The most mournful thing that I have ever witnessed was a child in prison. Once I saw a hardened little sinner of twelve years, laughing at his mother through the gratings of a cell-door. This child was evidently proud of the adroit theft that had brought him to that disgraceful pass, and put on airs that an old criminal would have been ashamed of, while the poor mother looked on speechless with wonder and distress. In the same prison, and in a cell like that, a boy younger than twelve, knelt the week after Mrs. Carter’s party—knelt and prayed by the meagre prison-bed, which shook under the fearful power of his weeping. Once he lifted up his face, and looked wildly around his dungeon. Then his face fell, and a shudder passed over him. A grave, walled in with stone, could not have been so terrible. Eternal disgrace seemed to have closed him in forever. Alas! alas! what had he done to deserve such hard treatment! What would become of his mother, whom he had fondly believed himself protecting? The two sisters, so lovely and good, who had really looked up to him, and loved him dearly—would they ever speak his name again without blushes! How fearfully lonesome it was. The strange, close atmosphere oppressed him like the breath of a pestilence. The cold whiteness of the walls chilled him. Over and over he repeated the Lord’s Prayer—the most holy words that ever came from a child’s lips; but they seemed insufficient to his anguish, and he cried out, “Oh, Father! Oh, my God! keep this from them! Let me drop down dead here, and I will not say a word; only do not let them know. It would kill them! It would kill them!” Then the poor boy would rest a little time in deadly quiet, as if he expected God to answer him then and there; but instead of the still, small voice that he listened for, came the clang of the cell-door, and a fierce cry of distress from some prisoner just brought in. This semi-lunatic from drink, pleaded for brandy just as earnestly as he prayed for help, but in language which made him shudder, as if the torment of some great crime were already upon him. The night closed in upon him, filling the prison with heavy gloom, inexpressibly mournful. The grating of that iron-door was closed: slowly the gray shadows of sunset fell through the long, narrow slit of stone, so cut in the wall that God’s beautiful sunshine could never creep through, and an awful darkness fell upon him. The clang of each door, as it swung into place along those long iron galleries, had gone through and through him like a dull sword. The heavy step of the keeper, walking from cell to cell, seemed to fall on his heart.