I cannot go on, though I have used only a fraction of my notebook. Moreover, I am inclined to think that the physical punishments I have instanced are not the worst that are administered in Atlanta and perhaps in other prisons. Great ingenuity is shown in the application of mental tortures, which have their outcome in insanity, but which never can be investigated by commissions and inspectors. An insane man is as safe as a dead man--if he tells tales, no one will pay attention to him. The cat-and-mouse game is a favorite with the inhumane type of wardens. Give your man alternations of hope and despair, and the results will soon reward your pains. Then there are the insults, the gibes and threats, the obscure forms of tyranny and outrage, the degradation of manhood--there are a hundred subtle ways of destroying and corrupting the spirit of a man. To be compelled to occupy the same cell with certain types of criminals is a most successful form of inhumanity; and when, as often happens, one of the two is a comparatively innocent boy, the results are awful. "Insufficient number of cells" is the explanation given; and at Atlanta at least there are the unfinished cell houses, which might have been finished years ago, had the appropriations been properly applied. "Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner!" we pray in our churches. But He says, "With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto you again." We do not set the Lord a good example of mercy in our prisons. XI THE GRASP OF THE TENTACLES I have spoken of punishments inside the prison. When a man has served his time and is set free (as it is called) another punishment begins, which may be worse and more disheartening than the suffering endured inside the walls. As I listened, on Saturday afternoons, or at other times, to the stories hurriedly and guardedly told me by my fellow convicts who had served more terms than one, I said to myself, "The wrong of prison is bad enough; but this of what happens to a man after prison is worse, and monstrous." The endless tentacles follow him, reach out after him, surround him, fasten upon him, and draw him back whence he came. And not that only, but they mark him and isolate him, disable him from free action, make honesty impossible for him. No citizen of whatever integrity and standing, if so pursued, maligned and undermined, would have any choice left him but either to perish or to break the laws. The spies of the government, with the prestige and power of the government behind them (however despicable and vicious they may be in themselves), can ruin any man; but ex-convicts are their staple food.