The United States Jail at Muscogee. Finally Connolly was able to leave his room and limp about. Before long some very suspicious rumors began to get afloat, till by degrees the whole story leaked out. The duel had been a farce from beginning to end. The pistols had been loaded with blank cartridges, while the crim son flow that had so completely saturated the leg of Connolly's immaculate trousers had
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been produced by pokeberries! Even the doctor, a wild, rollicking young fellow just home from college, had been in the secret. The tempestuous events of the spring and summer of '61 broke up the flourishing school of law, and scattered to their various homes the fun-loving young spirits whose madly merry pranks are talked of to this day on the old North Fork.
THE UNITED STATES JAIL AT MUSCOGEE. THE description of the jail for United States prisoners at Muscogee, I. T. given by Dr. Frederick Howard Wines in a recent number of the " Charities Review" reads like the war-time stories of Andersonville and Libby. Two classes of offenders are punished by the Federal government — those who offend against its sovereignty, and those who commit crimes of any sort within its jurisdiction. For the latter class it is necessary to maintain prisons, or jails, in Indian Territory, where the government has jurisdiction, and one of these is at Muscogee. The plan of this jail — credit for which is sometimes assigned to the De partment of Justice at Washington — is de scribed by Dr. Wines as follows : — "From the floor to the eaves is a dis tance of sixteen feet. There is no ceiling, but the space is open to the roof, which is hipped, four-square, and of corrugated iron. There are two open ventilators in the roof, unprotected in any way. Forty feet square (or two-thirds of the building) are used as a common prison, where prisoners associate in idleness by day and by night; a hetero geneous mass of convicted and unconvicted felons and misdemeanants, whites, Indians, and negroes, of all ages, with no attempt at classification or separation. In the twenty feet at the west end of the building is a central passage leading to the ' bull-pen,'
with cells on each side. The total number of cells is eight, of which those on the south side are ten feet square, but those on the north side about half as large again. Those on the south side are simply iron cages with grated fronts, but the north cells have wooden walls, sheathed with iron, and grated cell doors. Four of these cells are on a level with the floor of the common prison, and the other four immediately above them. One of the upper cells is totally dark, and is used as a dungeon for punishment as an aid to discipline. The space over the upper tier of cells is open to the roof, and it affords an opportunity to place an armed guard, at all hours of the day and night, where he can overlook the prisoners in the ' bull-pen.' "What does this armed guard see, and what would the reader see, could he stand at his side? Looking down, his eyes would rest upon a barnlike room, with iron walls and floor and roof, unfurnished, and lighted by seven barred openings, without sashes or glass, the sills of which are eight feet from the floor, so that no prisoner can look out, and no air circulates in the well be neath, in which they are compelled to live. No guard is required to breathe this atmos phere for more than one hour at a time. In the center of the room is an upright soft-coal stove. Around three sides, next
