The former
are employed in various light handicraft trades, and the latter in
domestic services, and both spend a portion of their time in school.
They remain from six months to four years. From the statements of the
superintendent and matron, it appeared that about three-fourths of the
male, and four-fifths of the female inmates become respectable members
of society, and the remainder are chiefly such as are fifteen or sixteen
years of age when first admitted into the Refuge, an age at which
character may be considered as in a great measure formed. The labor of
the children pays about one-fifth of the expense of the establishment,
the rest being defrayed by the legislature.

The prejudice of color intrudes even here, no children of that class
being admitted into the Refuge. Colored delinquency is left to ripen
into crime, with little interference from public or private
philanthropy. As might have been expected, colored are more numerous
than white criminals, in proportion to relative population; and this is
appealed to as a proof of their naturally vicious and inferior
character; when in fact the government and society at large are
chargeable with their degradation.

The Penitentiary contained, at the time of my visit, about three hundred
and forty male, and thirty-five female prisoners. In this celebrated
prison, hard labor is combined with solitary confinement, an arrangement
which is technically known as the "separate system." Silence and
seclusion are so strictly enforced as to be almost absolute and
uninterrupted; even the minister who addresses the prisoners on the
Sabbath is known to them only by his voice. A marked feature of this
institution is security without the aid of any deadly weapon, none being
allowed in the possession of the attendants, or indeed upon the
premises. As compared with the "silent system," exhibited in the not
less famed prisons of the State of New York, this is much less
economical, as the mode of employing the prisoners, in their solitary
cells, greatly lessens the power of a profitable application of their
labor. If prisoners exceed their allotted task, one-half of their
surplus earnings is given to them on being set at liberty. My visit was
too cursory to enable me to give a decisive opinion on the "separate
system," but I confess my impression is, that the punishment is one of
tremendous and indiscriminating severity, and I find it difficult to
believe that either the safety of so