It is more interesting to find a revelation of the things in which the criminal is most intimately interested by noting the wealth and variety of synonyms for certain words. Thus Cougnet and Righini found 17 words for warders or police; 9 for the act of sodomy; 7 for plunder. French cant has 44 synonyms for drunkenness, besides 20 for drinking, and 8 for wine, in all 72; while there are only 19 for water and 36 for money. This slang is largely of ephemeral life, but a considerable proportion is permanent. Its tendency is, however, to die out. The modern professional criminal avoids slang as he avoids tattooing. [Illustration: PLATE XIII.] § 8. _Prison Inscriptions._ Whenever the average human being is secluded for any considerable length of time from his fellows, he experiences the need of embodying some literary or artistic expression of himself. This instinct seems to be deeper and more wide-spread than that which induces some people to leave their names or other sign manual--the frothiest efflorescence of vain moments--on the places they visit. There is no vanity here, and it is an instinct from which no individual, whatever his degree of culture, is exempt; it is indeed scarcely distinguishable from the instinct which leads to the production of heroic works of art. The expression must vary with the individual. I knew a room, the residence of a long succession of medical students during certain weeks of seclusion involved by hospital duty, of which the walls were covered by inscriptions, humorous or broadly witty, cleverly artistic sketches, happy lines from the classics. Each person’s inscription is after his kind: Mgr. Darboy, the Archbishop of Paris, writes in the form of a cross, “O crux, mentis robur, ave;” Bill Sykes at Clerkenwell writes, “Lads, your only friend here is your brown lofe and pint of thick.”