Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1878-03-04
LETTER FROM TRUE FAX.

De Wishing you duu youi lOouoio MP
py and prosperous new year, but have
been on the wing SO much since left
Vermont, that anything but the briefest
letter writing has been we'll nigh an i'm
now that | am settled for a
few days will try to catch up, and
make amends for past negligence.
| left the dear old home state on the
26th of October. thinking then to be in
California by the end of November, but
as it is now the Goth of January, and
am still nine hundred miles from San
Francisco, can safely conclude that /
don't always calculate straight.
Coming to Springfield. Mass, cross
ed to Albany, N. Y, where | halted
long enough to make visit to old
friends. Albany is queer old town,
very aristocratic in some ways and very
primitive and old fashioned in others.
1t is a question when walking down
State street on fine morning whether
am in some slow, southern town where
the old way is the only way recognized
by the people, or whether the capital Of
rich, proud state has been revolving
| backward on the axis of time, and has
halted at the place where the only mar
ket-house was the middle of its finest
street; for fact it is that Albany, with
all her wealth and aristocracy, has no
market-house, and the citizens 60 into
State street and buy their fruit, meat
and vegetables from wagons. Rather
primitive for town boasting over 75,-
900 souls.
The Albany penitentiary has repu-
tation second to no other in this coun-
try, and criminals know very well that
once within it's walls, there they remain
until their sentence is served or until
the chief executive, either of the nation
or state, reaches out his hand with a
parchment in it which means pardon
for never since its establishment has &
prisoner made escape This was the pc
offspring of the brain of certain Mr.
Pillsbury, and when he drifted frou
that prison house to the one over on th
q hill, one where the cell was shorter AM
narrower even than the one he had Civ
f en- his most hardened subject, his man
tie of office fell upon his son and tn
!. prison is still known as '.Pillsbury'
4 Penitentiary." Probably there is n
Ia other one like it in all our land. Th
n buildings are located upon an elevation
! and are in the midst of large, fir
! grounds, with nothing to suggest ii
If idea that it is prison-house-no hig
! enclosing wall, no grated window, T
ID barred gates, no armed sentry in fac
if nothing but what one might find at ar
1e of our institutions of learning, and
felt, when | entered the door of Il
10 large main building, that might s
le troops of young people hard at wol
of among their books. But this is a scho
of of a different order from those to viii
o. we send our sons and daughters to
It. trained it is the cemetery in which m
Mt ny mothers's hopes are buried-t
h. tomb where end the brig ht dreams
,r- many wife.
ed Over 600 prisoners-men, women a
,ss mere boys-are within those walls; b
he man beings over whose lives clou
,te blacker than night have settled dow
,oo Some are there for life, with nothing
ost all their future to look forward to
The the same dreary round, day after da
The forgotten. perhaps, by the few frier
~ left them when crime sent them to Il
for living tomb, hoping no longer for
don, sure of no release but that VIII
tlv Qeatn snail DrlnS.
nh. We rang the bell and were admit
Ids. to the reception room, from which
nth could look out and see the prison
,;v march to their dinner. The worksh
lar. occupy two sides of square and
,ill cells, ration room and main building
in remaining two sides, leaving a Ia
ort. court where the grass is kept beautif
,u,d green, and which must be a perpe
al comfort to those men and women
fer;. are never permitted to go outside
court,
that The discipline of this penitentiary
from without doubt more rigid than in
case similar institution in the country v
oon there is less in the surroundings to
HIGH gest the prison-house while the t.
were ment of the inmates is apparently
the brutal than Is usually found, there
de- laws and regulations here which
+ Of having broken once, will hardly vel
err a to try again. Working together,
valpe by side, day after day, until they {
amer the days by the years which have f
this No man dares speak to his neighbo
bord man dares turn from his work, eve
T. Of moment. Here is companionship '
q 70 is more intolerable than solitary col
ment here is shown breaking Of
de spirit Wnlcn is worse 'nan Siay inE
value. body.
ot be would like to follow the cour
both some criminal who has served his
-. - 1 a....o al into thn norl