exile of the offender from
Society until he can show himself worthy to be granted a new opportunity;
and then give him a chance to build up his character while in retirement
by free exercise of the faculties necessary for wise discrimination and
right choice of action. Then your religious appeal to the prisoner will
not be flagrantly contradicted by every sight and sound about him.

In one of the prisons in a neighboring state, I saw hanging up in the
bare, unsightly room they called a chapel, a large illuminated text: Love
One Another.

It seemed to me I had never before encountered such terrible, bitter,
humiliating sarcasm.

At first sight it seems almost a miracle--the change that is being wrought
under Superintendent Riley and Warden Rattigan in Auburn Prison. But in
truth there is nothing really extraordinary about it--it is no miracle;
unless it be a miracle to discard error and to replace it by truth. The
results of a practical application of faith and hope and love often seem
miraculous, but as a matter of fact such results are as logical as any
geometrical demonstration.

When a man, treated like a beast, snarls and bites you say, "This is the
conduct of an abnormal creature--a criminal." When a prisoner, treated
like a man, nobly responds you cry, "A miracle!"

What folly! Both these things are as natural as two and two making four.

The real miracle is when men who have been treated for many years like
beasts persist in retaining their manhood.

A prisoner is kept for half a generation in conditions so terrible and
degrading that the real wonder is how he has kept his sanity, and then he
asks only for a chance to show where Society has made a mistake, begs only
for an opportunity to be of service to his brethren.

Donald Lowrie and Ed Morrell, laying aside their own wrongs and making
light of their own sufferings, as they arouse not only the state of
California but the whole nation to a sense of responsibility for the
shocking conditions in our prisons; Jack Murphy, turning his back upon
the chance of a pardon, asking nothing for himself, seeking only how he
can do the most good to his fellow-prisoners; these are the real miracles;
when the spirit of God thus works in the hearts of men.

I have talked with no sensible person who proposes to sentimentalize over
the law-breaker. Call the prison by any name you please, yet prisons of
some sort we must have so long as men commit crime; and that from pre