The way in which Canadian rebels were treated in prison is to the reader of their experiences a continual reproach to the powers which made them thus suffer. But the American Bastille, according to the records left by Mackenzie, out-did the Canadian. A steep staircase, a ladder and a trap-door fastened by bar and lock, led to a room wherein were the dangling rope and hideous apparatus of death ready waiting for the next unfortunate; beyond the room was Mackenzie’s cell. It was only through this passage-way that mother, children, wife or friends could reach him, where they had to run the gauntlet of coarse jests from brutalized men and the worse than brutal remarks of such women as were prisoners there. The gaoler in this place deserved to be immortalized by Dickens. Of low stature, with an exaggerated hook nose, fleshless and fallen-in cheeks on which nature had begrudged a sufficient skin covering; round, sunken, peering eyes, feline from long watching; nails filthy, like claws forever in the dirt--such was the gaoler. “You felt in regarding him that if cast into the sea he would have more power to pollute it than it would have to purify him.” A fee of thirty-six dollars for three months procured from him the occasional admittance of friends, although the iron doors were freely opened to those who wished to see a real live Canadian rebel. Close confinement and miasma broke Mackenzie’s health in a short time; he could no longer eat the food which his children carried him--it was feared he might be poisoned by the gaol fare--his wife was in delicate health, his mother had reached ninety years, and his mind was torn with anxiety over the illness of a beloved daughter. The other prisoners were allowed occasional days of freedom to visit taverns and roam the town, but no such liberty came to him. “My dear little girl grew worse and worse, she was wasted to a skeleton.... I had followed four of her sisters and a brother to the churchyard, but I might not look upon her. One fine day she was carried ... to the prison, and her mother and I watched her for forty-eight hours, but the gaoler vexed us so that she had to be taken home again, where she was soon in the utmost danger, and when her poor little sister comes to tell me how she is at dusk ... the gaoler will tell her to wait in the public place in the gaol, perhaps for an hour or more, till supper comes, as he can’t be put to the trouble of opening my cage twice.”