throughout the chapel, to hear my sad experience.  I felt perfectly incompetent to give satisfaction to an audience, partly composed of the most hardened wretches that infest our land—­men who are steeped to the very lips in degradation, many of whom are men of talent, well-educated, and well acquainted with most of the leading topics of the day, knowing, too, as I did, that an error might be construed into an insult; and to such men an insult is unpardonable.  I commenced by relating my sad experience, and in a few minutes there could scarcely be seen a dry cheek in that vast assembly of depraved men.  My address being closed, the prisoners were marched in order to their dining-room.

The chaplain and myself visited the cell of Wyatt, the murderer.  We found him sitting upon the straw which covered the floor.  He seemed to be somewhat indifferent when the chaplain first spoke to him, but upon his second speech, telling that Mr. Green had again called to see him, he sprung to his feet and shook hands with me—­said he was glad I had called—­that he had been fearful I had left the prison, after giving my address, without seeing him, and added, “Mr. Green, I would love to hear you give your experience.”  I told him of the attention the prisoners had given me, and the advice I had given them, about signing the anti-gambling pledge, so soon as they were released—­to come out with their sad experience, and they would find the good and generous-hearted ever ready to receive them.  He turned round to the chaplain and said, “How much good such a society as that would have done, had it been formed before I became a gambler!—­How many men it would have saved from the dagger of the midnight murderer!  But it is too late to save me.”  I changed the subject, by asking him about different gamblers of our country.  We talked about many with whom we both had been intimate.  Some, he tells me, now live in your empire city, and were leading men among the politicians in the last presidential contest.  I knew them to be leading men.  I knew them to be gamblers and swaggering bullies; and I knew them to be at one time connected with Wyatt, but did not know them to be murderers; yet they certainly are.

Wyatt asked me if they permitted such men to vote?  I told him they did.  Said he, “A gambler should not be entitled to a vote, nor to his oath.”  He spoke correctly; and said he, “The day is not far distant when the man, who is known to the world as a gambler, will not be countenanced.”  Neither his vote nor his oath would be taken at the present day, if the citizens, who are the bone and sinew of the country, would take into consideration his real principles.  He said, “No man who bets upon elections should be entitled to his vote, nor to his oath; for a man who can be excited to bet upon an election, can be excited when upon oath to stretch the blanket; or, in plainer language, to swear to a lie.  Such I believe to be facts.”  “And lotteries are another species of villany,”