r of his sentence. At this writing, November, 1915, nothing
further has been heard from him.

We have before us an individual who to start with, is badly tainted
hereditarily. His childhood history is indefinite, aside from his
statements of having been usually the lowest in his class at school. He
launched upon an industrial career at a very early period in life and
simultaneously with commencing to earn money he began to indulge in
alcoholics. His industrial career was cut short soon after. He gets
drunk and sets fire to a store, causing the death of a human being.
This, at the age of seventeen. His moral status can readily be surmised
when we remember his reply to the question as to whether he was sorry
for the deed. "Why should I be sorry? I didn't know the man that was
burned." The usual course of the law was taken in the case and he was
placed in a reformatory. He spent nearly six years between that
institution and hospitals for the criminal insane, when he was released
on parole. It is of interest to note here how he reacted to the stress
of confinement in the reformatory. We find that on two occasions during
this period it became necessary to transfer him to an insane asylum. We
shall have occasion to refer to this again later.

If there ever existed in him any chance for reform, the reformatory
apparently killed it, for his life since then has been an uninterrupted
chain of crime and debauchery. He has been a prey to all the vices of
modern civilization; he is a confirmed alcoholic, was addicted to the
habitual use of morphine and cocaine; has been infected on numerous
occasions with gonorrhoea; has contracted syphilis and received a serious
burn during an attack of delirium tremens. In all, he spent eight of the
past fourteen years in penitentiaries, jails, and institutions for the
criminal insane, and has, now, an indictment for larceny hanging over
him. Released from a six years' confinement he finds himself thrown upon
his own resources and is confronted for the first time with the problem
of providing for himself. The poorly-begotten organism, whose start in
life, already deficient in those attributes and forces which are so
essential for an effective struggle for existence and which was rendered
still more deficient by a six years' sojourn among criminals, finds
himself unable to cope with conditions as they exist, and several months
after his release from imprisonment we again find him arrested for
ro