those who could rested at once from their toil, and, collecting in groups, lazily smoked and talked; some of the younger men, however, seemed to enjoy the sport of jumping

BUILDING SEA-WALL.

699

on large cakes, to which they had given impetus, and gliding sledge-fashion over the ice. I have often been amused by the method of working shown by the prisoners. While the foundations for certain buildings erecting for the Lunatic Asylum were being dug some twenty men were employed in wheeling earth. They started off in a procession, each with his barrow filled, and then turning a corner were out of sight of the keeper, when instantly the whole line stopped, each man seating himself upon his vehicle. This was always done with the regularity of clock-work. One soul ani

THE SWILL TUB.

mated the gang, only inspired to exertion by the appearance of the officer. This lazy feeling is indicated in the sketch of the prisoners building sea-wall. Of course, seeing that no remuneration thereunto accrues, no one expects them to work with much gusto, still it is to be believed that an energetic man could not from habit refrain from being industrious in the task given him.

The picturesque, and indeed comical, aspect of a party breaking stones near the river attracted my attention. The weather was somewhat chilly; although the sun shone brightly a cold wind made the thinly clad feel uncomfortable, and as protection against this, several of the men had ensconced themselves in old baskets lying about. I discovered in the overseer of the gang an individual who had been employed at the Asylum in the more congenial occupation of writing. Drink there procured had rendered him insolent to the Warden of the Work-house, and he was in consequence reduced to his present position. The gift of a cigar established us on familiar footing, and he became quite communicative concerning his fellow-prisoners under him.

"What's that man tied his pants tight about the ankles for-that man who keeps walking up and down?"

in giving concerts. He can get off a good thing, too. Up there at the Asylum, where he was for a time, there's a watchman named Cordial, who had occasion to carry him forcibly back to the 'Lodge' in one of his freaks. As he was rather roughly handled, he exclaimed, 'This is what I call a Cordial reception!" Not bad, eh? Then, too, being rebuked by an official, who told him he wanted none of his impudence, 'Of course you don't, my

good Sir, you've got enough of your own."" "Look at that man!" I exclaimed, interrupting the recital, and pointing to an individual who, having laid aside his hammer, had produced from his hat a beet, a carrot, and some crusts of bread, involved in a dirty handkerchief, and then unbuttoning his vest revealed a larger stock of refuse vegetables, including potatoes, which he proceeded leisurely to munch. "Look at him, I think he's awful!"

"Offul, of course he is; he went to the dogs long ago. No amount of victuals will satisfy that fellow. As soon as he with some others

come out to work in the morning, they strike a bee line for the swill tubs of the Asylum and stuff their jackets, pants, and hats with greasy beets and pieces of bread. They're used to it, the gluttons; it's the way many of them supported life while in the city."

"Don't the institution feed them well?" "It feeds them; they get as much as others, of course; but they always complain of feeling hungry."

Near by these stone-breakers a gang of some fifty Penitentiary prisoners were engaged in blasting rocks, and I may as well state here for the benefit of visitors to the Island, that the Penitentiary men are to be distinguished from others by their uniforms of whitish material, striped horizontally with dark brown.

"You have clever men up here, then?" "Yes, sometimes. You see that grizzlyheaded little fellow with the bright black eye, he's one of them. Commenced life as a clerk, I believe-took to drinking, wrote poetry for the Sunday papers, delirium tremens-has been to several Lunatic Asylums. In one he wrote a novel depicting life therein, rather scandalizing the institution. It fell into the Physician's hands, who burned it up. He escaped sentence for forgery in Massachusetts by a plea of insanity. Has been engaged in lecturing and

mately connected with feminine pursuits, such as the hanging of clothes to dry. Yet at one time I used to remark a couple of stalwart females on the steamboat dock, who busied themselves in lading and unlading a cart, which drove down from their prison. The odd situation of these Amazons, as they "chaffed" with the men around, their bold and confident looks, their apparent delight in their masculinity, fastened them securely in my memory. I have since learned they were connected with the Cigar Factory. Occasionally, as the cart was about starting on a return to the institution, one of them would bound upon it, and rushing