The Bluff Hill penitentiary was called “a model prison.” A “modern
Howard” was said to have planned it, and passed his oracular judgment,
ratified by the authorities of the State in which it was located, upon
its cells, prison-yards, work-shops, chapel, eating-rooms, and ingenious
instruments of torture.
That the furnaces failed to keep the prisoners from freezing in
winter, or that there was no proper ventilation in summer, was,
therefore, nobody’s meddling business. Better that _they_ should suffer,
year in and year out, than that a flaw should be publicly picked in any
scheme set afoot by the “modern Howard.” The officers elected to preside
over Bluff Hill prison, were as stony as its walls, and showed curious
visitors round the work-shops, amid its rows of pallid faces, pointing
out here a disgraced clergyman, there a ruined lawyer, yonder a wrecked
merchant, with as much nonchalance as a brutal keeper would stir up the
caged beasts in a menagerie, for the amusement of the crowd; with as
little thought that these fallen beings were _men_ and brothers, as if
the Omniscient eye noted no dark stain of sin, hidden from human sight,
on _their_ souls.
They gave you leave to stop as long as you pleased, and watch the
muscles of your victim’s face, work with emotion under your gaze. You
could take your own time to speculate upon the scowl of defiance, or the
set teeth of hate, as you flaunted leisurely past their prison uniform,
in your silk and broadcloth; or you could stand under the fair blue sky,
in the prison-yard, when the roll beat for dinner, and see them in
file, by twos--guarded--march with locked step and folded arms, to their
eating-room. The beardless boy branded in your remembering eye for life,
wherever you might hereafter meet him, for this his first crime, how
hard soever against fearful odds, he might struggle upward to virtue and
heaven. You might follow the sad procession to thair meals, where the
fat, comfortably-fed chaplain craved a blessing over food, from which
the very dog at his door would have turned hungry away; or you could go
into the prison hospital, and view the accommodation (?) for the
sick--the cots so narrow that a man could not turn in them; or you could
investigate “The Douche,” which the keeper would tell you, with a bland
smile, “conquered even old prison birds;” or you could peep into the
cells (philanthropically furnished by this “modern Howard” with a
Bible), so dark that at the brightest noonday no prisoner could read a
syllable; or you could see the row of coffins standing on an end in the
hall, kept on hand “for sudden emergencies;” or any other horrors of the
place, for which your morbid curiosity was appetized.
Or, if you had a human heart beating within your breast, if you could
remember ever kneeling to ask forgiveness of your God, you could turn
away soul-sick from such unfeeling exhibitions, and refuse to insult
their misery--fallen as they were--by your curious gaze. You could
remember in your own experience, moments of fearful temptation, when the
hot blood poured like molten lead through _your_ veins. You could place
in the balance, as God does--as man does not--neglected
childhood--undisciplined youth. You could remember, that at a kindly
word, whispered in those felon cars, the hardest rock might melt; and
you could wish that if prisons must be, they who pass under their iron
portals might pass unrecognizable in after life by the world’s stony
eyes--you could wish that when freedom’s air again fanned their pallid
temples, no cursed scornful finger might lash to fury the hydra-headed
monster Sin, in their scarred hearts.
Heaven speed the day when the legislative heart, pitiful as God’s,
shall temper this sword of justice with more mercy.
* * * * *
“Which is he?” asked an over-dressed, chubby, vulgar-looking fellow,
to the keeper of Bluff Hill prison.
“That tall fellow yonder,” replied the keeper, “with the straight
nose, and high forehead--that’s he--see? reefing off flax yonder.”
“Don’t say,” said the man, with his bloated eyes gloating over Percy.
“How old is he?”
“Nineteen only,” said the keeper.
“Humph!” said the man, loud enough for Percy to
hear--“_Pre_--co--cious; wasn’t intended for that sort of work, I fancy,
by the look of his hands; they are as small and white as a woman’s. Ask
him some question, can’t ye? I wish I was keeper here; I’d like to
break his spirit,” said Mr. Scraggs, as Percy answered the keeper’s
question without raising his eyes. “Bah! how these fuzzy bits of lint
and flax fly about the room; my throat and nose are full. I should think
this would kill a fellow off before long.”
“It does,” said the keeper, coolly.
“And what’s that horrible smell? Faugh--it makes me sick.”
“That? Oh, that’s the oil used in the machinery.”
“Why the fury don’t you ventilate, then?” asked Mr. Scraggs, thinking
more of his _own_ lungs than the prisoners’, adding, with a laugh, as he
recollected himself, “I don’t suppose the Governor of your State is
particular on that p’int;” then, with another stare at Percy, he said,
“they say he seduced old Ford’s daughter before he stole the money.”
The words had hardly left his lips, when, with a bound like a panther,
Percy instantly felled him to the earth, the blood spouting from his own
mouth and nostrils with the violence of his passion.
Scraggs lay for some hours insensible, though not dangerously wounded,
and Percy was led off in irons, to reflect on this new misery in
solitary confinement.