"I don't know. There are bathing-tubs, for the prisoners, in my wash-house. I never use them; but if you wish to, you can. They are scrubbed out clean." "I must be up from four A. M., 'till nine P. M. That makes seventeen hours of labor." "Sometimes you will be required to sit up one, two, or three hours later." "Why?" "The Master's wife or daughters may have company, and keep the women up-stairs. We have to sit up and wait for them to come in, so as to lock them up." "And be up all the same at four next morning?" "Yes." "Do the Master's wife and daughters get up at four the next morning, after sitting up so late, and go to work?" "Of course not." "If the wife is Head Matron, has she not her duties to do in the morning as well as we? And ought she not to see that the other officers are not worked like that? If she possesses the common feelings of humanity, she would provide some relief, if it were in her power." "There is not much humanity in exercise here. We are all too hard worked to think of any one but ourselves." "I should think that might be your case." "I often tell them it is as much a House of Correction for the officers as the prisoners." "Ten hours of labor is now considered a good day's work. To drag the convicts from sunrise to sunset only exhausts them. They do not get through with as much work as they would do in ten hours, and the intervening time given to rest." "That has been an established rule here for fifty years or more." "It is certainly a very antiquated idea, all of a half century old. I recollect hearing my grandfather say that people worked that way when he was a boy. But people's ideas have changed since that time, and the people of this generation consider such demands of labor very unreasonable." "The only changes here have been to make things harder. They will put upon you all they can make you do." If she had been telling the truth that was a plain, but correct statement of facts. "How long has the present Master had charge here?" "Forty-five or fifty years." "It is no wonder that his heart has become like the nether millstone. No man ought to remain in such a place such a length of time. The best human heart that ever beat would become ossified, if it ever entertained human feelings, if compelled to exercise such continued tyrannous exactions." "I don't know whether he ever had human feelings--he does not exercise much humanity, as I regard it, now." "But he does not make the laws for the regulation of the institution. There must be State laws and a Board of Overseers to which he is accountable. There must be printed regulations for the management of this prison. I will get them from the Deputy to-morrow." "If you can, you will accomplish more than the rest of us have been able to do." "I can try." "You can try, and I hope you will succeed. The rest of us have been told that there were no printed rules that would do us any good. It may be a benefit to the rest of us if you succeed."