It is not reasonable to expect that a prisoner will take the trouble to understand and answer the questions of a stranger whose object in quizzing him he does not know. Few of us would care to unbosom ourselves to the first visitor who chose to interest himself in our affairs. He might count himself lucky if he did not find himself violently expelled. The prisoner cannot throw an unwelcome visitor out, but sometimes he would like to; and the attitude of some who seek to do good is at times provocative. When the enquirer is known it is a different story. Get the name of being "all right" and you will learn, but you must first deserve confidence. Frankness begets frankness, and for my own part I have found very few prisoners who wilfully sought to deceive me when they knew why I sought information from them. It was either freely given, or withheld with the plain statement that they could not fairly give it. The information given has not always been accurate, but there are not so many people who are accurate in their statements--not through want of desire to be truthful, but because their perception, their memory, or both, are blurred. But more than frankness is required; there must be some ability to see things from the standpoint of those who are questioned, and a sufficient knowledge of their language to understand an answer when it is given. There are very many people who think they know the English language, and who do not seem to have realised the fact that a different significance is attached to words in different districts and among different classes. There are not merely slang words, but words used in a slang sense, and when these are taken literally the result is misunderstanding. Yet we are sometimes treated to the result of investigations by people who have had no training, and who in a marvellously short time can obtain voluminous and striking information; how much it is worth is another question. Try to get by question and answer a short record of the antecedents of any of your friends, and you will find that it cannot be done in a few minutes, that it will not be free from inaccuracies, and that it will require explanation before you understand it as they would like. To obtain such information from a stranger is a more difficult task.