Now, a year or two before our tale, one Captain O’Connor was governor of this jail.  Captain O’Connor was a man of great public merit.  He had been one of the first dissatisfied with the old system, and had written very intelligent books on crime and punishment, which are supposed to have done their share in opening the nation’s eyes to the necessity of regenerating its prisons.  But after a while the visiting justices of this particular county became dissatisfied with him; he did not go far enough nor fast enough with the stone he had helped to roll.  Books and reports came out which convinced the magistrates that severe punishment of mind and body was the essential object of a jail, and that it was wrong and chimerical to attempt any cures by any other means.

Captain O’Connor had been very successful by other means, and could not quite come to this opinion; but he had a deputy governor who did.  System, when it takes a hold of the mind, takes a strong hold, and the men of system became very impatient of opposition, and grateful for thorough acquiescence.

Hence it came to pass that in the course of a few months Captain O’Connor found himself in an uncomfortable position.  His deputy-governor, Mr. Hawes, enjoyed the confidence of the visiting justices; he did not.  His suggestions were negatived; Hawes’s accepted.  And, to tell the truth, he became at last useless as well as uncomfortable; for these gentlemen were determined to carry out their system, and had a willing agent in the prison.  O’Connor was little more than a drag on the wheel he could not hinder from gliding down the hill.  At last, it happened that he had overdrawn his account, without clearly stating at the time that the sum, which amounted nearly to one hundred pounds, was taken by him as an accommodation, or advance of salary.  This, which though by no means unprecedented, was an unbusiness-like though innocent omission, justified censure.

The magistrates went farther than censure; they had long been looking for an excuse to get rid of him and avail themselves of the zeal and energy of Hawes.  They therefore removed O’Connor, stating publicly as their reason that he was old; and their interest put Hawes into his place.  There was something melancholy in such a close to O’Connor’s public career.  Fortune used him hardly.  He had been one of the first to improve prisons, yet he was dismissed on this or that pretense, but really because he could not keep pace with the soi-disant improvements of three inexperienced persons.  Honorable mention of his name, his doings and his words is scattered about various respectable works by respectable men on this subject, yet he ended in something very like discredit.

However, the public gained this by the injustice done him—­that an important experiment was tried under an active and a willing agent.

With Governor Hawes the separate and silent system flourished in ——­ Jail.

The justices and the new governor were of one mind.  They had been working together about two years when Robinson came into the jail.