I was first led into its grim shadow by a woman who came to the settlement. Her son, a boy of sixteen, had been arrested two months before and had been waiting trial in an unventilated cell, originally designed for a single occupant, with two others. His cell-mates had changed a dozen times. I recall that one had been an old forger, who was waiting an appeal, another was the keeper of a disorderly house and a third had been a high church curate, who had embezzled the foreign mission fund to buy flowers for a chorus girl. The lad was patently innocent. And this was the very reason he was held so long. The district attorney was anxious to make a high record of convictions. His term was just expiring and he was not calling to trial the men he thought innocent, these "technically" bad cases he was shoving over on his successor. At last, with the help of a charitable lawyer, named Maynard, of whom I will write more later, we forced the case on the calendar and the boy was promptly acquitted. In talking over this case with Benson, I found that he was already interested in the problems of Criminology. He was one of the trustees of "The Prisoner’s Aid Society." The interview in the newspaper, which Ann had read to me at the hospital, had been an effort of his to draw attention to the subject and to infuse some life into the society. "They’re a bunch of fossils," he said. "Think they’re a ’_société savante_.’ They read books by foreign penologists and couldn’t tell a crook from a carpet sweeper. We need somebody to study American crime. Not a dilettante—someone who will go into it solid." I told him I had thought a good deal about it and was ready to tackle the job if the ways and means could be arranged. "I imagine I could get the society to pay you a living salary. But they are dead ones. If you did anything that wasn’t in the books, it would scare them. I’ll think it over." About a week later, I received a letter from the recently elected, not yet installed district attorney asking me to call on him. His name was Brace, his letter the result of Benson’s thinking. I found him a typical young reform politician. A man of good family, he was filled with enthusiasm, and confidently expected to set several rivers on fire. There was going to be absolute, abstract justice under his regime. Benson had told him how the actual district attorney was shoving off the "bad cases" on him and he was righteously indignant. He wanted someone whose fidelity he could trust, who would keep an eye on the prison side of the Tombs. He was sure there were many abuses there to stop, and he was the man to do it. The only position he could offer me under the law was that of special county detective. The pay would be eighteen hundred a year. "It is not exactly a dignified position," he said. "The county detectives are a low class,—but of course you won’t have to associate with them."