But let us believe, for an instant, that one prisoner has resisted the ill effects of wicked association--let us suppose him to have escaped the contamination of a jail, to have received no moral hurt from bad example, to be untainted by the corrupting atmosphere of congregated vice--in short, to return into the world at the end of his imprisonment a better man than he was at its commencement. Let us suppose all this, although the supposition, it must be confessed, is unsupported by experience, and directly in the teeth of probability. He sallies forth from his prison, full of good resolutions, and determined to win the character of an honest man. Perhaps he has a small sum of money, which helps him to reach a part of the country most distant from the scene of his disgrace. He seeks for work, and is fortunate enough to obtain it. For a short time, all goes well with him. He is industrious and sober, and gains the good-will of his employer. He is confirmed in his good intentions, and fancies that his hopes of regaining his position in society are about to be realised. Vain hopes! Rumour is busy with his name. His fellow-labourers begin to look coldly on him. The master does not long remain in ignorance. The discharged convict is taxed with his former degradation, and made to suffer again the consequences of a crime he has well and fully expiated. His brief hour of prosperity is over. He is cast forth again upon the world, denied the means of gaining an honest livelihood, with nothing before him but starvation or a jail. What wonder should he choose the latter! Goaded by despair, or stimulated by hunger, he yields to the first temptation, and commits a crime which places him again within prison walls. It is his second conviction. He is a marked man. He were more than mortal if he escaped the deteriorating effects of repeated association with the hardened and the vicious. His future career is certain. He falls from bad to worse, and ends his life upon the scaffold.