In New York State I owe much to the loving and able assistance of my dear friend, Mrs. E. A. McAlpin. She has won a very warm place in the hearts of the "boys" and constantly leads my League meetings for me--spending hours over interviews with the "boys" in the prisons of New York. I have around me a devoted little band of workers who help me in the outside work, and yet we all feel this longing for more time, more means, more strength to fill the great opportunity that has opened before us. We realize only too keenly that this is but the small beginning of a great work. Already we are in touch with some twenty-four thousand men within the walls, and with a growing number who are now in the hard struggle to honorably maintain their regained freedom. We did not commence the enterprise with any preconceived ideas, plans or hobbies of our own to work out. We believed that to be successful the work must be of natural growth, developing with circumstances. To plan your methods out in study or committee room and then to try to bend the circumstances to your well laid track, will almost invariably mean failure. All the plans and measures of the present organization have been worked out in prison, and that which I know of the problems I have learned from the "boys" themselves. From the very first I realized that to make the work effectual there must be the establishment of personal friendship, and that it was only as we recognized and helped the individual that we could by degrees affect the whole population. They needed friendship and the touch of human sympathy far more than preachment or argument. To thus help them practically we had of course to know the men that we might enter as much as possible into their lives, so that we could meet them on a more intimate footing than that of lecturer and audience--preacher and congregation. The only way in which one can really understand a man's life is to meet him on the level. We commenced with the chapel services, talking to the men collectively in a strain that would make them feel and realize the faith and hope we felt for them. Then I expressed my willingness to correspond with all those who had no friends to write to. The many letters which reached me as a consequence soon gave us an insight into the thoughts and feelings of the men and we were then able to become familiar with the names and histories of many of them. After this we could follow up our correspondence with personal interviews. It was wonderful how the hearts of the men were touched and opened to us. In no field have I found a quicker and deeper response to the message delivered, and there has certainly been time now to prove that it was not a mere passing emotion or revival enthusiasm, but that a deep and lasting work was being accomplished.