Here, at once, the brakes must be set down hard, else their prison days will have been as "rolling stones" that "gather no moss." Furthermore, a nearly perfect conduct record will not, as a general proposition, alter the case in the least; in fact, the lad who cunningly plays up to conduct, and down to fundamental equipment, is an intrinsic faker, and should not be granted a parole while he fakes. Nothing short of the prisoner's consecutive, concentrated endeavor along industrial and associated lines, backed by his will to adjust to the free-life exactions upon him, will serve either the State or him. Lay gentlemen, and their jockeys within prison confines, have freely prescribed nostrums of reform that are diametrically opposed to the intrinsic meaning of the preceding paragraph. Result? Ask any chief of police of any city in America. Do not ask the dream-drugged, nor their retainers, who will switch you off for a ballooning after chimeras in the mist-swept clouds. Just recall that the American recidivistic criminal holds the world's record by a furlong to the mile; that he does so under mundane pressure in the grand majority of instances; and that airplaning with and for him must eventuate in a crash to earth, whereon and whereof he made his anti-social bed, and whereon and whereof he must make it over--piece by piece. Knowledge of all such and sundry, with equipment with which to assure emphasis on essential values, must the criminologist possess, and be able to apply. He cannot have acquired specific means to that end a'circling in a swivel chair, and he won't get anywhere with any kind of preparation while listening to other than the voice of reason, established in harmony with the cumulative study, observation and experience of mankind. VI LINKS IN THE CHAIN OF CRIME Of "Bogy," early-day champion telegrapher of the United States, it was alleged by those of his craft: "It's Bogy here, Bogy there, Bogy almost anywhere." Blessed with an alert, incisive brain naturally coördinated with the quickest of terminal reflexes, Bogy was drawn to the key when even "duplex" telegraphy was a far-removed possibility. Also, he was rated an electrician when the "Electrical World" issued a fourpage sheet dotted with elementary diagrams and analyses, vulgar craftsmen would now pronounce kindergarten stuff. As to natural gifts, it is probable that Thomas A. Edison hadn't a very great deal the edge on Bogy, his contemporary; indeed, if tradition is to be accepted, both, when young, were afflicted with an overdose of inertia, though Edison even then spent much of his time dabbling with electrical instruments. Edison, so the tale runs, stuck to the home base and to the dabbling, until there was born in him the desire to do something no other man had done, and to serve his fellowmen in the doing. In due time the "inertia" gave place to a power of consecutive, concentrated effort, matched but few times in the annals of human endeavor.