"I was standing on a railway platform at ---- with a friend waiting for a train, when two ladies came into the station. I was acquainted with one of them, the younger, well. She told me she was going to London, having been fortunate enough to get a liberal engagement as governess in the family of the lady under whose charge she then was, and who had even taken the trouble to come into the country to see her and her friends, to ascertain that she was likely in all respects to suit. The train coming in sight, the fares were paid, the elder lady paying both. I saw them into the car, and the door being closed, I bowed to them and rejoined my friend, who happened to be a London man about town. 'Well, I will say,' said he, 'you country gentlemen are pretty independent of public opinion. You are not ashamed of your little transactions being known!' 'What do you mean?' I asked. 'Why, I mean your talking to that girl and her duenna on an open platform.' 'Why, that is Miss ----, an intimate of friend of ours.' 'Well, then, I can tell you,' said the Londoner to me coolly, 'her friend is Madam ----, one of the most noted procuresses in London, and she has got hold of a new victim, if she is a victim, and no mistake.' I saw there was not a minute to lose; I rushed to the guard of the train and got him to wait a moment. I then hurried to the car door where the ladies were. 'Miss ----, you must get out; that person is an unfit companion for you. Madam ----, we know who you are.' That one victim was rescued, but how many are lost?" With "Prisoner Number 503," whose story follows, I have conversed personally and I have not the slightest doubt that her story is true. It surprised me to hear her say that she was and is a member of a Baptist church, with an implication in her words and manner that members of other churches are not quite so safe as members of her denomination. Her story was published January 28, 1909. She was brought to justice by the Chicago Law and Order League. BY PRISONER NUMBER 503. I am writing this message to the readers of The National Prohibitionist and to the world from behind the bars in that gloomy pile of buildings alongside the Drainage Canal, where Chicago every year spends some millions of dollars to protect herself from the criminal classes which she constantly creates and breeds. It may shock the respectable people who read these lines to find that their author is an imprisoned criminal. I lay emphasis on the word "imprisoned," because my not very long experience with the world has taught me that violation of the law is not particularly offensive to the mass of the world's inhabitants so long as it is not attended with the "pains and penalties" that are prescribed for the law's violation. I may as well shock my readers still more at once by the frank confession that I am in prison convicted of being what is commonly known as a "white slave trader" and I was justly convicted and was guilty of the offense charged.