new government._ I did not serve under this
government for a period sufficiently long to enable me to learn from
personal observation very much as to what would be gained in the fare of
the prisoners, but thought some steps were being taken in the right
direction. The cracked wheat dinner was abolished for meat and potatoes.
The evening after, I found the prisoners rejoicing over it. One
exclaimed, "_Didn't_ we have a good dinner, to-day? They have put away
that wheat stuff, and now give us good meat and potatoes. Oh, _isn't_
it good?" A woman, leaving prison, gave us an account of the warden's
scolding, that Councillor ---- "was about poking his nose into
everything." This, if true, gave signs of a determination to know and
remedy matters. But they had to work under difficult circumstances. They
did not begin sufficiently near the bottom.

As informed, they went quite thoroughly into fitting up the clothing and
bedding,--a welcome move, for no set of fellows ever needed it more. The
next winter, however, I said to a man who was leaving, "You fare better
over there this year than last, do you not? You are kept warmer, are you
not?" To which he answered, "I don't see much difference." Certainly, I
was looking for a different answer from this, and did not know what to
make of it.

52. _The warden question._ It was supposed and reported that the warden
would be removed; then we learned that the political muddle prevented,
some contending for a straight, out-and-out Democrat, others, for a
Labor Reformer, the party with whom they had bargained and thus gained
the power. Then there was another element which seemed largely to
prevail, and which some thought acted more powerfully than all
others,--the fear as to how the prison accounts would stand at the end
of the year. They had found out the condition of things in the prison,
and learned something of how they had been run the previous year, and
had every reason to suppose that they could not possibly make so large a
show of gains as was then made. A highly important matter to them, for,
should they run behind, their opponents would, of course, use it to
their party disadvantage in future political campaigns. What could they
do in the matter? Of course, the most feasible way was to keep the same
warden, with the hope, by his manipulating, of a less falling off; or
the fact of their having made no change here, would blunt the force of
the falling-short argument material