How awfully certain is it that "the way of the transgressor is hard!" _This_ poor sufferer found it so; and as no iniquity can go unpunished, there must be a dreadful retribution for the man, who, not only shut up his bowels of compassion from him, in the day of his afflictions, but sported, like a demon, with his dreadful condition. This prostrate sufferer had never injured his keeper, but was entitled to his kindness, and there is no excuse for that neglect and cruel torture, which he received at his hand. The laws of God and man, the laws of humanity, and even the laws of the prison, which demand for every prisoner, kindness, and for the sick, the best and most affectionate attention, were wantonly outraged by such conduct, which must in the estimation of every feeling heart, fix a lasting stain, not only on the guilty author of it, but on his _superiors_ who suffered such iniquity to pass in silent approbation. BURNHAM. The crime for which this man was sentenced to imprisonment was so base, and so revolting to all the feelings of humanity, that I almost dread to describe his sufferings, lest the sympathies of the reader should lead him to forget the greatness of the crime, in contemplating the miseries of the criminal. But it is possible for the worst man on earth to be abused, and murder would be murder still, though the victim were deserving of death. My design, then, in publishing this sketch, is, not to whiten the scarlet of crime with the tears of pity, but to hold up to public execration, a series of oppressions which could not be justified, nor their authors shielded from the just contempt of all good men, even if Satan himself had been the one oppressed. The crime of Burnham ought never to be named; it is of too dreadful a character to be thought upon by any unperverted soul, without the utmost pain. Let it suffice to say, that a _conspiracy_ was the means of effecting his infernal purpose; that this conspiracy had two _females_ joined with him, to the everlasting infamy of their names; and that _another_ female, _young_, _innocent_, and _amiable_ was the _victim_. For this crime, he was justly doomed to a long confinement in the State Prison, and a similar doom was soon awarded to one of his female conspirators.