42. _Lack of truthfulness at the prison._ We are often told that no confidence can be placed in the word of a prisoner. But in my experience under the new rule, I was taught the sad lesson that I could place no greater confidence in the assertions of some of the officers. A complaint of this character had repeatedly been made by released prisoners. Still, it required personal experience to enable me to appreciate its full and lamentable force. Hence, the shock I felt at the virtual request of the warden for me to join in the falsehood course, by telling the prisoners that Henry Stewart, when removed to the insane asylum, was taken out to be tried for attempts to murder his overseer.--Then, again, there were the assertions I repeatedly heard the warden make to prison visitors, on passing through the cook-room. "We give the prisoners good food and enough of it. We purchase the best of articles the market affords, and have the food well prepared." He would repeat this in earnestness and apparent sincerity, as though he really believed it himself.--Subsequently, a gentleman of the city, of undoubted veracity, being about to visit the parents of a prisoner, called and asked the warden how he was, with the answer, "He is all right; you may tell his folks that he is all right." In a few days after, it was found that, at the very time of this assertion, the man was so sick that the doctor had nearly given him over to die. Then I would sometimes smile and sometimes feel sorrowful at his changeable appearance; perhaps if one of influence and authority came in, he would put on peculiar airs of suavity, and expatiate upon how things were and should be in prison, while one without that influence might enter and receive entirely different treatment. I here see how our rulers may have been led on at times, unaware of the true state of things in the institution. How easy to cover up! Then in the female department, I called for a convict in order to arrange for her disposal on leaving prison, and was told, "The assistant is in the city with the key to their apartment, therefore you can not see the woman." But how was I surprised shortly to learn that, at the moment of this assertion, the assistant was in the kitchen at work, and known to be there by my informant. Is it any wonder that such people disbelieve in prison reform? 43. _Reported quarrel between the warden and chaplain._ The idea has been circulated, how extensively I know not, that the warden and chaplain had a quarrel between them at the prison. It seems to have pervaded some minds in the legislature at Concord in '71, being used to the disadvantage of a bill before that body in regard to the prison, the fate of which perhaps was made to turn on that. No doubt a certain Concord gentleman, who had an ax of his own to grind in connection, knows very well how this report was made so prevalent. Whether he or another started it, I know not.