The Argosy — page 392: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

In the Black Forest. 371 Certainly it was the very place for the enjoyment of good music; but though the orchestra was not bad and the singing was passable, it fell far short of its reputation. When half over, and the hour for the English church service had arrived, it was a relief to creep quietly away to a very different atmosphere and a simple ritual. One of the most interesting visits 1s that to the convict prison, just outside Freiburg. Here again (strange fate) I was met with the answer that the governor was away at a marriage in the town—just as though marriages were for ever taking place in the Black Forest. However, more fortunate than at Villingen (not having a woman’s will to deal with), after a few preliminary ceremonies, the great prison doors swung back and admitted me. The prisoners here are all reduced to solitary confinement, be the term long or short. Nothing could be better organised or regulated. The long passages were as clean, the iron rails as bright as though built but yesterday. No sound re-echoed through the great building, of which one wing remains tc be added. I was admitted into several of the cells, but as a rule visitors are not allowed to enter them or to speak to the prisoners. Solitary confinement, with a silence as profound as that reigning within monastic walls, is the stern rule; the latter, to some of them, probably a greater punishment than the loss of liberty. But, without entering many cells, the warder slipped aside the little wooden slide in the door, about two inches square, through which I was able to see into most of them. The prisoners were all at work, some at one trade, some at another. Many of the faces convinced me that they were in ex- cellent keeping, and could not do better than remain there for the rest of their days. No power on earth would keep such faces and such expressions out of mischief. Others again must evidently have got into prison through the force of untoward circumstances ; a cruel fate more strong than they; faces never born, never meant to stand in a felon’s dock, or to yield to the temptation of crime. Here the general expression was one of intense melancholy and dejection. One longed to enter, to bid them be of good courage, hope for better days, and a chance of redeeming what had been wrong in the past. But this was not permitted. Only if there is anything in mesmeric influence, in that sympathy which silently and unconsciously asserts its presence, surely a glimmer of hope must have darted through the souls of some of those poor wretches, making their present life more bearable, their future less dark. Who can tell the remorse and regret, the misery and despair of the ‘‘ might have been,” which must eat into the very souls of the few out of the thousands, who, ina moment of sudden weakness or dire temptation, have fallen from their “high estate” as honest men? The chapel was fitted up in a series of small boxes, so that no one prisoner could see another. Sunday morning is the only time they are allowed to break silence and talk to the minister, as he catechises, cConniclbooolks (S(O)