ing when you get out this time?"

"I think I shall go hawking bits of things through the country."

"I am afraid you will find it difficult to make a living at hawking?"

"Well I have the prison to come to, where I'll always get my grub."

This prisoner had a delicate constitution, and in his case "hard
labour" was a meaningless sentence, and imprisonment was no punishment
to him whatever. To have made it more severe would have been all the
same to him, as the hospital would then have been his perpetual abode.
Some prisoners were in hospital nearly the whole of their sentence. One
prisoner lay in bed with paralysis upwards of four years, and had to be
lifted out to have his bed arranged several times a day: if he had been
paid to commit a crime he could not have done it.

Another prisoner was in hospital all the years I was in prison, and had
been so for several years previous to my arrival. I only remember his
being in bed a few days on one occasion. I was much interested in
another patient, who ultimately died in prison, and whose history was
rather a singular one. I shall narrate it as he gave it to me:--

"I am what is called a herbalist, or herb doctor. I was brought up in a
workhouse, my parents having died when I was quite a child. I had a
great many brothers and sisters, all of whom died young. I had a very
delicate constitution, and was thought at one time to be dying of the
same disease as carried off my mother and sisters. The doctors gave me
up as being beyond their skill. Well, I had begun to study medical
botany by this time, and I at last discovered herbs that cured me. I
now thought of curing others, and began first with some children
belonging to poor people. I succeeded in almost every case, and as I
charged nothing at all for the medicines, I was called out by all the
poor people in the neighbourhood.

"At last my practice began to interfere with my employment as a weaver,
and my master told me that he was willing to keep me and advance my
wages, but I was on no account to have anything more to do in curing
the sick. Well, I went round my circle of friends to ask their advice,
and they unanimously agreed to support me among them rather than be
deprived of my assistance. I accordingly gave up my place and opened a
herb shop. I studied the properties of herbs constantly. I had no taste
for any other employment. I tried the effects of all of them on myself
first of all, and sometimes on my wife, be