The Tombs Prison is in the nature of a detention barracks, where persons awaiting trial are kept for a season, and where one-half are discharged for lack of evidence and other legal loopholes through which men and women slip to freedom. Here prisoners are permitted to see their friends every day of the week, except Sundays and legal holidays. At the present time when the Tombs contains about 400-500 state and federal prisoners, it can be readily seen that one-half of the inmates are visited daily, which would average a thousand visitors a week. What a Babel of tongues operate here from every part of the world! What scenes may be witnessed during the visiting hours! Here may be found wives and mothers, fathers, brothers, children and friends all in tears! Sometimes as many as eight to ten different nationalities are found speaking their own peculiar language on one tier of forty prisoners,—English, German, French, Spanish, Russ, Bohemian, Scandinavian, Polish and even Chinese. With their arms stretched out through the bars, taking hold of each other in the anguish of a death bed scene, they kiss each other, weep and groan over one another and frequently become hysterical. And these scenes continue during the entire visiting hour, and when the gong rings for the recess, they are so loath to depart that often the keepers have to drag them from each other. As the wives, mothers, children and friends pass along the corridors toward the gate, you can see their eyes still full of tears and red with weeping.