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The female prisoners occupy one of the wings of the prison, 
and are employed in spinning, sewing, knitting and pulling 
horse-hair, platting straw, and washing. They sit in long warm¬ 
ed corridors, adjoining to the doors of their bed-rooms; ten and 
more sleep in one room, on horse-hair mattresses with blankets. 
There are also cells for solitary confinement established for them; 
in one of them, four weeks since, a handsome girl was confined 
that had been condemned for stealing, and affected to be a sim¬ 
pleton, deaf and dumb, but during her solitary confinement she 
began to speak sensibly, and with good understanding. The male 
prisoners inhabit the other wing, and have the whole yard to 
themselves, where there are several workshops. Most of the 
prisoners were busy in the yard sawing marble, others weave, 
are tailors, shoemakers, &c. and there are several good cabinet¬ 
makers, who make very fine furniture for the stores in the city. 
All hands are busy: the invalids are mostly employed in pulling 
horse-hair. In the bake-house of the institution they bake very 
good brown bread, and each prisoner receives daily one pound 
and a half. The prisoners have a long subterraneous room for 
an eating hall, which is lighted with lamps, and receive daily 
good broth, fresh meat, and potatoes. They certainly live much 
better than many an honest man who has to maintain his family 
by his industry. A weaver was confined in the solitary cells, 
who, in a moment of impatience, had cut through his thread with 
a knife, because it was entangled. In each wing there is a separate 
nursery for the patients of both sexes. In spite of the great num¬ 
ber of prisoners, great cleanliness is maintained. 
His excellency, John Quincy Adams, President of the United 
States, had just returned from a visit to his aged and venerable 
father near Boston, and took the room next to mine in the Man¬ 
sion-house. He had been invited to the Wistar-Party on the 
22 d of October, at the house of Colonel Biddle, and accepted the 
invitation to the gratification of all the members. I also visited 
the party. The President is a man about sixty years old, of rather 
short stature, with a bald head, and of a very plain and worthy 
appearance. He speaks little, but what he does speak is to the 
purpose. I must confess that I seldom in my life felt so true and 
sincere a reverence as at the moment when this honourable gen¬ 
tleman whom eleven millions of people have thought worthy to 
elect as their chief magistrate, shook hands with me. He made 
many inquiries after his friends at Ghent, and particularly after 
the family of Mr. Meulemeester. Unfortunately I could not 
long converse with him, because every member of the party had 
greater claims than myself. At the same time I made several 
other new and interesting acquaintances, among others with a 
Quaker, Mr. Wood, who had undertaken a tour through Eng» 
