A great treat was in store; one of the fruit-trees he had planted in the huge fallow of ——­ Jail was to be shaken this afternoon.  Two or three well-disposed prisoners had been set to review their past lives candidly, and to relate them simply, with reflections.  Of these Mr. Eden cut out every one which had been put in to please him, retaining such as were sober and seemed. genuine to his lynx eye.

Mr. Eden knew that some men and women listen more to their fellows than their superiors—­to the experiences and sentiments of those who are in their own situation, than to those who stand higher but farther away.  He had found out that a bad man’s life honestly told is a beacon.  So he set “roguery teaching by examples.”

There were three male narratives in the press and two female.  For a day or two past the printers (all women) had been setting up the type and now the sheets were to be struck off.

There was no little expectation among the prisoners.  They were curious to see their compeers in print, and to learn their stories, and see how they would tell them; and as for the writers, their bodies were immured, but their minds fluttered about on tip-toe round the great engine of publicity, as the author of the “Novum Organon” fluttered when he first went into print, and as the future authoress of “Lives and Careers of Infants in Arms” will flutter.

The press stood in the female-governor’s room.  One she-artisan, duly taught before, inked the type and put in a blank sheet.

No. 2 pulled the bar of the press toward her, and at the moment of contact threw herself back with sudden vigor and gave the telling knip; the types were again covered with ink, the sheet reversed, and No. 3 (one of the writers) drew out a printed sheet—­two copies of two stories complete.

“Oh! oh! oh!” cried No. 3, flushing with surprise and admiration, “how beautiful!  See, your reverence, here is mine—­’Life of an Unfortunate Girl.’”

“Yes, I see it.  And pray what do you mean by an unfortunate girl?”

“Oh, sir! you know.”

“Unfortunate means one whom we are bound to respect as well as pity.  Has that been your character?”

“No,” was the mournful reply.

“Then why print a falsehood?  Falsehoods lurk in adjectives as well as substantives.  Misapplied terms are strongholds of self-deception.  Nobody says, ’I am unfortunate, therefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.’  Such words are fortifications to keep self-knowledge and its brother repentance from the soul.”

“Oh, sir! what am I to call myself?” She hid her face in her hands.

“My dear, you told me a week ago you were—­a penitent.”

“So I am, indeed I am.  Sir, may I change it to ‘a penitent girl?’”

“You would make me very happy if you could do it with truth.”

“Then I can, indeed I can.”  And she took out “an unfortunate,” and put in “a penitent.”