"His name, and crime, and term of suffering are unknown, even to the officer who delivers him his daily food. There is a number over his cell-door, and in a book, of which the governor of the prison has one copy and the moral instructor another, this is the index to his history. Beyond these pages the prison has no record of his existence; and though he live to be in the same cell ten weary years, he has no means of knowing, down to the very last hour, in what part of the building it is situated; what kind of men there are about him; whether in the long winter nights there are living people near, or he is in some lonely corner of the great gaol, with walls and passages, and iron doors between him and the nearest sharer in its solitary horrors. "Every cell has double doors--the outer one of sturdy oak, the other of grated iron, wherein there is a trap through which his food is handed. He has a bible and a slate and pencil, and, under certain restrictions, has sometimes other books, provided for the purpose, and pen and ink and paper. His razor, plate and can, and basin hang upon the wall, or shine upon the little shelf. Fresh water is laid on in every cell, and he can draw it at his pleasure. During the day his bedstead turns up against the wall and leaves more space for him to work in. His loom, or bench, or wheel is there, and there he labors, sleeps and wakes and counts the seasons as they change, and grows old." Over the inmates of this Philadelphia gaol Dickens exuded a great deal of sympathy and sentiment. He invested each man he wrote about with a pathos that made good reading at any rate, and no doubt sincerely believed all that he wrote. To a man of a convivial and companionable nature like himself the idea of a life of solitude was naturally horrible. To a man fond of long walks among other men the enforced absence of exercise as well as of companionship was naturally dreadful. To Charles Dickens, in short, a term of imprisonment in the Eastern Penitentiary would unquestionably have been the cruelest torture. He would, in all likelihood, have worn his life out speedily here, like a wild bird in a cage, or have laid violent hands upon himself, or have become a madman. To the felons whom he visited, men for the most part of blunt sensibilities and brutal natures, he credited the same qualities as belonged to his own refined and sensitive composition, and he put himself in their place and spoke for them from his own standpoint. How far he was led astray by this was shown by the case of the character long known as "Dickens's Dutchman." Of this fellow he wrote: