done in a week, and they would not ask for more. Their repentance is sincere, their horror of their crime is greater than their dread of death, which they welcome as a means of expiation. Is any good purpose served by keeping such people for three weeks in agony? The second class of "penitents" consists of a horrible section of humanity--the cowardly desperadoes. These are usually men whose crimes have shown a refinement of cruelty and callousness that is positively revolting. They are the "hardened" or professional criminals whose hearts are devoid of pity or remorse, and equally devoid of the least spark of courage. They are the miserable men whose lives have been spent in defying and blaspheming God, but who, when they see death before them, whine and howl, and beg for the intercession of the chaplain or any other godly person they may meet with, not because they repent of their sins, but because they are frightened almost to death by the thought of a fiery hell, which has been painted before their imaginations in glowing colours. To such men as these I am sure that the shortening of the waiting time would be the greatest possible mercy, for the longer time only gives them opportunity to work themselves into an almost demented state. At the end of three weeks they are often so broken down and hysterical as to be incapable of correctly understanding anything, and their only remaining feeling is a wild, frantic dread of the scaffold. Besides the two classes of penitents, there only remains the class who are not penitent at all. They are mostly men who have been long acquainted with crime, who have made it the business of their lives. They look upon the law and its officers much as a business man looks upon a clever and unscrupulous competitor; and upon a sentence of death as one of the business risks. Life ends for them, not at the scaffold, but in the dock, when sentence is pronounced. From that time they sink into a state of sullen indifference, or take up any occupation that may offer, merely to kill time. In some cases they take to Bible reading and prayers, because they think "it can't do any harm, and may do a bit of good," and because they have nothing else to do. No one can say that such men are penitent, since on release they would return to their vicious ways. They would not be likely to reach any better state if they were allowed to live three months instead of three weeks, for the only regret that they can be brought to feel is personal and purely selfish. It is founded on fear of hell, and is not a contrition for having committed the crime, but a regret that the crime carries with it a punishment in the next world. Convicts of this class, when they have no hope of reprieve, do not thank us for the three weeks of "life" that are given to them. If they could have their own choice, they would prefer to walk straight from the dock to the scaffold, and to "get it over" at once.