University of Virginia Library

SING SING.

Sing Sing is a pleasant village, on the west side of the
river, about six miles above Tarrytown. It is a very
musical place (as its name imports,) as all the birds sing
charmingly; and is blessed with a pure air, and delightful
prospects. There is a silver mine a couple of hundred
yards from the village, to which we recommend the
adventurers in the South American and North Carolinian

mines to turn their attention. They will certainly lose
money by working it, but the money will be spent at
home and the village will benefit by their patriotism. If
they get ruined, there is a state prison close by where
they will find an asylum. There is an old lady living
in the neighbourhood, who recollects hearing her father
say, that he had once before the revolutionary war, been
concerned in this mine, and there is a sixpence still preserved
in the family, coined from its produce, that only
cost him two hundred pounds. There is a new state
prison building here, from marble procured on the spot,
in which the doleful experiment of solitary confinement
is to be tried. It will not do. It will only be substituting
lingering torments for those of sudden death. Without
society, without books, without employment, without
anticipations, and without the recollection of any thing
but crimes, madness or death must be the consequence
of a protracted seclusion of this sort. A few days will
be an insufficient lesson, and a few months would be
worse than death—madness or idiotism. It is a fashionable
Sunday excursion with a certain class of idlers in
New York, to visit this prison in the steam boat. It is
like going to look at their lodgings before they are finished.
Some of them will get there if they dont mind. After
all, we think those philanthropists are in the right who
are for abolishing the criminal code entirely, and relying
on the improved spirit of the age and the progress of
moral feeling.

Three or four miles east of Sing Sing, is the Chappaqua
Spring, which at one time came very nigh getting
the better of Ballston, Saratoga and Harrowgate, for it

is a fact well authenticated that one or two persons of
good fashion came very near to be cured of that incurable
disease called “I dont know what,” by drinking these
waters. Upon the strength of this, some “public spirited
individuals” erected a great hotel for the public accommodation.
We wish we knew their names, as
we look upon every man who builds a tavern, as a
public benefactor, upon the authority of the famous prize
poet, heretofore quoted, who says—