Offense: Petit Larceny. She was born in Prag, Bohemia, and educated in Bohemian and German. She has a father and sister living in the old country and an aunt in New Jersey to whom she came three years and a half ago. This aunt and her family are poor and very foreign and unprogressive. Esther worked for them faithfully and gained little knowledge of English or training of any sort while with them. She left them several times and took positions as waitress in private families, still helping them out from her meager earnings. Her last position was as waitress in a small restaurant in New York where she met Lilian Marx. She had been there eight months when the restaurant went out of business and the girls were thrown out of work. It was soon after this that the girls stole from Macy’s store several articles, two pairs of 59–cent stockings, a belt and some cheap manicure articles, apparently on the impulse of the moment, because they saw another girl doing it so easily. In jail they were warned by the other girls not to tell the truth about anything and they were too frightened to think what to tell. Esther’s story was in the main true, but Lilian made up in obedience to the other girl’s suggestion a conflicting tale. The probation officer felt that she was not getting the truth, and as the two girls were so young and so without protection, she advised their commitment to the institution in order that the institution might investigate their case more thoroughly. Investigation in the case of Esther revealed nothing further against the girl than the one offense for which she was arrested. We have found her to be intelligent, conscientious, and, far beyond other girls, sensitive to fine distinctions of right and wrong. It was the opinion of the Laboratory that she might get more harm from association with the girls than good from a long term in the Reformatory and that it would be well to parole her as soon as she had had some training and a suitable position was in view.... She will not write to her aunt because ... the aunt said she did not know any such girl. Will not write to her father because she does not want him to know anything about the matter. She had heard that we sometimes send girls back to their own country, and she would be glad to go except that she would have to make some excuse to her father for being sent back. When I asked her if she would tell him the truth she said: “Tell him that I was sent home for stealing a pair of stockings?” It seems to strike her as quite ridiculous. [The following letters (except the last) were written by Esther to her friend Lilian and show her general attitudes. The letters were written mainly in Bohemian during the seven months she was on parole, and were translated for the institution by a Bohemian woman whose rendering is similar to the few letters written in English by Esther. I have adapted the translations only slightly. About half the letters are printed here.]