He did not offer to bring the Supervisor to me, or to take me to her. As I got acquainted with the affairs of the institution, I found that she was emphatically super to all of them except her own housekeeping. She had brilliancy enough to look after that, and see that it was done well. She had the ability, and she exercised it, to come or send down when her parlor, which was directly over the prisoners' kitchen, was too cold, to have the furnace door shut, or if it was too warm, to have it opened. About a week after I went there she came in, probably my repeated inquiries had been reported to her, and gave me an order to have a room cleaned in the attic of the prison. It was one morning when we were in the midst of house-cleaning with a gang of men whitewashing in the prison. I told her I didn't think it possible to attend to it that day. "I will show it to you now, because I have time." I really had not time to look at it, as any one of common powers of observation would have seen; but, as she was my superior officer, I followed her without further remark. As she passed through the prison, and saw the men at work, she gave me another illustration of her luminous capacity by remarking,-- "You must be careful and not let your women get with the men." "Yes, ma'am." She took me up the sixth flight of stairs into the roof of the prison, into a room where the receiving officer packs away the clothing that he takes off the convicts when they come into the prison. After showing me the dust on the floor, and cobwebs on the walls, she said,-- "You had better send one of your women up to clean it. I always begin at the top when I clean house." "I don't see how I can spare one to-day. If the Deputy will send me in one to do it, I will do my best to oversee it. But you see how inconvenient that will be, it is so far up here, and there is so much going on in the kitchen." "It won't be much to clean this." I thought, but did not say it, it might appear differently to you if you were to do it. I should consider it a good day's work for two strong women. I looked round with her, and listened to her suggestions. "What I wanted to call your attention to, particularly, was this box of old clothes. I think it must have been here two or three years." I wondered if it had been two or three years since she had been in that room. "They are cloth caps," she went on, "there may be an old coat or pair of pants among them. I don't think they will be of any use,--they might as well be sold, and the pay go towards the support of the institution." I looked into the box. There might have been twenty pounds of woolen rags, originally; but they were nearly chowdered into dust by moths. I saw by that one interview the occasion of the reticence of the Deputy, with regard to the Head Matron.