In speaking of their doubt and distrust of the man who has come from prison, people have quoted to me the unfavorable impression that has been made upon them by the manner, the bearing, the very speech of recently discharged men with whom they have come into contact. They have repeatedly said to me that the shuffling uncertain gait, the head hung down, the shifty look in the eye, and the fact that he can hardly give a straight clear statement of what he needs, have all gone to rob him of confidence, and people have turned away merely to say, "I could not think of employing such a one." Alas, in the past, that picture has been only too true of many a long termed man in the first days after his discharge from prison. But what has made him so? The world says a guilty conscience, a shiftless unstable character; he merely shows what he is, a criminal born! No! I answer he is a criminal, branded, and in his poor crushed body and hopeless mind, he carries the cruel marks for which God Almighty will demand justice in the great reckoning day. A thoughtless world quick to condemn and damn the one who has fallen, a brutal system that drove and lashed instead of helped and raised the one in servitude, will be held responsible for the shattered minds and ruined bodies that can be found amid the driftwood in the great under world. Do you know what the lock-step is and does? The shuffling column of men is not allowed to step or march with a soldierly swing, but is so near together that the arms of one man rest on the shoulder of the one in front of him, and they walk with the feet interlocked, so that each step must be a sliding shuffle. Let a man walk thus during the years of his imprisonment, and there is not a detective or police officer, who could not pick him out in the city throng, however well he might be dressed. People complain of the shifty eye, the downward glance of the man who they say betrays by it the fact that he cannot look the world in the face. Are we not taught that habit is second nature, and what is the habit in which these men have been drilled for years in some of our prisons? They are forbidden to look up from their work in the workshops should any one pass through the room. If any one meets them in the prison corridor or in the yard they are to keep their eyes down, or, worse still, to turn their faces to the wall. Take an innocent man and drill him on pain of punishment by this rule, and on his discharge he would unconsciously do the same thing whenever accosted, and hence very probably give the impression of insincerity. Then what of speech? Many men to whom I talk in prison or on the days subsequent to their discharge, stutter and stammer helplessly, becoming sometimes painfully embarrassed, as they try to explain themselves. What is that but the result of long silence? I do not argue that it would be wise or possible for these men to be allowed to talk freely in work shop or in