Oh, the fund of information he will impart to you as he guides you around! “Yes, the men is allowed to walk up and down in their cells or to sit on the bed daily.” All this on one tone and in one breath. What an engineer John is! Listen to his description of the mighty wall which encloses the Tombs: “That high wall around the prison was built at great expense of money, time, and men, so as to put the yard inside of it.” And an architect! “This building and that building isn’t the same building at all.” Ah, there is method in it all! He is leading, as every great dramatist does, up to his climax. Old John approaches it with reverential awe: this great beam of wood, lying in the yard, what stories it could tell! But John anticipates any superfluous remarks this obsolete institution might make for itself. “Do you see that beam of wood? That’s the last piece of the old gallows; all the rest has been cut up for relics; here the rope was tied.” Old John’s monologue, which follows, closes with these words: “And here you see the marks made by the axe in the hands of the hangman when it cut the rope that sprung the trap, launching the unhappy wretch into eternity. They do not hang yet any more, they make them sit in a chair up at Sing Sing, and kills them with nobody knows what.” He never says electrocution, it’s too much for him; perhaps he does not believe in it—neither do I. We suspect that every now and then John freshens up these marks himself; should this part of the old apparatus be painted, John would lose half his income—those chips, not his face, are his fortune. How little a quarter must seem, how good is life to a visitor after hearing John and seeing the old gallows! Old John is a judge of human nature: if he thinks you will stand it, he points to a black stone in the side of the old Tombs and tells you it is where a colored man dashed his brains out long ago rather than be hung, and how the successive wardens have tried unsuccessfully to remove the stain.