For here were rich soups and gravies, substantial roast beef, succulent steaks and chops, the renowned baked beans of legend, comforting hashes, pies and puddings, fresh vegetables, including the famous sweet potato of the South in its pride; and long draughts of milk from the tranquil cows of the pasture, together with tea and coffee from the Orient, sugar, mustard, salt and pepper and vinegar, enough to beguile the most squeamish appetite, and, to top off with, fruits in their season, led by the incomparable Georgia watermelon. I may have inadvertently omitted some items from this toothsome list, but it is enough as it stands to make an epicure's mouth water. And if any skeptic were still unconvinced, a photographer would be admitted with his undeniable camera at certain seasons--Christmas and Fourth of July, for example--who would place a picture of the revelry and the revelers on the everlasting records, with garlands and festive decorations, and actual dishes of some sort on the groaning boards, and serried rows of plump felons ready to fall to. The fame of all this went forth into the world, and Atlanta Penitentiary, its warden, its guards, and its cooks shine in penal annals as the acme and ideal of modern humanitarian ideas upon the reclamation of convicts through gentleness and love, and a full stomach. I found opportunity to study some of these historic scrolls, and was so much impressed by them that I caused a suggestion to be conveyed to the warden. Instead of sending all the menus to Washington, and to admiring friends in the Atlanta neighborhood, let one or two of them be placed at each meal upon the tables of the diners, to the end that they might be stimulated, by the perusal of these literary masterpieces, to choke down their gullets the actual garbage which was furnished in the name thereof. But the warden's views seem not to have been in harmony with mine on this occasion. I am glad to learn, however, from certain graduates of the institution since my own departure from it, that the food has greatly improved in quantity and somewhat even in quality, since these chapters began to appear in newspapers. I need not attempt to fathom the reason. If it were incomparable before, why or how better it? It could hardly have been done at the instance of the old and warm personal friend of the warden and the Attorney-General who was sent to Atlanta recently in the guise of a Spartan inspector of the alleged abuses; because, for one thing, the improvement had set in long before he made his investigation, and the investigator, in his report, appears to have discovered no room for improvement anywhere. It must have just happened--one of those miracles in the way of gilding refined gold and painting the lily which are so common nowhere else as in our model penal institutions.