That was all Jim wanted of me, and at first he refused to take the small loan I pressed upon him, although the money he received from the state would not go very far in New York City. "I don't want to take it, Tom," he objected, "and I'll tell you why. You'd be giving me that money thinking I was going straight. Now I'm going to try to go straight; but you've no idea of the difficulties. How am I going to get an honest job? The cops all know me well, they'll follow me wherever I go. I can't enter a theater, I can't get on to a street car. If anything happens I'll be one of the first men the coppers'll be after. How much of a chance have I to get an honest job? Now, if I take your money and then didn't go straight I should feel like the devil." "Jim," said I, "you'll take that money because you _are_ going straight. I'll bank on you." My confidence was not misplaced. Jim went to New York and, having the luck to have a home with a good mother and a brother who is straight, Jim had time to hunt his job until he found it. About two weeks after his release Jim lunched with me in New York, and in the course of conversation remarked, "Say, Tom, don't you think there's such a thing as an honest crook?" "Sure, Jim," I answered, "you're one." A little taken aback by this direct application, Jim said, "Well, you know what I mean. I'll tell you a case. There was three of us pulled off a little piece of business once, and afterward one of those fellows wanted me to join with him and freeze out the other fellow. Now, that's what I don't call honest, do you?" "I certainly do not," I said. "And now I'll tell you what was in my mind. I call you an honest crook, Jim, because while you've been a crook you have been square with your pals. Because the operations of your mind are honest, you haven't tried to fool yourself. There is nothing the matter with your mental operations. You have been simply traveling in the wrong direction. Make up your mind to shift your course, and you'll have no trouble going straight, because you are naturally an honest man." Space forbids my going further into Jim's interesting history, but up to the time of writing my diagnosis seems to have been correct. Jim has a good job, is going straight, and just before Christmas he said to me, "Tom, I never was so happy in my life!" How many more men like Jim are there in prison? Are they not worth saving? Jim said in his letter, "Prison life did not reform me, nor will it reform any man." That is true; and no man will find help in prison for reforming himself until the conditions are greatly changed--until a system has been established in which a man can gain some sense of civic responsibility toward the community in which he lives. If such a sense of responsibility could be developed while in prison, would it not greatly help in a man's conduct after his release?