A stranger visiting the prison for the first time would find it hard to divine for what purpose these walls of grating had been built.  But on the appointed days when the friends of the prisoners are allowed to enter the prison, their use is sadly evident.  It would not be safe to permit wives and husbands, and mothers and sons, to clasp hands in unrestrained freedom.  A tiny file, a skein of silk, can open prison-doors and set captives free; love’s ingenuity will circumvent tyranny and fetters, in spite of all possible precautions.  Therefore the vigilant authority says, “You may see, but not touch; there shall be no possible opportunity for an instrument of escape to be given; at more than arm’s length the wife, the mother must be held.”  The prisoners are led in and seated on a bench upon one side of these gratings; the friends are led in and seated on a similar bench on the other side; jailers are in attendance in both rooms; no words can be spoken which the jailers do not hear.  Yearningly eyes meet eyes; faces are pressed against the hard wires; loving words are exchanged; the poor prisoned souls ask eagerly for news from the outer world,—­the world from which they are as much hidden as if they were dead.  Fathers hear how the little ones have grown; sometimes, alas! how the little ones have died.  Small gifts of fruit or clothing are brought; but must be given first into the hands of the jailers.  Even flowers cannot be given from loving hand to hand; for in the tiniest flower might be hidden the secret poison which would give to the weary prisoner surest escape of all.  All day comes and goes the sad train of friends; lingering and turning back after there is no more to be said; weeping when they meant and tried to smile; more hungry for closer sight and voice, and for touch, with every moment that they gaze through the bars; and going away, at last, with a new sense of loss and separation, which time, with its merciful healing, will hardly soften before the visiting-day will come again, and the same heart-rending experience of mingled torture and joy will again be borne.  But to the prisoners these glimpses of friends’ faces are like manna from heaven.  Their whole life, physical and mental, receives a new impetus from them.  Their blood flows more quickly, their eyes light up, they live from one day to the next on a memory and a hope.  No punishment can be invented so terrible as the deprivation of the sight of their friends on the visiting-day.  Men who are obstinate and immovable before any sort or amount of physical torture are subdued by mere threat of this.

A friend who told me of a visit he paid to the Prison Mazas, on one of the days, said, with tears in his eyes, “It was almost more than I could bear to see these poor souls reaching out toward each other from either side of the iron railings.  Here a poor, old woman, tottering and weak, bringing a little fruit in a basket for her son; here a wife, holding up a baby to look through the gratings at its father,