AUBURN PRISON. 



309 



workshops, were nearly four hundred of them 

 were at work, under the superintendance and 

 eye of the turnkeys, without seeing an indivi- 

 dual leave his work, or turn his head to gaze 

 upon me as a stranger. So strictly is this res- 

 traint enforced, that the men would not know 

 their fellow prisoners, though they worked to- 

 gether for years, if they did not hear the keep- 

 ers call them by name. It being their dinner 

 hour, I saw them leave their workshops, and 

 proceed in military order, under the eye of their 

 turnkeys in solid columns, with the lock march 

 to the common hall, where they partook of 

 their meal in silence. I saw no fetter, nor 

 heard the clinking of any chain, nor was any 

 military guard seen, excepting a man with a 

 musket on the parapet wall, to fire an alarm if 

 necessary, yet there was perfect order and 

 subordination. Not even a whisper was heard. 

 If one had more food than he wanted, he raised 

 his left hand, and if another had less, he raised 

 his right hand, and the waiter changed it. — 

 Though in the presence of so large a number 

 of convicts, who had all knives in their hands, 

 yet no one appeared to apprehend the least 

 danger from mutiny. So effectual was the 

 restraint imposed by silence in preventing all 

 combination, that when they had done eating, 



