The untried prisoner may have newspapers and magazines sent in to him as well as books, unless, indeed, the Visiting Committee refuse to permit this. He can choose suitable literature for himself provided his friends are willing to send it to him, but immediately he is convicted he has no choice in the matter. The State is his librarian; and it seems a little absurd that the taxpayer should be charged for providing him with things which he does not want, and which can do him no good, if he or his friends could, at their own expense, procure him books he would enjoy. Of late years lectures have been given to prisoners, and occasionally concerts have been provided for them. The lectures have been on all kinds of subjects. Some of them have dealt with travel and have been illustrated by limelight views; others have dealt with sanitation, physiology, and the treatment of common ailments; others have taken the form of cookery demonstrations; and the prison audience is invariably more appreciative than most audiences outside. They enjoy anything that breaks the dulness of their routine life. No sensible person expects that the lectures will make them travellers, or physiologists, or cooks, though an interest in these subjects may be kindled by the lecturer. Few people are ever lectured into a change of life, but anything that prevents them from sinking into apathy, from brooding on the petty incidents that go to make up their lives in prison, from beating against the bars of their cage, is beneficial. There are those who protest against making the prison too comfortable and who seem to believe that people want to go there. There need be no fear of this. A cage is a cage even though it be gilded, and they are few indeed who seek imprisonment. Occasionally you have some saying they prefer the prison to the poorhouse. I have worked in both places and wholly agree with their preference, but that is not a testimony to the desirability of life in prison, but a reproach to the poorhouse. Those who support efforts to lessen the monotony of prison life are not moved by any desire that the prisoners may have a good time. For my own part, I am not concerned to make their lot less mechanical merely for their sakes, but for the sake of the community of which they are a part. I believe that imprisonment has been shown to have a bad effect on those who suffer it, and as some day they are to be turned loose on the community, it is advisable to prevent them being liberated in a condition that would make them more dangerous to their fellow-citizens, or more troublesome, than they were before their arrest.