I sauntered forth into the yard, and passed fifty or sixty fellow-unfortunates, sauntering as listlessly as myself. Strolling about, I came to a large grating, somewhat similar to Mr. Blowman’s bird-cage, in which was a heavy gate called the “lock,” and which communicated with the corridors leading to the exterior of the prison. Here sat, calmly surveying his caged birds within, a turnkey—not a repulsive, gruff-voiced monster, with a red neckerchief and top boots, and a bunch of keys, as turnkeys are popularly supposed to be—but a pleasant, jovial man enough, in sleek black. He had a little lodge behind, where a bright fire burned, and where Mrs. Turnkey, and the little Turnkeys lived. (I found a direful resemblance between the name of his office, and that of the Christmas bird.) His Christmas dinner hung to the iron bars above him, in the shape of a magnificent piece of beef. Happy turnkey, to be able to eat it on the outer side of that dreadful grating! In another part of the yard hung a large black board, inscribed in half-effaced characters, with the enumerations of divers donations, made in former times by charitable persons, for the benefit in perpetuity of poor prisoners. To-day, so much beef and so much strong beer was allotted to each prisoner. But what were beef and beer, what was unlimited tobacco, or even the plum-pudding, when made from prison plums, boiled in a prison copper, and eaten in a prison dining-room? What though surreptitious gin were carried in, in bladders, beneath the under garments of the fairer portion of creation; what though brandy were smuggled into the wards, disguised as black draughts, or extract of sarsaparilla? A pretty Christmas market I had brought my pigs to! Chapel was over (I had come down too late from the “Reception” to attend it); and the congregation (a lamentably small one) dispersed in the yard and wards. I entered my own ward, to change (if any thing could change) the dreary scene. Smoking and cooking appeared to be the chief employments and recreations of the prisoners. An insolvent clergyman in rusty black, was gravely rolling out puff-paste on a pie-board; and a man in his shirt-sleeves, covering a veal cutlet with egg and bread-crum, was an officer of dragoons! I found no lack of persons willing to enter into conversation with me. I talked, full twenty minutes, with a seedy captive, with a white head, and a coat buttoned and pinned up to the chin.