After seeing them properly accommodated for that night, I next attended the sheriff's officers to the prison, which had formerly been built for the purposes of war, and consisted of one large apartment, strongly grated, and paved with stone, common to both felons and debtors at certain hours in the four and twenty.

Besides this, every prisoner had a separate cell, where he was locked in for the night.
I expected upon my entrance to find nothing but lamentations, and various sounds of misery; but it was very different.

The prisoners seemed all employed in one common design, that of forgetting thought in merriment or clamour.

I was apprized of the usual perquisite required upon these occasions, and immediately complied with the demand, though the little money I had was very near being all exhausted.

This was immediately sent away for liquor, and the whole prison soon was filled with riot, laughter, and prophaneness.
'How,' cried I to myself, 'shall men so very wicked be chearful, and shall I be melancholy! I feel only the same confinement with them, and I think I have more reason to be happy.' With such reflections I laboured to become chearful; but chearfulness was never yet produced by effort, which is itself painful.