“It straightens ’em down, sublimely-to put ’em in here,” says Mr. Glentworthy, laconically, lighting his lamp.  “I hope to get old Saddlerock in here.  Give him such a mellowing!” He turns his light, and the shadows play, spectre-like, along a low, wet aisle, hung on each side with rusty bolts and locks, revealing the doors of cells.  An ominous stillness is broken by the dull clank of chains, the muttering of voices, the shuffling of limbs; then a low wail breaks upon the ear, and rises higher and higher, shriller and shriller, until in piercing shrieks it chills the very heart.  Now it ceases, and the echoes, like the murmuring winds, die faintly away.  “Look in here, now,” says Mr. Glentworthy—­“a likely wench-once she was!”

He swings open a door, and there issues from a cell about four feet six inches wide, and nine long, the hideous countenance of a poor, mulatto girl, whose shrunken body, skeleton-like arms, distended and glassy eyes, tell but too forcibly her tale of sorrow.  How vivid the picture of wild idiocy is pictured in her sad, sorrowing face.  No painter’s touch could have added a line more perfect.  Now she rushes forward, with a suddenness that makes Madame Montford shrink back, appalled-now she fixes her eyes, hangs down her head, and gives vent to her tears.  “My soul is white-yes, yes, yes!  I know it is white; God tells me it is white-he knows-he never tortures.  He doesn’t keep me here to die-no, I can’t die here in the dark.  I won’t get to heaven if I do.  Oh! yes, yes, yes, I have a white soul, but my skin is not,” she rather murmurs than speaks, continuing to hold down her head, while parting her long, clustering hair over her shoulders.  Notwithstanding the spectacle of horror presented in this living skeleton, there is something in her look and action which bespeaks more the abuse of long confinement than the result of natural aberration of mind.  “She gets fierce now and then, and yells,” says the unmoved Glentworthy, “but she won’t hurt ye—­”

Can it be possible that such things as are here pictured have an existence among a people laying any claim to a state of civilization? the reader may ask.  The author would here say that to the end of fortifying himself against the charge of exaggeration, he submitted the Ms. of this chapter to a gentleman of the highest respectability in Charleston, whose unqualified approval it received, as well as enlisting his sympathies in behalf of the unfortunate lunatics found in the cells described.  Four years have passed since that time.  He subsequently sent the author the following, from the “Charleston Courier,” which speaks for itself.

“From the reports of Council.

“January 4th, 1843.

“The following communication was received from William M. Lawton, Esq., Chairman of the Commissioners of the Poor-house.

“’Charleston, Dec. 17th, 1852. “’To the Honorable, the City Council of Charleston: