"You see I can put you both out of heart." "I have played all my hearts," said the younger gentleman.
"Then we'll have another lead," answered his companion.--"And as to the old and condemned Tolbooth, what pity the same honour cannot be done to it as has been done to many of its inmates.

Why should not the Tolbooth have its 'Last Speech, Confession, and Dying Words ?' The old stones would be just as conscious of the honour as many a poor devil who has dangled like a tassel at the west end of it, while the hawkers were shouting a confession the culprit had never heard of." "I am afraid," said I, "if I might presume to give my opinion, it would be a tale of unvaried sorrow and guilt." "Not entirely, my friend," said Hardie; "a prison is a world within itself, and has its own business, griefs, and joys, peculiar to its circle.

Its inmates are sometimes short-lived, but so are soldiers on service; they are poor relatively to the world without, but there are degrees of wealth and poverty among them, and so some are relatively rich also.

They cannot stir abroad, but neither can the garrison of a besieged fort, or the crew of a ship at sea; and they are not under a dispensation quite so desperate as either, for they may have as much food as they have money to buy, and are not obliged to work, whether they have food or not." "But what variety of incident," said I (not without a secret view to my present task), "could possibly be derived from such a work as you are pleased to talk of ?" "Infinite," replied the young advocate.

"Whatever of guilt, crime, imposture, folly, unheard-of misfortunes, and unlooked-for change of fortune, can be found to chequer life, my Last Speech of the Tolbooth should illustrate with examples sufficient to gorge even the public's all-devouring appetite for the wonderful and horrible.