“The pore lad's out o' harum's rache, any way,” she reflected. “He can't be git-tin' into hot wather now, and that's a fact. And maybe after awhiles they 'll let him go agin. They let out murtherers and thaves and sich like, and Larry's done no hurt to nobody but hisself.” Margaret was inclined to be rather severe on President Lincoln for taking away Larry's prize-money. The impression was strong on her mind that the money went into Mr. Lincoln's private exchequer. “I would n't wonder if Misthress Lincoln had a new silk gownd or two this fall,” Margaret would remark, sarcastically. The prison rules permitted Mr. O'Rourke to receive periodical communications “from his friends outside.” Once every quarter Mr. Bilkins wrote him a letter, and in the interim Margaret kept him supplied with those doleful popular ballads, printed on broadsides, which one sees pinned up for sale on the iron railings of city churchyards, and seldom anywhere else. They seem the natural exhalations of the mould and pathos of such places, but we have a suspicion that they are written by sentimental young undertakers. Though these songs must have been a solace to Mr. O'Rourke in his captivity, he never so far forgot himself as to acknowledge their receipt. It was only through the kindly chaplain of the prison that Margaret was now and then advised of the well-being of her husband. Towards the close of that year the great O'Rourke himself did condescend to write one letter. As this letter has never been printed, and as it is the only specimen extant of Mr. O'Rourke's epistolary manner, we lay it before the reader _verbatim et literatim_:-- _febuary. 1864 mi belovid wife fur the luv of God sind mee pop gose the wezel. yours till deth_ . _larry O rourke._ “Pop goes the Weasel” was sent to him, and Mr. Bilkins ingeniously slipped into the same envelope “The Drunkard's Death” and “Beware of the Bowl,” two spirited compositions well calculated to exert a salutary influence over a man imprisoned for life. There is nothing in this earthly existence so uncertain as what seems to be a certainty. To all appearances, the world outside of Moyamensing Prison was forever a closed book to O'Rourke. But the Southern Confederacy collapsed, the General Amnesty Proclamation was issued, cell doors were thrown open; and one afternoon Mr. Larry O'Rourke, with his head neatly shaved, walked into the Bilkins kitchen and frightened Margaret nearly out of her skin. Mr. O'Rourke's summing up of his case was characteristic: “I 've been kilt in battle, hanged by the court-martial, put into the lock-up for life, and here I am, bedad, not a ha'p'orth the worse for it.”