oice and a
confiding, boyish manner that is very winning.

Number Three I advise to apologize to the Captain of his company and to
try to keep his temper better in the future. The person who called him
ugly names, having been sent to the hospital, seems to have been
sufficiently punished. To my relief Number Three seems to be decidedly
better of his cold.

Number Four (it is needless to say that my heart warms toward the handsome
young fellow whom I greet as Joe) I advise to apologize to his Captain for
the fight with Number Five, and to be more careful for the future. Joe is
rather abashed and self-conscious by daylight, but very prolific of
promises. Methinks he doth protest rather too much, and in spite of his
good looks, his eyes do not give the direct glance that one likes to see.

To Number Five I give advice similar to Joe's, and he engages to profit by
it.

To Number Eight I also urge an apology to the powers that be and
submission to the inevitable. He is a little harder to convince than the
others, but we reach an agreement.

"What is the use," I say to all of them, "of letting your tempers get the
better of you when it hurts nobody but yourselves?" My preaching is
directed rather toward a cultivation of self-interest than of lofty
idealism, but I believe it hits the mark. They none of them admit the
justice of their jail sentences, and on that point I can not argue with
them. I acknowledge the injustice, but ask them to face the facts. So one
and all admit they have been wrong and express themselves ready to make
all amends for the present and try their best for the future.

And so, in a much pleasanter frame of mind than when I last left this
place, I retrace my steps to the Warden's rooms.

Returning through the back office I shake hands all around--with both
officers and prisoners--all but one man. A slight, pale figure in glasses
is bending over his desk in a corner of the office. He is one of the
Warden's stenographers. Last July I had an extended conversation with him,
at the Warden's suggestion, and a more hopeless and discouraging
proposition I never struck. He is an old-timer, knows all the ropes, has
been through the game, and has settled down to hopeless cynicism. He seems
to have no belief in himself or others, and I have no doubt is utterly
uninterested in my whole experience, and will be one of the greatest
stumbling blocks to any attempted reforms. He will condemn them at the
outset, di