ordered all reading aloud to
be discontinued throughout the prison!

This decision illustrates the usual method adopted by convict
authorities in dealing with questions connected with the treatment of
prisoners. If a privilege is granted to the convicts and one out of 600
abuses that privilege the 599 will be deprived of it. It was no matter
whether the privilege had a good or bad effect upon the majority of the
prisoners, if it gave the governor and the directors any trouble they
soon put an end to it. If it was a good thing for the prisoners and
tended in any way towards the diminution of crime, to have these
readings, the directors could have separated the Roman Catholics from
the Protestants without any difficulty. If it was a bad thing why was
it continued so long? The Roman Catholics had one legitimate ground of
complaint, however, in the chaplain having frequently ordered articles
to be cut out of "Chambers's Journal," "Good Words," &c. The prisoners
naturally asked "Why cut out anything? why not let us judge for
ourselves? If the books are good let us have them whole; if bad, reject
them altogether; or if there is to be cutting out, why not cut out 'The
Thief out of the Confessional,' which is so offensive to the true
Catholic?" I happened to read several of the articles which were so cut
out, and in several cases one number of a periodical got bound up and
in circulation with the condemned article in it. I here note a few
articles which were placed in the chaplain's _Index Expurgatoriam_,
1st--"Evasions of the Law," an article which appeared in "Good Words,"
and I may remark that convicts could scarcely be made worse by reading
it, for they knew all it contained and probably more than the writer of
it did. 2nd--A review of a work by a female warder, in "Chambers's
Journal." 3rd--The last half of "The Franklins," a story in the
"Leisure Hour." 4th--An article on the "Prisoners' Aid Society" which
appeared in the "Quiver," some years ago.

In addition to my employments of knitting and reading, I had to go to
school one half-day every week for about twelve months, or until a
certain class were exempted from attending. On entering the school the
prisoner sat until the roll was called, and after half-an-hour was thus
spent, he read a couple of verses from the Old Testament, and then
listened to an explanation of the passage read. This done, he wrote a
short time in his copy book, if he felt inclined, and the proce