I should like to say a good word for Head Keeper Connoughton, too. He was not generally liked, for he was a strict disciplinarian, but I think he was one of the best keepers in the country. He was stern, but not brutal, and when a convict was sick, Mr. Connoughton was very kind. He was not deceived by the fake lunatics, and used to say: "If you go to the mad-house, you are liable to become worse. If you are all right in the morning I will give you a job out in the air." Although Mr. Connoughton had had little schooling he was an intelligent man. I believe the best thing the community can do to reform criminals is to have a more intelligent class of keepers. As a rule they are ignorant, brutal and stupid, under-paid and inefficient; yet what is more important for the State's welfare than an intelligent treatment of convicts? Short terms, too, are better than long ones, for when the criminal is broken down in health and made fearful, suspicious and revengeful, what can you expect from him? However, in the mood I was in at the end of my second term, I did not believe that anything was any good as a preventive of crime. I knew that when I got on the outside I wouldn't think of what might happen to me. I knew that I couldn't or wouldn't carry a hod. What ambition I had left was to become a more successful crook than I had ever been before. Warden Sage gave me some good advice and then I left Sing Sing for New York. I did not get the pleasure from going out again that had been so keen after my first bit. My eye-sight was failing now, and I was sick and dull. My only thought was to get back to my old haunts, and I drank several large glasses of whiskey at Sing Sing town, to help me on my way. I intended to go straight home, as I felt very ill, to my father and mother, but I didn't see them for several days after my return to New York. The first thing I did in the city was to deliver some messages from my fellow convicts to their relatives. My third visit for that purpose was to the home of a fine young fellow I knew in stir. It was a large family and included a married sister and her children. They were glad to hear from Bobby, and I talked to them for some time about him, when the husband of the married sister came home, and began to quarrel with his wife. He accused her of having strange men in the house, meaning me. The younger brother and the rest of the family got back at the brother-in-law and gave him better than they got. The little brother fired a lamp at him, and he yelled "murder". The police surrounded the house and took us all to the station-house in the patrol wagon. And so I spent the first night after my return in confinement. It seemed natural, however. In the morning we were taken before the magistrate, and the mother and sister testified that I had taken them a message from their boy, and had committed no offense. The brother-in-law blurted out that he had married into a family of