Let us see how this may work out in practise. A convict, having served his term, is presented by the United States (or a state, as the case may be) with a suit of new clothes, and with a five dollar bill. He also gets a ticket on the railway to the place of his destination, and, though he is in theory a free man from the moment that he passes the prison gates, as a matter of fact an official is assigned to take charge of him and put him on his train; he cannot remain in Atlanta (supposing for the once that Atlanta Penitentiary has been his abiding place during his sentence) on penalty, if he do, of forfeiting his ticket and having to pay his own way. This may be a provision of the law, or it may be simply a measure to prevent ex-convicts from talking to newspaper reporters or other enquiring persons. The thing is invariably done, unless the man's residence happens to be Atlanta itself. In my own case (to cite an instance) the regular procedure was observed, with only one accidental modification. I received my suit of clothes, my five dollars, and my railway ticket--at least, the latter was given to the guard detailed to accompany me to the station, to be by him delivered to the conductor of my train. But I had previously made up my mind to say a few things to the reporter of a certain local newspaper, and I was ready, in case of necessity, to abandon my eleemosynary ticket and to pay my own way to New York on a later train. I had money of my own to do this with; most ex-prisoners, of course, have not. But the sacrifice was avoided by the circumstance that Mr. Moyer, the warden, was absent at the moment in Indianapolis, and the deputy incautiously let me out an hour or more before my train started. I lost no time in meeting my reporter, and during the next forty minutes, in an automobile provided for the occasion, we drove about the streets of Atlanta, while I imparted to his astonished ears my reasons for thinking that the penitentiary was not the paradise on earth that it had hitherto been believed to be. He brought me to the railway station in season for my train, and I got safely away, leaving mischief behind me. That was my good luck. On the other hand, a friend of mine recently released told me that the warden had called him into his office at the last moment, and had extracted from him a promise not to talk to any reporter in the town before leaving. That is the usual way; but it is the exception, sometimes, that counts. Let us return to our average convict, just out, and with the world before him, where to choose to display his prison-made garments and to spend his five dollars. It not seldom happens, to begin with, that he is not so much out as he had imagined. Our present method with convicts has peculiarities. Here is a common example.