rtain future. In winter and spring, when the weather was cold, it
used to be rather trying for me to stand so long on parade being
counted. About an hour or an hour-and-a-half was spent in this way each
day. Then the clothing of those of us who worked indoors was the same
on the coldest day in winter as on the hottest day in summer. This was
an excellent arrangement for keeping the hospital supplied with
patients. I knew many who suffered from this cause, and some who
attributed their death to the want of proper under-clothing. I felt the
cold more perhaps than the others, as my hands were exposed holding my
crutches, and my speed in walking could never get beyond that of a
goods train, whilst my companions could run at express speed when it
suited them.

My employment was knitting and reading aloud to the prisoners. At that
time, and up to a very recent date, it was the custom where fifty or a
hundred prisoners were at work, for one of the prisoners to read aloud
an hour every forenoon and afternoon. When I commenced this reading, my
audience were very careless about listening, unless when I read some
amusing work of fiction. Indeed, other prisoners did not attempt to
read any book of a more solid description. But during the years I was
engaged in this way I had the most abundant and satisfactory testimony
that I had obtained an influence over the minds of the prisoners, and
had succeeded in attracting their attention to general literature in a
more effectual manner than any of my predecessors.

My readers will have been accustomed, perhaps, to regard convicts as
very ignorant men, but it must be borne in mind that they belong to all
classes of society, and if I were to speak of them in the mass, I
should say that they were much more intelligent and as well educated as
the ordinary peasantry of England. When I commenced reading in prison
there were a good many works in the library, which were afterwards
withdrawn as being too amusing for the place. These were such works as
"The Last Days of Pompeii," "Now and Then," "Adam Bede," "Poor Jack,"
"Margaret Catchpole," "Irving's Sketch-book," "Dickens's Christmas
Tales," &c. There still remained periodicals with tales in them, and
these with a mixture of historical, biographical and other-works,
constituted the general reading in the work-rooms. The periodicals I
note in the order of their popularity, "Chambers's Journal," "Leisure
Hour," "Good Words," "The Quiver," "Sunday