Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/427

Rh American cities and prisons should be judged. The prison of Philadelphia was very unlike this.

We found the condition of the female portion of the Tombs very unlike that of the males. Here a woman had sway, and she was one of those genial, powerful characters which can create around them a new state of order, governed by wholesome influences. Her form, which indicated great cordiality and considerable physical power, seemed made, as it were, to sustain the children of the prison, to elevate, not to depress them. She was cheerful, and hearty, and good-tempered, yet nevertheless so resolute with the prisoners, that none of them ventured to oppose her. Many seemed to look upon her as a mother, and she seemed to regard many of them as diseased children rather than as criminals; this was the case in particular with those who were imprisoned for drunkenness.

“Oh, Miss Foster! oh, Miss Foster!” lamented one scarcely half conscious woman, who was waking up in one cell from a fit of drunkenness, “I am now here again!”

“Yes, that you are, you poor thing!” said Miss Foster, and went compassionately to lift her head from the extremely uneasy position into which it had fallen in her drunken sleep.

When she entered the cells, the prisoners talked to her as to a guardian and a friend. One woman, who had been imprisoned many times, and brought hither for drunkenness, but who always during the time of her imprisonment behaved in the most exemplary manner, had become so attached to Miss Foster that she begged to be allowed always to remain in prison, where she might assist Miss Foster. This had been permitted to her, and she was very useful to Miss Foster in the prison.

One room in the prison is called “The Five Days' Room,” or “The Incurable's Room;” here women are taken who have been repeatedly found in a state of drunkenness. After five days' confinement they are