going out to lecture on
Association matters, the other about writing to prisoners' friends.
These I wholly abandoned. True, nothing was said to me suggestive of
these changes, nor had I taken any wrong step on the points, but, in the
investigation, I was led to see that these were _the_ sources whence
misconception would be the most likely to arise, and where evil-minded
persons might pretend a wrong, with some show of plausibility, without
really any shadow of grounds in truth. I would not only shun every evil,
but every appearance of evil, or what might be construed into an
appearance.

Great sensitiveness pervades too many minds on the idea of attempting to
show benevolence to a released prisoner, they holding it as a wrong to
society. These will not hear on the subject understandingly, but with
prejudice and a proclivity to misrepresent. Though the class does not
embrace, in its numbers, the more intelligent, worthy citizens, yet it
contains more or less who possess the power of casting mists of
blindness before the well-disposed and honest seekers for the right.

In this class, we find the ideas of the brutal and vindictive freely
cropping out in their utterances. "Those fellows ought to suffer. They
were put in prison for punishment, now let them have enough of it, so
that they may thus learn to do better, no matter if it were ten times
worse." These persons seem to think that the correct way of prison
management would be to select the most hard-hearted, cruel men of the
State for officers, and deliver the convicts into their hands, for them
to exercise their brutal feelings upon as fully and freely as they may
choose. These points, then, evidently need to be agitated in the State,
by lecturers and through the press, but it were better that this work be
done by others than by the prison chaplain.

The loss of my occasional writing was severely felt, especially by
outside friends. Thus, on Fast day of '71, a prisoner wrote a letter to
a sister in the West, and asked for an envelope and stamp that he might
send it, but weeks and months passed and none were forthcoming. There
was the idea, "You must not ask a second time." The sister became
deeply troubled at not hearing from or about the brother, not knowing
whether he were dead or alive, and wrote to me, earnestly beseeching to
be informed. But as I was now under the ban, I did not answer her. She
also wrote to the ex-warden, but he was away and did not answer. I