=The Indeterminate Sentence.=--The ideal Indeterminate sentence provides that when once a criminal falls into the clutches of the law he shall be deprived of his liberty until he has given satisfactory evidence that he is able to conduct himself as an honest and industrious citizen. It makes no distinction between different crimes, such as to provide that the man who embezzles shall receive a longer sentence than the man who commits arson or vice versa, but makes the restoration of liberty depend entirely upon reformation. It refuses to tolerate the idea that any criminals should be at large to prey upon society, and it thus imposes upon society the obligation to undertake the reform of all criminals. This IDEAL sentence, however, does not exist. At Elmira, the authorities are obliged to recognise a maximum, so that if at the expiry of this maximum, the prisoner should have made no progress towards reform he must, nevertheless, be discharged. Since, however, a man may at Elmira reduce a sentence of ten years to something like 22 months, a great incentive is given to him to identify himself with the efforts being made on his behalf. From every point of view the indeterminate sentence in the case of those sent to reformatories appears the most reasonable. The business of the trial court is concluded as soon as the question of guilt is determined. The judge has not imposed on him the impossible task of measuring out a punishment which in its severity shall exactly accord with the degree of crime committed. The question of the prisoner's sanity is not left to the jury to decide but to qualified alienists. Neither does this question determine his GUILT but only his RESPONSIBILITY. No account has to be made of the provocation from which the prisoner suffered at the committal of his crime. If but a small degree of criminality exist, the safest adjustment of punishment is to be found in the indeterminate sentence. From the social point of view, it gives the best safeguard to the society. It guarantees that a criminal once convicted shall cease to prey upon society. He will either reform and return to society as a useful member thereof and a contributor to its wealth, or else, refusing to reform, he will never regain his liberty. This sentence lays it down that society ought not to tolerate criminals in its midst. Imprisonment for a fixed period under our present penal system serves but to exasperate the criminal, and at the end of his sentence, when he is a more dangerous criminal than ever, the law demands that he shall be released. It is only by indeterminate sentences that society obtains the guarantee it may justly demand. For its effect as a means of discipline a prisoner will give his own experience. The following extract, was written by an inmate of the Reformatory in 1898:--"From the view-point of a 'man up a tree' I would say that the character of our sentence has everything to