" I replied, earnestly. "You could not find one scholar
in ten thousand of them. Their education is either very limited, or
altogether deficient."

"Do the buildings they are confined in cost a great deal?"

"Vast sums of money are represented by them; and it often costs a
community a great deal of money to send a criminal to the penitentiary.
In some States the power to pardon rests entirely with the governor, and
it frequently occurs that a desperate criminal, who has cost a county a
great deal of money to get rid of him, will be pardoned by the governor,
to please a relative, or, as it is sometimes believed, for a bribe."

"And do the people never think of educating their criminals instead of
working them?

"That would be an expense to the government," I replied.

"If they would divide the time, and compel them to study half a day as
rigorously as they make them work, it would soon make a vast change in
their morals. Nothing so ennobles the mind as a broad and thorough
education."

"They are all compelled to listen to religious instruction once a week,"
I answered. "That surely ought to make some improvement in them. I
remember hearing an American lady relate her attendance at chapel
service in a State penitentiary one Sunday. The minister's education was
quite limited, as she could perceive from the ungrammatical language he
used, but he preached sound orthodox doctrine. The text selected had a
special application to his audience: 'Depart from me ye accursed, into
everlasting torment prepared for the Devil and his angels.' There were
eight hundred prisoners, and the minister assured them, in plain
language, that such would surely be their sentence unless they
repented."

"And that is what you call the consolations of religion, is it?" asked
the Preceptress with an expression that rather disconcerted me; as
though my zeal and earnestness entirely lacked the light of knowledge
with which she viewed it.

"That is religious instruction;" I answered. "The minister exhorted the
prisoners to pray and be purged of their sins. And it was good advice."

"But they might aver," persisted the Preceptress, "that they had prayed
to be restrained from crime, and their prayers had not been answered."

"They didn't pray with enough faith, then;" I assured her in the
confidence of my own belief. "That is wherein I think my own church is
so superior to the other religions of the world," I added, proudly. "We
can get the pri