The library was a very good one and contained not only the latest novels, but philosophical works and books for study; also a limited number in French and German. To these were added religious works, especially poetry, and sermons for Sunday reading. I found a choice collection to help me support the Sabbath day, for the suspended animation makes a day of misery of the “day of rest.” One could not read all day without tiring, and the absence of week-day work usually made it a day of heavy, creeping depression. There are two periods of exercise, and chapel morning and afternoon. The remainder of the time the prisoners are locked in their cells. Reading was my only solace; from first to last I read every moment that I could call my own. The best index of the quality of the books was that every volume was read or examined by the chaplain and his staff before it was admitted to the library. If it contained any articles on prison life or matters relating to prisoners, these were always carefully cut out. From my observations I consider that prison schoolmasters and schoolmistresses are overburdened with miscellaneous and incompatible duties. No one needs to be told that the average prisoner is a slow learner, and that even a dull boy or girl is a better pupil than a grown man or woman plodding along in the first steps of knowledge, and who is taught, not in a class, but in a cell. Yet the schoolmaster or schoolmistress has to devote hours daily to teaching, to help in letter-writing, in the office work, in the distribution of library books, in the library work; and now that their number is likewise reduced on the ground of expense, the pressure of their work is out of all proportion to the hours within which it can be reasonably performed. I have always been fond of reading, and during my leisure hours I got through a large number of books. This was between noon and half-past one, and seven and eight in the evening, when my light had to be put out. NEWSPAPERS FORBIDDEN The rules forbid that any public news be conveyed to the prisoners, either at visits or by letters. This seems to be a very short-sighted view to take of the matter. To allow newspapers in the prison might, of course, lead to cipher communications to prisoners from their friends; but no harm can possibly come of allowing information regarding public affairs of national interest to be conveyed through the legitimate channels of letters and visits. It would give the prisoners fresh food for thought, and tend greatly to relieve that vacuity of mind which is the outcome of lack of knowledge of external things, and of the monotony of their lives; it would also make a pause in their broodings over their cases, which is the sole subject of their thoughts and conversations when permitted to converse at all. HOW PRISONERS LEARN OF GREAT EVENTS