The month was over—the honeymoon to the newly married; the exquisite
convalescence to the “living mother of a living child”; “the first dark
days of nothingness” to the widow and the child bereaved; the term of
penance, of hard labour, and of solitary confinement, to the shrinking,
shivering, hopeless prisoner.
“Sick, and in prison, and ye visited me.” Shall you, or I, receive such
blessing? I know one who will. An overseer of a foundry, an aged man,
with hoary hair, has spent his Sabbaths, for many years, in visiting
the prisoners and the afflicted, in Manchester New Bailey; not merely
advising and comforting, but putting means into their power of regaining
the virtue and the peace they had lost; becoming himself their guarantee
in obtaining employment, and never deserting those who have once asked
help from him.[1]
[1] Vide _Manchester Guardian_ of Wednesday, March 18th, 1846; and also
the Reports of Captain Williams, prison inspector.