The Cruise of the Violetta

IT seemed to me I was getting into the habit of incarceration. I passed from jail to jail. It was becoming monotonous.

But this was a creditable jail, built in the fervour of the Reformation, with a considerable veranda in front facing on Main Street. In the fervour of the Reformation it had been, as you might say, a centre of interest in Zionville. So many citizens got enclosed there during that period for one reason or another connected with their not understanding the tendency of events, that this jail always had a peculiar social standing. It was not like the jails of other communities. It bore no necessary social stigma. If a citizen was deposited there, it made all the difference, and depended on the amount of repentance his case was supposed to call for, whether he was put in a front or a rear cell. Because in a front-windowed cell he could see Main Street, and maybe talk with friends in the street, or join in the conversation on the veranda. In this way the Judge and the condemned of the preceding afternoon might often be arguing in the evening through a barred window about politics or religion. Hence it always made a man vexed and low in mind to be put in a rear cell, where he couldn't see Main Street.