The State makes no provision for these offenders, and, unless as in this instance they are separated by the individual action of the Warden, they would ere now be proficient in the lore of crime. Crime is contagious, because thought is contagious. By this it is not meant that you and I, if we mix with criminals, will become criminally inclined; because our ego--or soul--not having any prenatal defect or susceptibility to crime will be unresponsive to its influence. But to a criminal, whether he be a first offender or not, the pernicious, indiscriminate companionship of fellow convicts who suggest crime in its various distorted shapes to his abnormal, defective mind, will plant seed-thoughts which thus sown thrive and grow until we have the confirmed criminal. If a criminal is so receptive to suggestions of evil, and his criminal capacity is so strengthened and fixed by the ideas and emotions that he entertains, would not counter-suggestions have just as potent an effect on the individual? [Illustration: A Marin Landscape. (From the Original by Thad Welch.)] If, through the channels of thought, he is susceptible to maleficent influences will he not be equally responsive, through the same medium, to the beneficial? [Illustration: Mt. Tamalpais from Ross Valley.] Granting this to be true, would it not be well to surround the convict with all that stands for advancement, and through intelligent education and suggestion awaken the latent good which is in each individual, no matter how dormant and perverted it may be? By education is not meant the rudimentary school education, for many criminals are proficient in that, but the far more important study of self-respect, honesty, veracity, industry, unselfishness, and an appreciation and proper use of the things that are. Methinks if with the contemplated enlargement to the prison an educative, segregative, industrial system similar to that adopted with such marked success in the Elmira Reformatory, New York, were inculcated in our state prison there would be less "recedivists"--fewer many-term offenders--and the fifteen thousand dollars which it costs the State monthly to conduct a prison would not be devoted to confirming criminals. Although Marin County is sparsely populated, owing to its large tracts of hilly surface and consequent non-agricultural facilities, still the towns within its borders are of average population, the largest, San Rafael, comprising five thousand inhabitants.