584; Dickens, 567; Haggard, 481; Crawford, 415, and Henty, 402.
After fiction came biography, of which 1,227 volumes were read; history followed with 953 volumes; religion with 792, and poetry with 205. Of books in foreign languages, German led with 1,686 volumes, Hebrew was next with 1,259; Italian third, with 1,067, and French last, with 545.
What intelligence and vitality is enclosed in the walls of prisons! But it is, at least, something of a comfort to realize that men's lives no longer drag out in the silence and neglect that once attended punishment. Now the influences of the outside world reach them, conveying still some sense of fellowship, for many, of coming opportunity. (Text.)—The Reader Magazine.
(2513)
Prisoner, A, and His Liberty—See Dead Tho Alive.
PRISONERS, EMPLOYMENT FOR
The Maryland Prisoners' Aid Association
have established a woodyard and novelty
manufacturing shop at No. 311 North Street,
Baltimore, where steady employment is furnished
those desiring to start anew after
liberation from penal institutions. Like all
work of this kind, the new plant is conducted
with the idea of defraying its own expense,
and not to realize profits.
All the machinery in the woodyard, which, in full operation, employs twenty men, is driven by electricity. The principal product is kindling, manufactured from cordwood shipped from Anne Arundel County. The wood is unloaded from cars alongside the sawmill, where it is cut, split and loaded on wagons ready for delivery.
An important feature of the plant is the shop on the second floor, where light cabinet articles of all descriptions are manufactured. Many of the men going to the Aid Society for help in obtaining employment are of a mechanical turn, and these are given positions in the shop. In charge of a skilled cabinet-maker and woodworker, John McVauley, tables, chairs, magazine racks, umbrella-stands, settees, stools, upholstered furniture and miscellaneous household articles are turned out for which the men are paid wages about equal to the rates paid by manufacturing plants.—Baltimore Sun.
(2514)
PRIVACY, LACK OF
Korean homes are in a sense open to all
the world. Any one who pleases may try
the door, push it open, and come in. He
needs no first acquaintance, and no introduction.
An ordinary Korean guest-room is
free to all the world. On the other hand,
the inner quarters are separate, and for a
male traveler to venture there would be a
breach of the most sacred law of society.
Into this outer room come gentlemen of
leisure, tramps, fortune-tellers, Buddhist
priests, all mankind, in fact. Here is located
the high seat of the master. As you live in
this guest-room, you feel the fearful lack of
privacy. You are as tho encamped on the
open highway, under the gaze of all men.
If you write a letter, the question is, to whom
are you writing it. "Why do you write thus
and thus? What reference is here? Who?
When?" These are the questions that are
asked by those who look over your shoulder,
without any breach of proper form or infraction
of the eternal law that governs
things.—James S. Gale, "Korea in Transition."
(2515)
PRIVATION, COMPARATIVE
While her husband was still lying in prison
for debt, the Archbishop of York asked
Susannah Wesley:
"Tell me, Mrs. Wesley, whether you were ever really in want of bread?"
"My lord," she answered, "strictly speaking, I never did want bread. But then I had so much care to get it before it was eaten, and to pay for it after, as has often made it very unpleasant to me; and I think to have bread under such terms is the next degree of wretchedness to having none at all."—W. H. Fitchett, "Wesley and His Century."
(2516)
PRIVILEGE
In "The Gospel of Life," Charles Wagner writes this sound wisdom:
Never is knowledge more touching or art
more radiant than when they illumine the
brow of the obscure. I am quite familiar
with the fact that there are certain privileged
ones of the earth who believe that this kind
of good is reserved for them, that these are
meats too delicate to be set before common
folk. Scandalized at seeing the people
walking about in the Louvre or in the halls
of the Hotel de Ville, some one said to me
one day, "Do you think that it was for these
people that Puvis de Chavannes painted his
ceilings?" "I don't know as a matter of
fact," I said, "whether it was for them that
he painted them. But I know another ceiling
more beautiful than are these of earth;
