It sounds like a jest; but the men are here, the thing is done. In some moods I would say to myself, "It's too preposterous--it can't be--it's an hallucination--a bad dream!" But there it was, visible and palpable. Was it protection for society to shut up a man from ability to support those dependent on him, who were thus themselves driven to want and perhaps crime, multiplying the original criminality by three or four or half a dozen? Could any injury which the culprit could do to the community equal the injury thus done by the community to him and his, and indirectly to itself, by such treatment? Or could the technical and perhaps unconscious violator of an obscure and whimsical law be reformed by putting him on an equality with a cold-blooded murderer, or with a man who had grown rich by selling the shame of women? Was the punishment equable which handled with equal severity a brutish negro from the cotton fields, and a man brought up in refinement and gentleness? But I would go further, and challenge the right of the community to inflict penal imprisonment as we know it at all. Some criminals belong in hospitals, others in insane asylums, for others the thoughtless neglect and selfishness of society is responsible, and they should be succored, not punished; and the remainder should be constrained, under surveillance but not in confinement, to compensate for the harm they did by labor or self-denial aimed directly at that result. But of this hereafter. Meanwhile, I paid attention to my companions themselves. In their intercourse with one another there was a singular amenity or pleasantness, and with some who had been prisoners for a long time, a sort of childlikeness. But it was like the childlikeness of a person partly dazed, or recovering from a severe illness or shock. They greeted one another with a covert smile, an unobtrusive movement of head or hand; only when under direct observation of an official would they pass without a sign. The usual words were, "How're you feeling?" or, "How're they comin'?" not in the perfunctory tone of greetings in the outer world, but with an accent of real interest and solicitude. The answer would be, "Good!" "Fine!" with as much heartiness as could be thrown into it--though it might be obvious enough that the truth was far from being that.