bruises, and listening to the
revelations the prisoners made to each other--and to me for some that
were near me talked to me a good deal. I had long had an idea that
Americans, being free, had no need of prisons, which are a contrivance
of despots for keeping restless patriots out of mischief. So I was
considerably surprised to find out my mistake.

Ours was a big general cell, it seemed, for the temporary accommodation
of all comers whose crimes were trifling. Among us they were two
Americans, two "Greasers" (Mexicans), a Frenchman, a German, four
Irishmen, a Chilenean (and, in the next cell, only separated from us
by a grating, two women), all drunk, and all more or less noisy; and
as night fell and advanced, they grew more and more discontented and
disorderly, occasionally; shaking the prison bars and glaring through
them at the slowly pacing officer, and cursing him with all their
hearts. The two women were nearly middle-aged, and they had only had
enough liquor to stimulate instead of stupefy them. Consequently they
would fondle and kiss each other for some minutes, and then fall to
fighting and keep it up till they were just two grotesque tangles of
rags and blood and tumbled hair. Then they would rest awhile and pant
and swear. While they were affectionate they always spoke of each other
as "ladies," but while they were fighting "strumpet" was the mildest
name they could think of--and they could only make that do by tacking
some sounding profanity to it. In their last fight, which was toward
midnight, one of them bit off the other's finger, and then the officer
interfered and put the "Greaser" into the "dark cell" to answer for it
because the woman that did it laid it on him, and the other woman did
not deny it because, as she said afterward, she "wanted another crack
at the huzzy when her finger quit hurting," and so she did not want her
removed. By this time those two women had mutilated each other's
clothes to that extent that there was not sufficient left to cover their
nakedness. I found that one of these creatures had spent nine years in
the county jail, and that the other one had spent about four or five
years in the same place. They had done it from choice. As soon as they
were discharged from captivity they would go straight and get drunk, and
then steal some trifling thing while an officer was observing them. That
would entitle them to another two, months in jail, and there they would
occupy clean, air