future treatment is entirely guided, and the class of labour is carefully selected in accordance with its decision. A card, then and there signed by the surgeon, and which is always fixed on one’s cell door, decides one’s future vocation; and “Hard labour,” or “Light labour and bed,” bear a significance incredible to the uninitiated. As I stood before the kind old man stripped to the waist (or rather to where my waist now is) I was amused by his astonishment at my enormous proportions. I satisfied him I was not deceiving him by a reference to an operation I had once undergone; and this, coupled with my unnatural size, decided him I was incapable of hard labour, and the words, “Light labour and bed,” were recorded on my card. Before many hours had passed I realized the benefit of those magic words. These preliminaries, as is always the case in well-constructed dramas or farces, only led up to the event of the day—the inspection by the Governor. In Her Majesty’s prisons these individuals are clothed in attributes something more than mortal, and receive an amount of homage sufficient to turn the head of a fool or a snob. In this instance the Governor was neither, and though a strict disciplinarian, was the justest and “straightest” man I ever met. Prisoners and warders were equally amenable to his discipline, and the slightest dereliction of duty brought him down on you like a load of bricks. There was no abuse or verbosity accompanying this discipline, and though he was feared, I believe he was equally liked and respected by every man in the prison. The advent of such a personage naturally involved a proportionate amount of preparation, and everything received an overhaul. Men who wore Her Majesty’s livery for the first time, and were mere babes in the mysteries of its graceful adjustment, were told to put their stocks “square on,” or button this button and not that of their vests and jackets; lumps of coal that had burned crooked were carefully straightened, and even the coal-box got a lick of whitewash at the last moment. We were then rehearsed in a sort of drill: every man was informed that when “attention” was called he was at once to “spring” up smartly and remain standing—an old vagrant, aged 100 to judge by his appearance, “sprang” with so much zeal that I really thought he had cricked his neck. When all the preparations were considered complete, and we had attained an efficiency worthy the reputation of the “North Corks,” and as some minutes had yet to elapse before the great man’s arrival, it was deemed advisable to fix our thoughts in the same reverential groove by reading certain rules for our future guidance. The following notice is one of the half-dozen that hang up in every cell—all of which I shall produce hereafter. They can hardly be considered as light reading, or such as one would select unless absolutely compelled; nevertheless, they afforded me a certain amount of occupation by learning