In this department of the prison the separate system is practised as far as can be done consistent with the plans of employment, and, with regard to the effect of the system, even with the limited advantage which it has in this place, favorable reports are made. One instance is mentioned by a visitor, who is most faithful to the duties he assumes and whose regular labors are almost entirely limited to convicts, and to those of a particular gallery, so that he may not by diversity of labors, or a multitude of objects, lessen the good effects of his visits or diminish the means of a close intimacy with the minds of those whose good he seeks. He has within a short time received letters from two soldiers in the Army of the Potomac, both of whom had been under his moral dealings in the County Prison at one time, and both were members of the ——th regiment, both returned thanks for the valuable instructions and kindness of the visitor, both professed to have derived the most important benefits from his care, yet neither of them knew that they had occupied adjoining cells in the County Prison, and neither of them was acquainted with the fact that the other was addressing their common benefactor. Instances of this kind, if not frequent, do at least occur sufficiently often to strengthen the hopes of the Society that the labors which its visitors perform in the name of benevolence and under the direction of the Association, are fruitful, in individual and social benefit. Fruitful in that good which was contemplated in the formation of the Society.
One other instance of the effect of zealous, affectionate kindness and watchful care in this department may be mentioned. A visitor who has for twenty years been constant in the discharge of his voluntarily assumed duties, found in a cell a lad who had by bad association and repeated crimes deserved and received a sentence for many years imprisonment. He was one of those impressible persons who yield to circumstances and follow out fully the course into which they may have been conducted. Notwithstanding the effect which several years’ bad conduct had produced on the perceptions of the youth, separate confinement had afforded him a means of preparing himself for that species of mental hostility to the world which the young convict is likely to entertain, and when the visitor entered his cell and asked for a statement of the circumstances of his short but miserable career, the voice of affection and the tone of deep, almost of parental interest with which the prisoner was addressed, secured his confidence, and his tale of wrong doing was readily told. In time the unfailing attention of the visitor became almost necessary to the existence of the prisoner, and the prescribed devotion was performed. The Scripture lessons were well studied, and all that could be required of the inmate of the criminal cell seemed to be so well done that the “visitor” felt authorized to second the wishes of the prisoner for Executive clemency. A full pardon was obtained, and in a short time afterwards, the released convict was seen occupying a place of peculiar trust, where his own word was all that could be demanded as a statement of cash received. The many failures and disappointments which pain and mortify the visitors in their labor of love, are not recorded. But such an instance as we have noticed above, will serve as a reward for many years of toil, as compensation for many hundred disappointments, and as encouragement to future exertions, and especially to careful studies as to the best mode of improving the means of usefulness. We are not to forget that the labors of the visitors are low down. In other callings it is a comfort to know that the good have been made better by well sustained efforts. The mission of the Society’s Visitors is to those whom the world deems already lost. To snatch even a few from the many, very many, of those who constitute the class of depraved and criminal, publicly exposed, is a work in which the laborers must find much of their reward in the sense of suffering mitigated, and the feeling of kindness gratified. Their highest boast must be that God has accepted the services for the permanent benefit of even a few.