Negro criminals have the most cheerful and encouraging visitors. The Black race is blessed with a disposition to view the bright side of all situations and experiences. It is a cheerful race. The Negro is a foe to gloomy thoughts. It is hard to depress him. He will dance, sing and make merry at the foot of the gallows. The Negro visitors enter smiling and so depart. They talk with prisoners just as though they were free and comfortably ensconced in pleasant homes. They cheer instead of depressing the prisoner. The Italians are really distressing in their efforts to comfort friends in prison. They jabber, whine, cry, caress and condemn and reproach until they have the prisoner in a state bordering on insanity. They leave him in a condition truly pitiful. Instead of cheering him, he has been rendered far more miserable by his visitors. He dreams of electric chairs, prisons, policemen and handcuffs. The bananas his visitors bring he could well do without, as he could the visits of friends who so greatly depress him. Fritz appears and says to Hans, “I think you go by the prison alretty, ain’t it?” “Naw, I thinks I go by the shudge bimeby, pretty quick, and he lets me go home to mine Louisa. I am not guilty alretty,” responds the hopeful Hans. German visitors as a general thing conduct themselves sensibly. They are not emotional, but hardheaded and sensible. They smoke with the prisoner, laugh and joke, and leave him in a cheerful frame of mind. The German is sociable and not easily rendered gloomy or depressed. The German visitors try to imbue prisoners with the idea that their trouble will soon end, and in a few days they will be sitting in Hoffmans’ beer garden with a glass of lager, and a plate of sauerkraut before them. So believing, the prisoner lies down to pleasant dreams. The privilege of seeing and conversing with friends, all things considered, is a great boon to prisoners and should never be denied them, especially those awaiting trial. Many a man naturally inclined to take a dark view of his trouble has been kept sane and sound from self-murder by the daily appearance of some loved one. The human heart when filled with fear and foreboding yearns for sympathy, encouragement and comfort. If these influences be withheld, the sufferings are so terrible as to pass human understanding. To an imprisoned man who is friendless, the coming of sympathy and kindly helpful interest is like a visit from God’s Holy Angels. No wonder the prisoner cries out in the night in the agony of soul. No wonder he offers a plaint that is sad and sorrowful. The following lines from the pen of an unfortunate show the harshness of even our modern prison life: “I know not whether the law be right, Or whether the law be wrong; All that we know who lie in jail Is that the bars are strong; And that each day is like a year— A year whose days are wrong!