Thus I was effectively taught my bounds, to touch nothing about the prison but my books, to suggest no change any way, and to bring nothing to the warden, or deputy, about a prisoner, which bounds I was ever careful to observe. There was an attendant rule to this red tapeism, as I understood it, that bore hard on the prisoners,--that one must ask for a thing but once. Some would ask me to help them to an article, when I would say, "You must go with that to the deputy, or warden." They replied, "I have, with the promise of it, but it does not come." Or, perhaps, "I ventured to ask the second time, and received the stern reply, 'Don't you ever mention that to me, again.'" A forlorn condition this,--the State placing her wards helplessly under a man who is not to be reminded of a request, which had slipped his mind, perhaps, through the multiplicity of business. Surely, such a man should be very considerate and particularly careful about attending to the needs of his dependents. The lessons taught me, the spirit manifested with all the surroundings, gave me to understand that I must walk in everything with the utmost circumspection or be mercilessly dealt with. True, I had ever labored to do all things in my prison management just as I should, ever acting with an eye single to the best prison order; but circumstances now evidently demanded of me a double care, that my every step should not only be right but appear right, and no shadow of grounds for complaint be any way found. 9. _Prisoners' Aid Association._ In the spring of '70, a company of ladies and gentlemen organized under the N. H. statutes into a corporate body by this title, to hold its annual meeting in the city of Concord, the second Tuesday of each June, the avowed purpose being to aid the discharged convicts by proper advice, and help them to places of labor without delay, where they may enjoy the needed society privileges, guardian care, and a general influence in favor of their best success, paying for them such small bills as may be necessary for this purpose. The legislature of that season voted the Association three hundred dollars, to aid it in its benevolent work, I being appointed agent for that purpose. 10. _Complaint of prison hunger._ Late in the summer, a man, leaving prison, complained that the prison living was not as good as that of the past year, the rations being poorer in quality, and less in quantity; that, at times, he had really so suffered with hunger that he could not sleep at night. I questioned him carefully, and he appeared honest in his statements, still, this being the first I had heard of such complaints, I would not form an opinion from this assertion, for he might be telling the story to injure the warden. But he gave this account here and there in the city, so that it was circulated widely. A lady, as she asserts, asked the prison physician if the rations had been reduced, and he replied that they had to some extent.