Then there are those within prison walls who, though evil well nigh all their lives, claim our sincerest pity. They may have done desperate deeds, may perhaps be ranked as habitual criminals and may represent to-day the most hardened and determined offenders and yet in strict justice they should not be spoken of with harsh condemnation, before the sad pages of their lives have been read. The judge and jury take cognizance only of the offense; the police and prison record note the list of charges and the number of returns to prison but those of us who seek to know the man beneath the criminal have a right to go back and ask ourselves, "What chance did this man have to do right, to act and to be as we are?" The answer sometimes is a pathetic revelation of a loveless babyhood and childhood where blows and curses took the place of kiss and caress; a youth where revolt against society in an embittered heart made it easy to develop every evil tendency and to follow the lead of those in the under-world who proved the only possible friends and associates. Many, many letters have I received from just this class of prisoner. I remember especially one that spoke of such a history. It was written just after my first visit to Joliet State Prison and was in the natural unrestrained language of one who had never learned the art of deftly turning sentences. He began with an apology for bad spelling and poor writing in which he explained that it was the first letter he had attempted to write in seven years, for he had no one in the world who cared whether he lived or died. Then he thanked me for what I had said to them Sunday, adding, "You said you loved us. Nobody ever said that to me before in my whole life and I hardly know what the word means. You spoke of home. The nearest approach to it I ever had was my time in the kitchen of one of the state prisons where the officer was very kind to me." Briefly this was his story. He was born in a poorhouse in Ireland and never knew father or mother and received in childhood no touch of love or sympathy. When still very young he was sent out to work and soon found evil companionship and was led into trouble. He came out to this country only to continue on the same path which was in fact the only path he had ever known. It naturally led him to state prison and his whole life here has been spent within the walls except for the few short holidays in the slums between the day of his discharge and the next arrest. All through the letter I could see that he had never dreamed there was another life for him. He confessed he had never tried to be good, had had no inducement or chance to be so. Very pathetic to me was the closing sentence in which he said, "Now that I know somebody cares, I will try." Let me diverge from my point enough to add that he made a success of the effort and became an earnest member of our League. On his discharge from prison he had