The custody of the jail was intrusted to a head jailer, assisted by four guards, or turnkeys, one of whom acted also as book-keeper.  Of the personal treatment toward me of those in office, at the time I was first committed, I have no complaint to make.  The rigor of my confinement was indeed great; but I am happy to say that it was not aggravated by any disposition on the part of these men to triumph over me, or to trample upon me.  As they grew more acquainted with me, they showed their sense that I was not an ordinary criminal, and treated me with many marks of consideration, and even of regard, and in one of them I found a true friend.

Shortly after Wallace came into office, he made several changes.  He was full of caprices, and easily took offence from very small causes; and of this the keepers, as well as the prisoners, had abundant experience.  The head jailer did his best to please, behaving in the most humble and submissive manner; but all to no purpose.  He was discharged, as were also the others, one after another,—­Wallace undertaking to act as head jailer himself.  Of Wallace’s vexatious conduct towards me; of his refusal to allow me to receive newspapers,—­prohibiting the under jailer to lend me even the Baltimore Sun; of his accusation against me of bribing old Jake, whom he forbade the turnkeys to allow to come near me; of his keeping me shut up in my cell; and generally of a bitter spirit of angry malice against me,—­I had abundant reason to complain during the weary fifteen months or more that I remained under his power.  But his subordinates, though obliged to obey his orders and to comply with his humors, were far from being influenced by his feelings.  Even his favorite among the turnkeys, a person who pretty faithfully copied his conduct towards the other prisoners, always behaved very kindly towards me, and even used to make a confidant of me, by coming to my cell to talk over his troubles.

But the person whose kind offices and friendly sympathy did far more than those of any other to relieve the tediousness of my confinement, and to keep my heart from sinking, was Mr. Wood.  There is no chaplain at the Washington jail, nor has Congress, so far as I am aware, made any provision of any kind for the spiritual wants or the moral and religious instruction of the inmates of it.  This great deficiency Mr. Wood, a man of a great heart, though of very limited pecuniary means, being then a clerk in the Telegraph office, had taken it upon himself to supply, so far as he could; and for that purpose he was in the habit of visiting the prison on Sundays, conversing with the prisoners, and furnishing tracts and books to such as were able and disposed to read.  He came to my cell, or to the grating of the passage in which I was confined, on the very first Sunday of my imprisonment, and he readily promised, at my request, to furnish me with a Bible; though in that act of kindness he was anticipated by the colored woman of whom I have already made mention, who appeared at my cell, with a Bible for me, just after Mr. Wood had left it.