All convicts who can read are furnished with a copy of the Bible, the Mexicans with Bibles in the Spanish language. They are also permitted to read such other religious or moral works as the Chaplain may approve. They can have but little opportunity for reading except on Sundays, when they are confined in their cells all day, with the exception of the time of public worship. The Chaplain preaches regularly on the Sabbath twice a-day. There is no chapel or hall provided for assembling the convicts. The convicts are marched out of their cells, each bringing his stool with him, and ranged along the opposite sides of one of the long narrow corridors, in no very strict or regular order. The Chaplain stands about the middle of the corridor, while at each end are the guards fully armed; the Superintendent is also present. By a special enactment of the Legislature, the front of the cell of any prisoner sentenced to solitary confinement for life, is painted black, and his name and sentence distinctly marked thereon. The object would seem to be to infuse a salutary dread into the minds of the other prisoners. Upon the only black-painted cell in the prison was the following inscription, in distinct white letters: _William Brown, aged twenty-four years, convicted for murder in Grimes County, spring term, 1858, for which he is now suffering solitary confinement for life_. Brown himself, however, was in fact at work in the factory with the other convicts! He entered the Penitentiary in May, 1859, and had been kept in close confinement in his cell, _without labor_, never being permitted to leave it for any purpose, until about the first of October, when his health was found to have suffered so much that, to preserve his life, he was, under a discretionary power vested in the Directors, released from the rigor of his sentence, and subjected to only the ordinary confinement of the prison. His health had since greatly improved. It is not to be wondered at that his health should decline under the strict enforcement of such a sentence. The cell in which he was confined was the same as to size, ventilation, and light as the rest; and being one of the lower tier of cells, the top of the doorway was some feet below the lower edge of the windows upon the opposite side of the corridor in the outside wall. He had even less chance for fresh air than if his cell had been in almost any other location. It is the sight and knowledge of such instances of solitary _unemployed_ confinement as this, and a wilful neglect or refusal to inform themselves upon, and recognize, the very wide distinction between the terms _separate_ and _solitary_, that renders many persons so violently prejudiced against, and opposed to the “Separate System.”