All knowledge is useful, I thought, and in time I shall understand running a steam-engine. As the women have been trusted with the dangerous thing, they may still continue to be, till I have leisure to learn the science of steam as applied to cooking. After I had taken a survey of the kitchen the Deputy took me into the women's prison which led out of it. The centre of the hollow square, in which the dormitories are built, looked like a huge block of glittering ice, so white were the washed walls of brick and stone. The black, grated doors of the cells, inserted into them, like the teeth of grinning demons, were ranged along the sides about two feet apart, tier after tier, five stories, one above another. The Deputy led me along past the iron doors. I trembled and shrank back; but I had no idea of receding from my undertaking. I "screwed my courage to the sticking-point," and looked into the narrow, stone rooms; but it was many days before I could force myself to enter one. I grew heart-sick, and faint with apprehension of unknown terrors at their cheerless aspect. "What lodgings for human beings!" I exclaimed. "They are not very pleasant," said the Deputy. "If you were the one to blame for it I should certainly charge you with great inhumanity." "I suppose you will think us very cruel sometimes." "In this case I don't know as you can help it. You did not make these sleeping apartments for the prisoners. The public functionaries of the State may be thanked for showing such tender mercies as these." "We are used to seeing them, and they don't look to us as they do to you." "Does that make them any more comfortable for the prisoners? Do they get used to them so as to be comfortable?" "I presume so. I know they are more comfortable places than some had before they came here." "Then it should be the work of the vaunting Christianity of this religious land to raise such degradation to cleanliness, comfort, and respectability." "There might be a great deal done in that direction if people were only disposed to do it." "Our prisons are rather private affairs, I believe. They can only be visited on certain days and occasions." "It would be very inconvenient for our work to have people running in, and over the place at all times. We could not have it. And it wouldn't be liked by the prisoners to be gazed at constantly." I made no reply; but I thought it might have a salutary effect upon the discipline of the prison, which he had just said I might think cruel, to be exposed to the observation of the public. The prisoners must have lost the sensibility which would shrink from being made a spectacle before they came in there. If visiting were allowed only on certain days and occasions, the place and the convicts would be put in order for company, and a very incorrect idea of the every-day life of the prisoners would be obtained.