and fastened a chain
about my leg, which I had to drag after me both day and night during
three months. My labor was sawing stone; my food was coarse corn bread
and beef shanks and cows heads with pot liquor, and a very scanty
allowance of that.

I have often seen the meat spoiled when brought to us, covered with
flies and fly blows, and even worms crawling over it, when we were
compelled to eat it, or go without any at all. It was all spread out
on a long table in separate plates; and at the sound of a bell, every
one would take his plate, asking no questions. After hastily eating,
we were hurried back to our work, each man dragging a heavy log chain
after him to his work.

About a half hour before night they were commanded to stop work, take
a bite to eat, and then be locked up in a small cell until the next
morning after sunrise. The prisoners were locked in, two together. My
bed was a cold stone floor with but little bedding! My visitors were
bed-bugs and musquitoes.

CHAPTER VIII.

_Character of my prison companions.--Jail breaking
contemplated.--Defeat of our plan.--My wife and child
removed.--Disgraceful proposal to her, and cruel punishment.--Our
departure in a coffle for New Orleans.--Events of our journey._

Most of the inmates of this prison I have described, were white men
who had been sentenced there by the law, for depredations committed by
them. There was in that prison, gamblers, drunkards, thieves, robbers,
adulterers, and even murderers. There were also in the female
department, harlots, pick-pockets, and adulteresses. In such company,
and under such influences, where there was constant swearing, lying,
cheating, and stealing, it was almost impossible for a virtuous person
to avoid pollution, or to maintain their virtue. No place or places in
this country can be better calculated to inculcate vice of every kind
than a Southern work house or house of correction.

After a profligate, thief, or a robber, has learned all that they can
out of the prison, they might go in one of those prisons and learn
something more--they might properly be called robber colleges; and if
slaveholders understood this they would never let their slaves enter
them. No man would give much for a slave who had been kept long in one
of these prisons.

I have often heard them telling each other how they robbed houses, and
persons on the high way, by knocking them down, and would rob them,
pick their pockets, and le