saying, (perhaps falsely attributed to so honored a source,) that the
death of this blood-stained fanatic has "made the Gallows as venerable
as the Cross!" Nobody was ever more justly hanged. He won his
martyrdom fairly, and took it firmly. He himself, I am persuaded, (such
was his natural integrity,) would have acknowledged that Virginia had a
right to take the life which he had staked and lost; although it would
have been better for her, in the hour that is fast coming, if she could
generously have forgotten the criminality of his attempt in its
enormous folly. On the other hand, any common-sensible man, looking at
the matter unsentimentally, must have felt a certain intellectual
satisfaction in seeing him hanged, if it were only in requital of his
preposterous miscalculation of possibilities. [Footnote: Can it be a
son of old Massachusetts who utters this abominable sentiment? For
shame!]

But, coolly as I seem to say these things, my Yankee heart stirred
triumphantly when I saw the use to which John Brown's fortress and
prison-house has now been put. What right have I to complain of any
other man's foolish impulses, when I cannot possibly control my own?
The engine-house is now a place of confinement for Rebel prisoners.

A Massachusetts soldier stood on guard, but readily permitted our whole
party to enter. It was a wretched place. A room of perhaps twenty-five
feet square occupied the whole interior of the building, having an
iron stove in its centre, whence a rusty funnel ascended towards a hole
in the roof, which served the purposes of ventilation, as well as for
the exit of smoke. We found ourselves right in the midst of the Rebels,
some of whom lay on heaps of straw, asleep, or, at all events, giving
no sign of consciousness; others sat in the corners of the room,
huddled close together, and staring with a lazy kind of interest at the