Many years back, in my early boyhood, I was taken through Auburn Prison.
It has always been the main object of interest in our town, and I was a
small sized unit in a party of sightseers. No incident of childhood made a
more vivid impression upon me. The dark, scowling faces bent over their
tasks; the hideous striped clothing, which carried with it an
unexplainable sense of shame; the ugly close cropped heads and shaven
faces; the horrible sinuous lines of outcast humanity crawling along in
the dreadful lockstep; the whole thing aroused such terror in my
imagination that I never recovered from the painful impression. All the
nightmares and evil dreams of my childhood centered about the figure of an
escaped convict. He chased me along dark streets, where I was unable to
run fast or cry aloud; he peeked through windows at me as I lay in bed,
even after the shades had been pinned close to escape his evil eye; as I
ascended a flight of stairs in dreamland and looked back, he would come
creeping through an open door, holding a long knife in his hand, while my
mother all unconscious of danger sat reading under the shaded library
lamp; he was a visitor frequent enough to make night hideous for a time,
and it was many long years before he took a departure which I trust is
final.

After this early experience I carefully avoided the Prison. Its gray stone
walls frowned from across the street every time I departed or arrived on a
New York Central train, but I made no effort to go again inside. In fact I
persistently refused to join my friends whenever they made a visit there;
once had been quite enough.

So it was not until many years afterward that I again passed within prison
walls. Then my official connection with the Junior Republic and its
successful training of wild and mischievous boys brought me in touch with
the Prison System. I had been interested in the Elmira Reformatory and had
visited Mr. Brockway, the superintendent of that institution. I became
acquainted, quite by chance, with a certain prisoner in Sing Sing, and
through him interested in other prisoners, there and in Auburn. In due
time, I began to appreciate the importance of the general Prison Problem
and the difficulties of its solution. Also I felt that my experience in
the Junior Republic had given me a possible clew to that solution.

Thus I was drawn to the prison almost in spite of myself; and, becoming
more and more interested, I felt that there was