On the other hand, as the men became interested in the League and the new experience deepened in their hearts, they wrote the good news to their homes, sometimes away over the seas, and back from every part of this country, and from very many distant lands came to us loving, grateful letters from mothers who felt they could pour out to us the heart-longings and anxiety that had been so long borne in solitude. The tie of friendship and understanding is much stronger and draws hearts together much more surely than that of charitable bounty. We can do far more in every way for these women for the reason that we are introduced to them by sons or husbands. My dear friend and helper, Mrs. McAlpin, has especially taken this work on her heart, so far as the prisons of this state are concerned, and through her talks with the men, she has been enabled to put us in touch with numbers of families who in this great city were in dire need of a helping hand. From the western prisons the work comes to us mostly through the mail, and we find that this new and unexpected field of usefulness has developed so rapidly that we have had to appoint one worker to do nothing else but visit the families thus referred to us. Before I write some of the stories of those materially helped, I want to speak of the mothers who have been cheered and comforted by good messages of their boys returning to the right path within prison walls. At the first meeting ever held in Sing Sing a little company of men took their stand for the new life, and among them was a tall, fine-looking young fellow whose deep emotion and evident sincerity very much impressed me. He stood with his face sternly set, showing in its pallor the effort that it cost him to rise before that great crowd of fellow-prisoners, and yet, determination was written in every feature. As I watched him, I saw the tears course their way down his cheeks. It was such a striking and earnest face that the chaplain also especially noticed him and found out his name for me. Shortly afterwards my mail contained a letter which brought me into closer touch with him, and then my interviews from time to time gave me his history link by link, until I knew the whole. It is one that has undoubtedly a thousand counterparts. He was the only black sheep of a bright, happy family, the youngest son and his mother's darling. Associating with wild companions, he went astray, saddening and bringing constant trouble to his home. His mother and sisters clung to him, pleaded and wept in vain. He went on in his wild course until he got into trouble in his home state, from the consequence of which his people saved him. Then he broke away entirely from home restraints and came east. By this time drink had gained a strong hold on him and he mixed in his drinking sprees with the roughest crowds. One night he was arrested in a saloon with a gang that had committed a burglary, and soon after found himself