Free Conjurer by Cordelia Frances Biddle

vicious dog, and limping home on the remaining stick, the “peg.”
    One month passed, then two and three. His daughter gradually improved to her former state; his wife did not. Josiah, in his distraction and despair, stitched sleeves shut, buttons without holes, breeches that could not close upon the calves.
    He was released from service, but not before pilfering a gentleman’s fine pocket watch. The white face set in gold reminded him of his daughter’s visage: round, flat, its outward calm masking a world of spinning motion. Recklessly, Josiah held this lovely object to the sun, studying it as it turned, like a budding flower, toward the light. It was then that he was arrested.
    Just as Ruth recites her own litany of want and despair, daily Josiah relives every moment of his wretched descent until the stones of the prison walls seem to begin to move closer, the barrel-vaulted ceiling to sink, and the floor to rise beneath his feet. Even the brief glimpse of sky seen from his solitary exercise cell appears oppressive and sinister, as if about to collapse down upon him. He knows that if he doesn’t escape from this place he will turn as mad as his lost wife.
    So he makes a daring plan, saving scraps of cloth from the yardage supplied for his prison work: a frock coat for the warden and a driving mantle for his wife. Josiah intends to stitch himself a dark jacket, lighter trousers, a white cravat to wrap elegantly around his neck—and a shoe made of heavy felt.
    Dressed in this finery, he aims to scramble up and over the wall of his exercise yard just after a band of visitors has passed. If luck holds, he will mingle with them. When they leave the prison grounds, he will be in their midst, his only problem the reek that emanates from a prisoner’s skin, but he believes this will remain unnoticed until he’s free of the compound itself.
    So Josiah waits, counting the hours and days until he hears a large group of visitors approach, practicing how they respond to their guide’s remarks, reiterating the facts and numbers he’s already heard from other tourists, oohing and aahing in copied awe and approval. “… The kennels for the Great Danes …” He imagines himself murmuring appreciatively to those around him. “… Walls thirty feet high, ten feet thick at the base, and buried twelve feet beneath the earth … How extraordinary …”
    What he never rehearses is his final farewell to the place that’s been his home for five long years.

A Refuge for the Poor
    T HE ASSOCIATION FOR THE CARE of Colored Orphans has been in existence for five proud years. The women who created it and who annually seek contributions for its benefit are among the chosen of the city: a Lippincott, a Morris, a Biddle, a Yarnall, a Cadwalader. These ladies envisioned an orphans’ refuge at Thirteenth and Fitzwater streets—among the poorest of the poor—and their ardor and hard work have wrought a miracle: a comfortable place with scrubbed pine floors, wide windows, and plenty of fresh, invigorating air.
    The gifts the women accept on behalf of their young charges are (when not ready cash) of a healthful, instructive nature: dried peaches, bags of beans, pocket handkerchiefs, stockings, sweet potatoes, and a map of Africa—which is a place so foreign that the foundlings who gaze upon it believe it is a chart of the heavens.
    â€œThis is from whence you came,” the orphans are told. But they aren’t about to be hoodwinked by a colorful picture. They know where they’ve come from: the cramped alleyways of the Seventh Ward, the docks of the Fifth. Many of the orphans remember their days upon the streets; some even remember having mothers.
    Sixty children are housed at the home on Fitzwater Street. When they’re old enough—and fit enough—they’re “bound out to respectable families.” If the experiment is a success, so much the