series of articles
which I wrote and published about that time, in the columns of one of
the newspapers, entitled "Mysteries of Leverett Street Jail." In those
sketches I gave the arrangements of the Jail, and its officers,
"particular fits;" and the manner in which the fellows writhed under the
inflictions, was a caution to petty tyrants generally. The startling
revelations which I made created great excitement throughout the whole
community; and I have good reason to believe that those exposures were
the means of producing a far better state of affairs in the interior of
the "stone jug."

I have thus, very briefly, given the extent of my experience with
reference to the old Leverett Street Jail. Unlawful ladies and gentlemen
are now accommodated in an elegant establishment in Cambridge street,
for the old Jail has been levelled to the ground to make room for
"modern improvements."--I visited it just before the commencement of its
destruction, and gazed at my old apartment "more in sorrow than in
anger." There were my name and a few verses, which I had written upon
the wall. There was the rude table, upon which I had penned two novels,
which, from their tone, seem rather to have emanated from a gilded
_boudoir_. There, too, in the grated window, was a little flower-pot in
which I had cultivated a solitary plant. That poor plant had withered
and died long ago, for the prisoners who succeeded me probably had no
taste for such "trash." I took and carefully preserved the dead remains
of my floral favorite--"for," said I to myself--"they will serve to
remind me of a dark spot in my existence."

And now, with the reader's permission, I will turn to matters of a more
cheerful character.

FOOTNOTES:

[M] I allude to Mr. W.G. Jones, now deceased.

CHAPTER XI

"_The Uncles and Nephews._"

Ring up the curtain! Room there for the Boston Players. Let them
approach our presence, not as they appear upon the stage, in rouge, and
spangles, and wigs, and calves and cotton pad; but as they look in broad
daylight, or in the bar-room when the play is over, arrayed in garments
of a modern date, wearing their own personal faces, swearing their own
private oaths, and drinking real malt out of honest pewter, instead of
imbibing dusty atmosphere from pasteboard goblets. Room, I say!

There is an intimate connection between the press and the stage, that is
a congeniality of character, habit, taste, feeling and disposition,
bet