There is no adequate provision for even the discovery of such deficiencies among those children who are taken into custody, said Mr. Coulter. “If while these defectives were still children,” he declared, “the causes of the abnormal mental condition which predisposed them to prey on society could have been removed, many of them would have been saved to useful citizenship. With such cases the time for relief, if curative or ameliorating remedies are possible, is in youth and at the first indication of criminal tendencies. * * * The causes of the overwhelming tendencies that array them against society may often be determined by pathological and physiological and psychological examination. Such causes, for instance, may be the existence of adenoids, which retard normal development, render the child irritable and mentally lazy; they may be the absence of thyroid glands, which brings about cretinism; they may be due to hereditary syphilis, which often results in a lesion of the brain. The children of this class are not responsible for the acts that lead to their commitment to reformatories. Taken in childhood, these causes may often be removed and the victim restored to society a normal being. A correct diagnosis is absolutely essential. Without a correct diagnosis no rational treatment is possible.” AN INMATE’S STORY It is a principle of evidence that the testimony of a witness with a favorable bias is to be taken at a discount, whereas the admissions of one with an unfavorable bias are of face value. Therefore, when an ex-prisoner speaks good of the prison in which he has been incarcerated, we listen with nearly full credence. Recently the Philadelphia _North American_ published the story of a forger who had served his term in the state prison at Charlestown, Mass. “That was a red-hot prison fifteen years ago,” says the _North American_. “It was infamous as a hell on earth, from the punishments, which included stringing up by the thumbs, the humiliating paddle and the water cure by means of the fire hose turned on the recalcitrant in his tiny cell, to the prisoners’ own contribution to the pandemonium in the way of riots and stabbing affrays. The discipline was as shamefully farcical as the prison officials were brutal.” Then the conscience of New England rebelled, continues the _North American_. A change in wardens made General Benjamin F. Bridges head of the institution and N. D. Allen deputy warden. These men abolished all cruel and inhuman punishments, stopped regarding the prisoners as they would wolves, treated them like men of “decent honor and probity,” and established, in a word, the “friendship system.” The spirit and atmosphere of the place changed. The story of the treatment now accorded the prisoners in this institution, as told by the time-expired forger mentioned above, is in part as follows: “The convict learns, the minute he enters, that the whole world is not against him.