Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/22

Rh Gerard College, as in all other American schools, a chapter of the New Testament is read aloud, to the assembled youths of the college, before they begin their daily work.

The statue of Mr. Gerard, in white marble, stands in one of the magnificent galleries of this scholastic temple. It is an excellent work, as the faithful portraiture of a simple townsman in his everyday attire; yet an extremely prosaic figure, presented without any idealisation, but which pleases by its powerful reality, although it stands almost like a something which is out of place in that beautiful temple.

I must also say a few words about the Philadelphia Penitentiary. In the centre of the large rotunda, into which run all the various passages with their prison-cells, like radii to one common centre, sate, in an armchair, comfortable and precise, in his drab coat with large buttons and broad-brimmed hat, the Quaker, Mr. S., like a great spider watching the flies which had been caught in the net. But no! this simile does not at all accord with the thing and the man,—that kind, elderly gentleman, with a remarkably sensible and somewhat humourous exterior. A more excellent guide no one can imagine. He accompanied us to the cells of the prisoners. The prisoners live here quite solitary, without intercourse with their fellow prisoners; they work however, and they read. The library is considerable, and contains, besides religious books, works of natural history, travels, and even a good selection of polite literature. It is with no niggard hand that the nobler seed of cultivation is scattered among the children of imprisonment, “those who sit in darkness.” The spirit of the New World is neither timid nor niggardly, and fears not to do too much where it would do good. It is careful merely, to select the right seed, and gives of such with a liberal heart and a liberal hand. I have often thought that beautiful stories, sketches of human life, biographies, in particular of the guilty who