Have you not imagination enough to put yourself for a moment in the predicament of the prisoner? There you sit in the narrow gloom of your cell, or you toil in the stifling confinement of your work room, and such is not only your state to-day, but for years to come it will be unchanged. You are isolated from sight of and association with every man and woman in the world who cares for you or thinks kindly of you; silence and rigid obedience are imposed upon you; you meet no looks that are not harsh, and hear no words but sharp commands or angry menaces. Your very toil is idle and unpaid, and its diligent performance brings you no credit or hope, except treacherous promises of a good constantly delayed. And then picture yourself when, after wearisome hours, the whistle blows that means intermission of labor and the renewal of strength by food. Yet that summons, instead of cheering you, does but make the burden of your misery heavier. Sullenly and heavily, in the endless line, you tramp into the huge, comfortless hall, with its hideous tables and benches, and as you pass up the aisles you glance abhorrently at the dirty scraps and masses of provender dumped carelessly out of noisome buckets by the filthy hands of the servers upon plates still rough and foul with the hardened grease of foregoing meals. You are faint for lack of nourishment, yet the sight of what is provided, and the unclean smell of it, nauseate instead of inviting you. Eat you must, if you would live and have strength to work, yet if you eat you invite sickness and suffering, and if you could eat all, and assimilate it, you would still leave the table but half fed. Every tyro in physiology knows the effect upon the general organism of dejection and resentment at meals. Prisoners more than men in any other condition need abundance to eat and good cheer while eating; but the food they get, and the circumstances in which they get it, causes them to degenerate physically, and the body affects the mind. Physical disease breeds the disease of evil thoughts and impulses. Criminals might be generated by prison food alone, without taking account of their previous records and future prospects. We of Atlanta penitentiary used to hear occasionally of the bills-of-fare of our repasts in the prison that were daily forwarded to Washington, by way of reassuring the Department of Justice, and whom else it might concern, as to the substance and excellence of our nourishment. These alimentary documents might be compared with like lists at Delmonico's and the Waldorf, and the names of the viands would be found to be identical. The inference, to the legal mind, not to speak of the penological one, was plain: the convicts at the penitentiary fared as sumptuously as do the banqueters of the Four Hundred--at no cost, moreover, to themselves, not even waiters' tips.