The eye of a stranger who passes along Coates’ street towards the Schuylkill, is arrested by an imposing structure, giving the impression of strength, permanence and security. But no sound meets his ear, nor is any sign of its use at all visible. Let him enter and survey the interior. In a spacious area he sees long corridors radiating from a common centre, divided into apartments of suitable size, clean and wholesome, and provided with light and air and furniture needful for the tenant. In these corridors are confined at constant and useful labor, three or four hundred men, but it is as quiet as a well regulated workshop, each is unknown to the other, but all known to the officers and authorized visitors. Their food, lodging and attendance in sickness and in health, are good and sufficient. Their understandings are cultivated, and the voice of kindness and sympathy is heard by many there, who have seldom heard it elsewhere all their lives long. Who does not exclaim, at the sight of such a contrast. How wonderful the transformation, and all too, within the memory of living men! But let us brace up our nerves and protect our senses while we return for a moment to the prison-scenes of a former day. It is the Lord’s day. The streets of the city are thronged with people wending their way to the various places of public worship, but who thinks or cares for the “gaol-birds?” Shut out from the light and air of heaven, polluted in body and mind, and given over to work all manner of wickedness greedily, the day which brings repose to the care-worn, and peace to the troubled in heart, is fraught with no good to them. Yet stay a moment. The sympathy of a disciple and minister of CHRIST--“that friend of publicans and sinners”--is awakened for them. He calls upon the keeper, and proposes to address the prisoners occasionally, in a religious discourse, and to begin on the following Lord’s day. The keeper is amazed at so preposterous a proposition, and expresses his conviction that the attempt would be extremely hazardous, involving not only peril to the preacher himself and to the officers in attendance, but the possible escape of the prisoners, and the consequent pillage and murder of the citizens! Whether this was the result of timidity, or of a design to obstruct all efforts at reformation, is not known; but these and all other scruples were so far overcome, that permission was given to make the trial. “At the appointed time the clergyman[1] repaired to the prison, and was received with a reserve bordering on incivility. The keeper reluctantly admitted him through the iron gate to a platform at the top of the steps leading to the yard, where a loaded cannon was placed, and a man beside it with a lighted match! The motley concourse of prisoners were arranged in a solid column extending to the greatest distance which the hall could allow, and in front of the instrument prepared for their destruction in the event of the least commotion.”