rarely it must be admitted— by the kindness of
those whom she particularly affected; and she has
even been known to leave off singing and
swearing when in the "dark," because the matron
on night duty, whom she liked, was tired, having
been nursing a sick brother all day, and besought
her to be quiet. "Good night, miss, Gord
bless you!" said the handsome tigress at last,
one little ray of womanliness breaking through
the storm. Mary Anne was marvellously strong.
Nothing could bind her. If put into a strait-
waistcoat, she used to rub the straps against the
walls till she wore them through, and so had
the use of her hands again; and she broke out
of the refractory cell something after the
fashion of Jack Sheppard, finally coming to
grief in the matron's chimney, where she stuck.
She was the terror and plague of the prison,
and "Ball's coming back" went like lightning
through the wards. At last, her health
breaking, she got a little calmer, and worked her
time out as well as she could, asking to be
put "in the dark" and kept cool, when she
felt the mad fits of passion or "breaking out"
come on her; and so, fighting against her
nature and doing the best she could with
herself, poor wild fiery Ball worked through her
time, and disturbed Millbank no more. It
was she who introduced into the prison the
many personal vanities which even yet afflict
the matrons; for to this day the plaster scraped
from the walls paints the complexion white, and
the red threads of the aprons and other
garments, steeped in water, colour the cheeks red,
and grease from the candle is a good notion of
bandoline— to the women's intense satisfaction
and the matron's horror and perplexity how
to act.

Other women were as strong and violent as
Ball, though none so vain. There was one
Copes, who would run up the wall of her cell
like a cat, and with her teeth would tear down
the canvas and framework of the padded cells
where she was confined; as for securing her
in a strait-waistcoat, she would get out of
that, somehow, in a very few minutes. She was
a perfect tigress, that woman, and only to be
managed by superior force; she did not care
what became of herself, and would frighten every
one into fits by knocking her head against the
stones of the yard, or against her own cell walls,
until they expected to see her brains dashed out.
She was a pleasant kind of companion, truly, and
Brixton passed her on to Millbank, and Millbank
returned her to Brixton, and a kind of electric
shock went through whichever prison was doomed
to hold her.

There is a great deal of feigned insanity and
simulated disease among the women; for, the
infirmary being their local paradise, as the more
enthusiastic call it, every one makes what haste
they can to get into it, and no one is very
particular as to the means of getting in. Eating
roughly pounded glass, to produce internal
hemorrhage, is one of their great tricks—
the doctor, not knowing what may be the
cause of the very alarming symptoms, ordering
them off to the infirmary at once, where
they have "all that heart can desire," they
say, including port-wine and good strong
tea. Pricking their gums with a needle, to show
actual spitting of blood; making soap pills, for
epileptic frothing at the mouth; lying stiff and
stark, to simulate catalepsy; sometimes assuming
a rheumatic limp, which prevents their doing
any active work, and which doubles them up into
crooked balls and hunchbacks; in one instance,
inflating the body to the most marvellous size,
so that the patient seemed on the point of
bursting asunder— a trick that exploded when she
was chloroformed, and could not inhale the outer
air as she had done— these are ordinary, every-day
deceptions, which every prisoner with a taste
for creature-comforts, and a good knack at
acting, will attempt. It is sometimes difficult
to tell the true from the false; but this kind of
bewildered sympathy is what both doctors
and matrons have to guard against, for the
successful feigner is always one of the most
corrupting examples. Also, the officers have to
keep watch against the various tricks by which
prisoners will communicate all they want known,
either in the prison, or out of doors. They can
talk silently, opening and shutting the mouth
as if speaking, but without a sound issuing— a
practice in great request at chapel, and thoroughly
well understood by them all; and by some means,
yet unknown, they are able to get news of
themselves sent to their friends, in spite of all
the vigilance possible. Nay, sometimes, at
Millbank, they will get notes carried over to the
men's side, and notes to them will find their
way back; but how this is done no one knows,
and the agents will not "split." One poor woman
got word sent to her husband of the exact day
and hour of her removal to the convict ship— this
was in the old days of transportation— and how
she herself came to that knowledge no one ever
understood. She found it out mysteriously, and
was never told officially or openly. However,
there the husband was, with the large-hearted
faith and love and patient forgiveness of the
honest working man; and before the guards
knew what was doing, he had thrust them aside,
and was hugging his poor guilty wife in his arms.
Tears were in the men's eyes when they warned
him to "stand back," but he had had his last brief
parting kiss, and it was his wife alone (as she
used afterwards to boast) who had given him the
opportunity for this melancholy joy. Do what
they will, the prison authorities cannot stop this
mysterious underground manner of
communication, and by what means it is done
none of them yet know, or can find out.

It would be impossible to go through all the
interesting characters and events recorded in
this sad book. There was the affected lady-like
swindler Seymour, the mouse-tamer, who made
such friends with a mouse that it would come
at her call, run up her sleeve, and sleep in her
bosom; and she used to take it to chapel and
talk of it as "my friend," and discuss its health
and character and constitution at length. One
day, a spiteful woman in Seymour's absence