emerge with comparatively small loss of social standing; for, indeed,
highly respectable persons occasionally stray in here. The Tombs is not
regarded as a final or fatal misfortune in a man's career. Yet it has its
drawbacks.

Dirt is one of the more obvious of these; I might call it filth, but it
depends on how one has been brought up. The impurity, at any rate, is not
confined to the surfaces of the cells, floors and walls, but it creeps
into the current language, and permeates the atmosphere. I am convinced
that there never has been or could be a houseful of people who hear or use
fouler and more unremitting obscenities than are those which flow
sewer-wise and unhindered from the lips of many of this population.

It dribbles and exgurgitates, black and noisome, at the slightest
provocation--nay, at none whatever, but with the delight of the past
master and artist in verbal nastiness, anxious to display his erudition.
It is a corruption of thought and expression so foul and concentrated, and
withal so limited in its vocabulary and scope, that it fastens itself in
the ear by a damnable iteration which no diverting of the attention can
overcome; and it announces a depth of moral and mental debasement which
seems as far from human as from merely animal possibilities; it is of the
uttermost soundings of Tophet, and would probably be modified by
fresh-heated gridirons even there.

This speech, or verbosity rather--for it has none of the logic or
continuity of mortal utterances--does not continue uninterruptedly during
the day, but observes special hours, when the guards are paying even less
than their usual attention to the vagaries of their charges. Of these
periods, the hours of early dawn are the most fertile.