It is also easy to write disciplinary "don'ts," and betimes most difficult to execute them. Just the same, don't curse; don't threaten, bluff or be bluffed; don't lose your temper; don't make promises unless you can fulfill them to the letter; don't construe as directed against you personally, acts that are aimed at bigger game; don't fraternize with prisoners to the gutter level; don't heap discipline of any kind on a lad, until he needs must conclude that you are "down on him," and are "giving him the worst of it"; don't wabble; don't shriek; don't resort unduly to petty impositions for petty offenses; don't utter false coin of suggestion and example; don't commonize discipline of character whatsoever, else it will lose its carrying power; don't reach lightly for tags of stigma: they depress and discourage; don't despise hints dropped to you by lads who are hoping for better things, and who may lead you to the correct psychology of the individual case, and of the mass; and don't assume that you know it all about crime and criminals: no man does, nor can, give him a life time to do it. Do seek to know yourself, your man, and so much of a great-big work as it is possible for you to know. Doing it, realize yours will be just one opinion about it all. Scores of others have written that which you must absorb in saving degree, if you are to get a grip on what makes and keeps men criminal. In short, be actually a compassionate criminologist with an open mind, and not a misinformed, or half-informed, or uninformed ego-centric, single-track dilettante, who drives ruthlessly along rock-strewn roads, over which life students of budding and budded felons soon enough learn that they must pick warily their way all of the way. But, warning! Listen to the "personal equation" cult, and many of the conclusions given off in this chapter by the writer postulate him a fit subject for the psycho-analyst. According to that wrecking crew, nothing clings to the habitual young felon that can't be cast off with such as baseball, and a bit of "laying on of hands"--by the "crew," of course. The "hands" have been patting and puttering persistently during the past three decades. Result? The mounting American Apaché has not so much respect for law and agents of the law, as eagle for sparrow. He rides gun-hung, kills for the mere blood-lust of killing, lies "until the cows come home," and laughs up his sleeve betimes over the use he makes and use made of "research" of him. Caught and corralled--against which the chances are about ten to one--he nestles down in many a State nest, where he practically dictates in a boiled shirt, and "does" what he sneeringly terms, "sleepin' time." This, spite of the written effusions of ex-criminals, who rush to print with grossly overdrawn statement--for a consideration.