The new jailer appointed by Wallach, and three of the new guards, or turnkeys, were very gentlemanly persons, and neither I nor the other prisoners had any reason to complain of the change.  Of the fourth turnkey I cannot say as much.  He was violent, overbearing and tyrannical, and he was frequently guilty of conduct towards the prisoners which made him very unfit to serve under such a marshal, and ought to have caused his speedy removal.  But, unfortunately, the marshal was under some political obligations to him, which made the turning him out not so easy a matter.  This person seemed to have inherited all the feelings of hatred and dislike which the late marshal had entertained towards me, and he did his best to annoy me in a variety of ways, though, of course, his power was limited by his subordinate position.

But, although I gained considerably by the new-order of things, I soon found that it had also some annoying consequences.  Under the old marshal, either to make the imprisonment more disagreeable to me, or from fear lest I should corrupt the other prisoners, I had been kept in a sort of solitary confinement, no other prisoners being placed in the same passage.  This system was now altered; and, although my privacy was always so far respected that I was allowed a cell by myself, I often found myself with fellow-prisoners in the same passage from whose society it was impossible for me to derive either edification or pleasure.  I suffered a good deal from this cause; but at length succeeded in obtaining a remedy, or, at least, a partial one.  I was allowed, during the day-time, the range of the debtors’ apartments, a suite of spacious, airy and comfortable rooms, in which there were seldom more than one or two tenants.  I pleaded hard to be removed to these apartments altogether,—­to be allowed to sleep there, as well as to pass the days there.  As it was merely for the non-payment of a sum of money that I was held, I thought I had a right to be treated as a debtor.  But those apartments were so insecure, that the keepers did not care to trust me there during the night.

By this change of quarters my condition was a good deal improved.  I not only had ample conveniences for reading, but I improved the opportunity to learn to write, having only been able to sign my name when T was committed to the prison.

But a jail, after all, is a jail; and I longed and sighed to obtain my liberty, and to enjoy again the society of my wife and children.  Had it been wished to impress my mind in the strongest manner with the horrors of slavery, no better method could have been devised than this imprisonment in the Washington jail.  I felt personally what it was to be restrained of my liberty; and, as many of the prisoners were runaway slaves, or slaves committed at the request of their masters, I saw a good deal of what slaves are exposed to.  Of this I shall here give but a single instance.  Wallace, the marshal, as I have already mentioned,