There they were, humans behind bars. Pacing back and forth in the narrow caged-in alley-way. Each had his cell, more like a cage it looked, and their door opened onto this “run.” The warder showed us how the cell doors worked. One iron lever closed the entire row with one movement. The sound was exactly like the closing of doors in the lion house at the Zoo. I did not like to look too hard, I felt a great embarrassment. Whenever, at the Zoo, I have stared at lions I have always been conscious of the indignity towards them, and to stare into the eyes of caged humans is almost more than one dare. In one cell lying on the bare wood floor, in a contorted position, almost standing on his head, one man lay half dazed, and seemingly in great distress. The warder said he was a drug-fiend. “How long have you been taking the stuff?” the warder asked him--“Twenty-one years ...” the fellow answered in a strange strained voice, moistening dry lips, and opening and closing his eyes. Then with a sudden outbreak, and without shifting his position: “No prison ever stopped a man from taking dope.” In another section, a nice looking Spanish boy was sitting writing in his cell. It looked like a cabin on board a ship. He had ornamented the wall with pictures from the illustrated papers of film-stars and English peeresses. He looked so young, so cheerful, so frank and honest. “Why are you here?” I asked. He smiled, and hesitated, and then looked shyly down: “A girl--eighteen--a minor--” “American?” I asked. “No--Italian.” “In Spain or Italy that wouldn’t put you in prison!” I said, thinking of the mature Latin girls of fourteen. “It’s like a home!” he said humorously. We went to the woman’s section. In one big cage sat three or four, one was greyhaired, her age was 74. “Smuggling drink” was her trouble. I began to feel that it is only a crime to be found out. In the next a woman sat alone. Big, thick, middle aged, with a face grown hard from suffering--she arose and came to the iron bars to talk with us. She had at last--she told the warder--slept one hour, and felt a little better. Her indictment was that she had shot her husband. “I adored him--” she said, “my daughter didn’t want me to marry him, because of the way he drank--we married just two years ago. Yes I am American born--my husband was a Swede. He was a cement-worker. His only fault was drink.--Last Saturday he bought some moonshine, mixed it up with beer,--firewater it was, it drove him crazy. He threatened to shoot me first and then himself. I got the gun off the Captain(?) who was in the house. I thought it was unloaded, and so I handed it to him as a joke, and it went off--” “Lucky it went off on him instead of on you--“I said. She looked at me wearily through half closed eyes: “It might as well have been me--” We left the prison.