That is not the standpoint of the visitor. She may have known nothing of the trials and temptations of the poor, save what she has seen from the outside. Hunger has never been her attendant; poverty has been unknown to her. She has received attention and care in her early days; has not been tasked beyond her strength; has been able to choose her own work and do it in her own time; has been well housed and well fed; and has found it easy to obey the law. Between the two a great gulf is fixed. Their outlook is as different as their experience. It is a great mistake to assume that the rich know more of the poor than the poor know of the rich. The street-corner spouter may denounce the luxury of the wealthy and expose himself to their ridicule. They know that they are not as he paints them, and they laugh or sneer at his ignorance; but they are as little qualified to judge him as he is to judge them. Each sees the other's vices; and every visitor is as much a subject of criticism by the prisoner as a critic. It is as unreasonable to expect that a woman in prison will give her confidence to a stranger who visits her, as it would be for the prisoner to expect that the visitor would submit to her questions. One thing is absolutely certain, and that is that visitors do not do the good they imagine they are doing when they pass from one cell to another exhorting the prisoners to better behaviour. They stir up the emotions of those to whom they minister, and some of the women find great consolation and relief in a good cry. There are those, however, who have learned to distrust the possibility of wholesale reform of prisoners, and who single out some one whom it seems possible to help and hang on to her, visit and encourage her on her liberation, and have their reward in the consciousness that they have really rendered effective assistance where it was needed. The ideal held up by the visitors in their advice to prisoners too often seems impossible of attainment by those to whom it is presented. There are some who have no ambition to live within the law, but there are many who would rather do so if they could. Most of us have not in us the capacity to become great saints; and to ask the ordinary person to conform to a standard which would present difficulties to us, does not seem reasonable. Something is gained if, though you fail to persuade a person to be good, you can induce him to be better than he has been. Just as many have drifted into evil courses step by step, they may be led into a better way of living by degrees. Sudden conversions are not uncommon, but they are not the rule. The visits to prisoners on the part of people from outside are of great benefit; anything is that breaks the monotony of the day; and if the visitors are receptive they may learn a good deal from the prisoners, and may be made the better for their visit even though they fail to make the impression they desire on those to whom they have spoken.