"You may go now, the sooner the better," was his gentle reply.
I called my maid, packed my trunk, and made all haste to depart. I made my adieus as brief as possible. My women, with one exception, were crying and lamenting my departure, and I truly regretted to leave the poor wretches in such merciless care.
"I shall spend the rest of my time in solitary," said O'Brien.
"I shall get locked up the first thing," said Lissett.
"I shall try to get into the shop," said Allen. "I never can stand it here after ye."
"My heart is as black after ye as that stove," sobbed McMullins.
It was many a day and night, after I went out from that prison, before the sights and sounds that I saw and heard there left my mental sight and hearing.
I thought as I went away, I will go from door to door through this broad Commonwealth, state what I have learned of woman's condition in prison, and beseech every other woman to help open the doors of her ignorance, and degradation, to the light of the knowledge which will lead to reformation.
Every one who has the cause of humanity at heart will echo the cry,--open the doors of our prisons, as the doors of other public institutions are thrown open, so that those who support may have an opportunity to inspect them.
It is the right of every tax-payer to know what is done within our prison walls at all times. It is the duty of every Christian man to make himself acquainted with the moral bearing of the discipline which obtains within them.
It is the duty of every religious woman to see that her fellow woman is not trampled down in degradation and vice, lower than her own sins would carry her, by the heel of her master in discipline.
Let the prison doors be opened, and the inside of them exposed to the view of all. Knowledge awakens interest, and interest leads to action.
If the people of this land could be roused to examine the subject, our prisons would soon be managed upon principles which would tend to the elevation of the wretched beings who now come out of them more degraded and hardened in the commission of crime than they go in.
God grant that the day filled with such blessing for the poor convict, be not far distant!
The following corrections which did not concern obvious printer errors have been made to the text: