The lids he so seldom could close, By sorrow forbidden to sleep, Sealed up in eternal repose, Have strangely forgotten to weep, The fountains can yield no supplies, The hollows from water are free, The tears are all wiped from these eyes, And evil they never shall see. * * * * * THERE lives a man in this metropolis of Gotham, who is esteemed by his fellow-citizens, among whom he has honestly acquired an ample fortune, for the strict integrity which characterizes his dealings in trade, and his unexceptionable private life. On one occasion he was asked at his barber's, on which side of two political parties he was going to vote, at an election to be holden that day. He replied, with something of a flush on his countenance, that he believed he should avoid voting on either side; such had hitherto been his practice. 'Yes, I guess it _has_!' whispered a man in the chair, as he arrested the barber's hand, and wiped the soap-foam from his lips; 'fact is, he _can't_ vote. He was three years in the state-prison!' Now this _was_ the fact. He had been three years immured in the penitentiary of a neighboring State, for a crime committed in the heat of passion, and he has to many friends given an account of the mental agony which he endured on first entering the institution. It was not so much the physical suffering; the tedious, sleepless nights in his narrow cell; the sorrowful silence in which he plied his incessant and thankless labor; his coarse and scanty food; not so much these, as the companionship of the hardened wretches around him, whose crimes he could only imagine from the character of their faces, as he caught glimpses of their features in the turning of a gang in marching, or in the chapel on the Sabbath. The _degradation of spirit_ it was that almost broke his heart. 'It mattered little,' he thought, 'how much he might be abused, what insolence of office he might suffer, or how deeply the iron in the dungeon might enter into his soul. Who would care for the unhappy convict? If he should repent and become a reformed man, no one would believe him, no one would employ him; and he would be compelled to give proof of his moral improvement by suffering starvation unto death.' For the first two or three weeks, he was almost _mad_ with the intensity of his mental suffering; and he remained in this state until one Sabbath morning, when the keeper, who was a Churchman by persuasion, permitted the Episcopal service to be read to the prisoners, at the request of a young relation, who was a student at a neighboring theological seminary. 'Never,' has our informant often heard the ci-devant state-prisoner say, 'never shall I forget the effect of one of those blessed prayers upon my mind. It taught me that I was not utterly forgotten and cast away, in my desolate abode.' The prayer runs as follows: 'O GOD, who sparest when we