into my cell was very faint, and I could only read by sitting on the floor with my back against the grating of the cell door.  But, so far from aiding me to read,—­and it was the only method I had of passing my time,—­Wallace made repeated and vexatious attempts to keep me from receiving newspapers.  I should very soon have died on the prison allowance.  The marshal is allowed by the United States thirty-three cents per day for feeding the prisoners.  For this money they receive two meals; breakfast, consisting of one herring, corn-bread and a dish of molasses and water, very slightly flavored with coffee; and for dinner, corn-bread again, with half a pound of the meanest sort of salted beef, and a soup made of corn-meal stirred into the pot-liquor.  This is the bill of fare day after day, all the year round; and, as at the utmost such food cannot cost more than eight or nine cents a day for each prisoner, and as the average number is fifty, the marshal must make a handsome profit.  The diet has been fixed, I suppose, after the model of the slave allowances.  But Congress, after providing the means of feeding the prisoners in a decent manner, ought not to allow them to be starved for the benefit of the marshal.  Such was the diet to which I was confined in the first days of my imprisonment.  But I soon contrived to make a friend of Jake, the old black cook of the prison, who, I could see as he came in to pour out my coffee, evinced a certain sympathy and respect for me.  Through his agency I was able to purchase some more eatable food; and indeed the surgeon of the jail allowed me flour, under the name of medicine, it being impossible, as he said, for me to live on the prison diet.  Wallace, soon after he came into office, finding a small sum in my possession, of about forty dollars, took it from me.  He expressed a fear that I might corrupt old Jake, or somebody else,—­especially as he found that I gave Jake my old newspapers,—­and so escape from the prison.  But he left the money in the hands of the jailer, and allowed me to draw it out, a dollar at a time.  He presently turned out old Jake, and put in a slave-woman of his own as cook; but she was better disposed towards me than her master, and I found no difficulty in purchasing with my own money, and getting her to prepare such food as I wanted.  I was able, too, after some six or eight weeks’ sleeping on the stone floor of my cell, to obtain some improvement in that particular; and not for myself only, but for all the other prisoners also.  The jailer was requested by several persons who came to see us to procure mattresses for us at their expense; and, finally, Wallace, as if out of pure shame, procured a quantity of husk mattresses for the use of the prisoners generally.  Still, we had no cots, and were obliged to spread our mattresses on the floor.

The allowance of clothing made to the prisoners who were confined without any means of supporting themselves corresponded pretty well with the jail allowance of provisions.  They received shirts, one at a time, made of the very meanest kind of cotton cloth, and of the very smallest dimensions; trousers of about equal quality, and shoes.  It was said that the United States paid also for jackets and caps.  How that was I do not know; but the prisoners never received any.