If man go unpunished, of human law, for this sin, justice will find him out sooner or later. God pity him when his retribution comes! The avenging of a guilty conscience will work him greater woe than the miseries of a prison can inflict.
As I sat in the prison this evening reviewing my day's work, I counted up my occupations.
I am Housekeeper, Engineer, Overseer, Jailer, Porter, Usher, Sentinel, and many others which I did not enumerate.
Irksome as was the handling of keys to me, it was quite an entertainment to see myself answering the knock of the gentlemen in striped uniform, letting them into my kitchen, and following them around, like a page after a prince; and then, letting them out. I hardly think they get such attendances in the outside world.
Rotation in duties, and reversion in offices was the order of the place. I was Usher to the prisoners; my sweeps were stationed on the stone stairs, when the prisoners were in their cells, and the kitchen door locked, to open it if there were a knock on the outside, and to lock it again after the officer who entered.
Sittings on the stone stairs could hardly have been comfortable accommodations. I was reminded of that fact this evening, by hearing Ellen whisper when she heard a knock,--
"I hate to get up,--I've just got my seat warm."
"Every back is fitted to its burden," is an old proverb. I wondered if those prisoners had been provided by a beneficent Providence, of some kind, with an extra amount of animal heat, in order to warm up the stones they lived on during their incarceration.
Supernumerary was in the habit of sending to me for my No. 5 key occasionally. She said it let her through from the house into the attic of the prison.
I could not imagine what she wished to go through there for. I finally settled down upon the supposition that she wished to supervise the prisoners' rooms at her convenience, and see if I kept them in order, and made the poor things as comfortable as possible.
The mystery was unraveled when she took me up to show me the room of the Receiving Officer which she wished to have cleaned. She pointed to a large closet on the same flat, where she packed away summer articles of use in the fall, and winter ones in the spring, which she said my 5 key locked.