American short stories : $b Selected and edited with an introductory essay on the short story by Charles Sears Baldwin
General
American short stories : $b Selected and edited with an introductory essay on the short story by Charles Sears Baldwin
American fiction -- 19th century; Short stories, American
Her eyes were cast down, this being the position most significant of
her spirit. Her pace was equal, firm, and rapid; she made herself
oblivious of the bustle of the streets, and she repented that her
vanity had permitted her to wear white and lavender, these making a
combination in her dress which she had been told became her well. She
had no right to embellish herself. Was she going to the races, or a
match, or a kettle-drum, that she must dandify herself with particular
shades of color? She stopped short, blushing. Would Miss Cro----.
But there was no help for it now. It was too late to turn back. She
proceeded, feeling that the odds were against her.
She approached her destination in such a way that the prison came into
view suddenly. She paused with a feeling of terror. The enormous gray
building rose far above a lofty white wall of stone, and a sense of
its prodigious strength and awful gloom overwhelmed her. On the top of
the wall, holding by an iron railing, there stood a man with a rifle
trailing behind him. He was looking down into the yard inside. His
attitude of watchfulness, his weapon, the unseen thing that was being
thus fiercely guarded, provoked in her such a revulsion that she came
to a standstill.
What in the name of mercy had she come here for? She began to tremble.
The man with the flowers came up to her and halted. From the prison
there came at this instant the loud clang of a bell, and succeeding
this a prolonged and resonant murmur which seemed to increase. Miss
Eunice looked hastily around her. There were several people who must
have heard the same sounds that reached her ears, but they were not
alarmed. In fact, one or two of them seemed to be going to the prison
direct. The courage of our philanthropist began to revive. A woman in a
brick house opposite suddenly pulled up a window-curtain and fixed an
amused and inquisitive look upon her.
This would have sent her into a thrice-heated furnace. “Come, if you
please,” she commanded the man, and she marched upon the jail.
She entered at first a series of neat offices in a wing of the
structure, and then she came to a small door made of black bars of
iron. A man stood on the farther side of this, with a bunch of large
keys. When he saw Miss Eunice he unlocked and opened the door, and she
passed through.
She found that she had entered a vast, cool, and lofty cage, one
hundred feet in diameter; it had an iron floor, and there were several
people strolling about here and there. Through several grated apertures
the sunlight streamed with strong effect, and a soft breeze swept
around the cavernous apartment.
Without the cage, before her and on either hand, were three more wings
of the building, and in these were the prisoners’ corridors.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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