ould have been), our
disheveled condition. Some young men lost beards and moustaches on this
occasion, which they had assiduously cultivated with scanty returns, for
years. Colonel Smith had a magnificent beard sweeping down to his waist,
patriarchal in all save color--it gave him a leonine aspect that might
have awed even a barber. He was placed in the chair, and in less time,
perhaps, than Absalom staid on his mule after his hair brought him to
grief, he was reduced to ordinary humanity. He felt his loss keenly. I
ventured to compliment him on features which I had never seen till then,
and he answered, with asperity, that it was "no jesting matter."

When we returned to the hall, we met General Morgan, Colonel Cluke,
Calvin Morgan, Captain Gibson, and some twenty-six others--our party
numbered sixty-eight in all. General Morgan and most of the officers who
surrendered with him, had been taken to Cincinnati and lodged in the
city prison (as we had been), with the difference, that we had been
placed in the upper apartments (which were clean), and he and his party
were confined in the lower rooms, in comparison with which the stalls of
the Augean stables were boudoirs. After great efforts, General Morgan
obtained an interview with Burnside, and urged that the terms upon which
he had surrendered should be observed, but with no avail. He and the
officers with him, were taken directly from Cincinnati to the Ohio
Penitentiary, and had been there several days when we (who came from
Johnson's Island), arrived. It is a difficult thing to describe, so
that it will be clearly understood, the interior conformation of any
large building, and I will have to trust that my readers will either
catch a just idea of the subject from a very partial and inadequate
description, or that they will regard it as a matter of little
importance whether or no they shall understand the internal plan and
structure of the Ohio State Prison. For my purpose, it is only necessary
that the architecture of one part of it shall be understood. Let the
reader imagine a large room (or rather wing of a building), four hundred
feet in length, forty-odd in width, and with a ceiling forty-odd feet in
hight. One half of this wing, although separated from the other by no
traverse wall, is called the "East Hall."

In the walls of this hall are cut great windows, looking out upon one of
the prison yards. If the reader will further imagine a building erected
in the in