in my situation the
necessary physical vigor. However, I thought little of this at that
moment, as I was too sick and excited to feel much disposition to eat.

The Washington prison is a large three-story stone building, the front
part of the lower story of which is occupied by the guard-room, or
jail-office, and by the kitchen and sleeping apartments for the keepers.
The back part, shut off from the front by strong grated doors, has a
winding stone stair-case, ascending in the middle, on each side of
which, on each of the three stories, are passage-ways, also shut off
from the stair-case, by grated iron doors. The back wall of the jail
forms one side of these passages, which are lighted by grated windows.
On the other side are the cells, also with grated iron doors, and
receiving their light and air entirely from the passages. The passages
themselves have no ventilation except through the doors and windows,
which answer that purpose very imperfectly. The front second story, over
the guard-room, contains the cells for the female prisoners. The front
third story is the debtors' apartment.

The usage of the jail always has been--except in cases of
insubordination or attempted escape, when locking up in the cells by
day, as well as by night, has been resorted to as a punishment--to allow
the prisoners, during the day-time, the use of the passages, for the
benefit of light, air and exercise. Indeed, it is hard to conceive a
more cruel punishment than to keep a man locked up all the time in one
of these half-lighted, unventilated cells. On the morning of the second
day of our confinement, we too were let out into the passage. But we
were soon put back again, and not only into separate cells, but into
separate passages, so as to be entirely cut off from any communication
with each other. It was a long time before we were able to regain the
privilege of the passage. But, for the present, I shall pass over the
internal economy and administration of the prison, and my treatment in
it, intending, further on, to give a general sketch of that subject.

About nine or ten o'clock, Mr. Giddings, the member of Congress from
Ohio, came to see us. There was some disposition, I understood, not to
allow him to enter the jail; but Mr. Giddings is a man not easily
repulsed, and there is nobody of whom the good people at Washington,
especially the office-holders, who make up so large a part of the
population, stand so much in awe as a membe