stringent rules against all presents to the invalids from persons without the walls, it was impossible to hinder the introduction of spirituous liquors concealed under one guise or another.
The patients in the hospital were waited upon by orderlies selected from the prisoners in the depôt, and there was an old fellow who so long filled the situation that one might have supposed he had been permanently elected to it, but the truth was, he could not be happy beyond the well-known prison walls, and if ever released upon his ticket-of-leave lost no time in trying to forfeit it, that he might be drafted back again to his accustomed home. He had been a sailor in his earlier days, and to live under some kind of discipline was, perhaps, become to him a second nature. However we lost sight of him at last, and a young prisoner replaced him who was as anxious to regain his liberty as the older one had been to part with it, and soon after his appointment very joyfully announced to us a remission that he had received of six months from the term of his original sentence, in consideration of protracted night nursing in various bad cases. On account of this man's kindness to the sick my husband took much interest in him, but we did not remain long enough in the colony to see how he would go on after liberation.
There are many persons who are fit for pupilage only, and one finds this eminently the case with convicts, some of whom, so long as they can work under another's eye, will fulfil certain allotted tasks exceedingly well, and show also much amiability of disposition; but the same men, if removed from control and allowed to become their own masters, will almost immediately be guilty of the most
