too indulgent officials smile sadly and protest that they have not the heart to be stern. "Coddling criminals"--the alliteration makes it roll pleasantly off the tongue! But do I forget the many indulgences given to prisoners--and so profusely celebrated in every mention publicly made of Atlanta Penitentiary? Let me name them once more. Saturday being a non-working day, it used to be the custom to lock the prisoners in their cells from Saturday morning till Monday morning--a custom still followed at many penitentiaries; for how could they be controlled if not split up into working gangs, and thus prevented from conspiring to mutiny? It is one of the obsessions of prison authorities that the prisoners are severally and collectively a sort of wild beast, always straining at the leash, and ready at the least opportunity to break forth in wild and deadly disorder. It is obviously expedient, too, to impress the public with this conviction, and therefore, in part, we have the clubs, rifles, and general parade of watchfulness. As a matter of fact, meanwhile, nothing is more easy to handle than a prisonful of convicts, if the most elementary tact be used; and they are eagerly grateful for the smallest unforced and spontaneous act of kindness. Until about eighteen months ago, however, severe restrictions were in vogue, and the warden declared that it was his belief and policy that men in prison should be taught by precept and illustration to regard themselves as dead to the world; that they should be held practically incommunicado, no visitors, letters at most but once a month, no conversation between prisoners--silence, solitude, suffocation in this terrible quicksand of jail for months, years, or a lifetime, at the mercy of men to whom mercy is a jest. Such a régimen is still in force at many jails, and when combined with contract labor, nothing in the age-long history of penal imprisonment shows a blacker record. It is advocated as the best way to induce men to reform, and become, after release, useful and industrious members of the community. A couple of years or so ago, Atlanta was visited by an Attorney-General, who was not prepared for what he saw, nor had the things he should not have seen been removed from sight before he saw them. He demanded some improvements on the spot, and soon after a new deputy warden was appointed--a young man, of kindly disposition, though weak, not inured as yet to the conventional brutalities, and with a backing in Washington which gave him unusual powers. Among good things which he instituted and insisted on were--two and a half hours outdoors on Saturday afternoons, for baseball and general relaxation; conversation at meals; music at dinner by a band made up from convicts; regular bi-weekly letters, with extra letters allowed between times by special request to orderly convicts; concerts or vaudeville performances every month or so in the chapel, by professionals.