When once the feet find themselves walking in the pathway of crime, it is very difficult for them ever to walk in paths of honesty and uprightness thereafter. NINE TIMES As I was walking through the penitentiary, in company with Deputy Warden Bradbury, he pointed out an old convict, and said, "There is a fellow that has seen prison life. He is here this time under the name of Gus Loman. He is now serving his NINTH term in this prison. At the expiration of one of his sentences he went away and was gone over a year, and when he came back I asked him where he had been so long. His reply was, 'Simply rusticating at Joliet, Ill., with some friends.' Every time he is sent to prison he gives in a new and different name and, of course, no one but himself knows what his real name is." When asked why he comes to the prison so often, he remarked that, when once in prison it is impossible to get work to do on the outside, and he had made up his mind to spend the rest of his days in prison. He claimed that the fates were against him and he could not make a living on the outside, as no one would employ him; that he had tried it several times and failed, and now he had given up all hope. He is a bold, bad and natural thief. As soon as his term is out he goes a little distance from the prison, gets on a spree, gets into trouble, steals something, and soon finds himself back again in the penitentiary. He is now over seventy years of age, and is both a physical and moral wreck. What an awful warning for the young is the history of such a wasted life. DESPERADO JOHNSON This convict is the most daring and desperate criminal in the Missouri penitentiary. The prison authorities have had more trouble with him than with any other man who ever found a home behind the walls of this great institution. He was sent up from Jackson County, and was charged with murdering two men before he was finally convicted of crime. On trial for these two murders be was successful in proving an alibi. The last time he was not so successful, and received a sentence of twelve years. Soon after his arrival at the prison he was set to work in one of the shops. When he became a little acquainted, his innate cussedness induced him to raise a riot in the prison. It was a desperate undertaking, but he was equal to the emergency. For days and weeks he was on the alert, and when a guard was not on the watch he would communicate with a convict, and enlist his services, and give him his instructions as to what part he should perform when the signal should be given.