I asked myself if it were possible that that man would dare to abuse the trust reposed in him in that manner. Certainly! The whole system of secrecy upon which our prisons are managed is just calculated to screen such conduct, and to induce the practice of it, if there be a tendency, in the disposition of the man who has charge, to do it. If the testimony of prisoners is not to be relied upon, a Master could make it for the interest of his officers to remain silent. Some might look at it in the same light that he did, and feel perfectly satisfied. Why should not a prisoner's testimony be taken in a matter where he is concerned? He has been tried and convicted of an offense. Is that fact a conviction in every other case where he may have difficulty with another person? If prisoners are entirely unworthy of trust, how does it happen that such a man, once a convict himself, according to the traditions of that prison, has charge there, and the unlimited confidence of the Board? I noticed, in making out the report of inmates, that there were not so many women as men in prison. There was satisfaction in obtaining that fact, because I had entertained the idea that women were more frequently punished for their offenses than men. It was a mistake, except in the one crime of licentiousness. In that man goes comparatively free, and woman is the only sufferer in what is, to say the least, their mutual sin. I say, almost every woman will say, and with truth, for the sin that man leads her into. Woman does not seek man, in that way, in the first instance. He draws her into the sin, and when she becomes abandoned, and the Penitentiary brings her up, she is no worse than he. She becomes a night-walker, and suffers for her violation of law. He is a night-walker also, as miserable and degraded a man as she is woman; but who prosecutes him, and gives him a sentence in the House of Correction! He continues a night-walker unmolested while she suffers for her sin. He walks into the parlors of the intellectually cultivated, and socially refined,--I was about to say virtuous woman. There can be little virtue in such shaky morality. I can only say of the chaste woman, and she takes the hand of the night-walker, and greets him cordially, and makes him welcome, especially if he be rich,--the hand that leads her fellow woman to her social ruin if not to her eternal death. If woman were to help make the laws, could she remedy this state of things,--would she? Would she take her husband, father, brother from his home to the Penitentiary? She must do that, in order to rid society of the pest of night-walking. She may do that now if she will. The law gives her the opportunity. Instead of lavishing her courtesies, as she now does, upon the male offender, she might extend her charity in kindly assistance to his victim, if she were disposed to do it.