The rule of Governor Chapman was essentially considerate and mild. There was no limit to his long-suffering and patience. Though by all the habits of his early life he must have learned to look at breaches of discipline with no lenient eye, we shall find that he never punished even the most insubordinate and contumacious of the ruffians committed to his charge till he had first exhausted every method of exhortation or reproof; and when he had punished he was ever ready to forgive, on a promise of future amendment, or even a mere hypocritical expression of contrition alone. It is now generally admitted that felons cooped up within four walls can be kept in bounds only under an iron hand. Captain Chapman acted otherwise, the committee which controlled him fully endorsing his views. For a long time to come the prison was like a bear garden; misconduct was rife in every shape and form, increasing daily in virulence, till at length the place might have been likened to Pandemonium let loose. Then more stringent measures were enforced, with satisfactory results, as we shall see; but for many years there was that continuous warfare between ruffianism and constituted authority which is inevitable when the latter savours of weakness or irresolution. Feigned suicides were among the earliest methods of annoyance. It is not easy to explain exactly what end the prisoners had in view, but doubtless they hoped to enlist the sympathies of their kindhearted guardians, by exhibiting a recklessness of life. Those who preferred death to continued imprisonment must indeed be miserably unhappy, calling for increased tenderness and anxious attention. They must be talked to, petted, patted on the back, and taken into the infirmary, to be regaled with dainties, and suffered to lie there in idleness for weeks. So whenever any prisoner was thwarted or out of temper, often indeed without rhyme or reason, and whenever the fancy seized him, he tied himself up at once to his loom, or laid hands upon his throat with his dinner-knife, or a bit of broken glass. Of course their last idea was to succeed. They took the greatest pains to insure their own safety, and these were often ludicrously apparent; but now and then, though rarely, they failed of their object, and the wretched victim suffered by mistake. Happily the actually fatal cases were few and far between.