"Bless your heart, sir, I don't know how I'd keep body and soul together if it wasn't for the law. If people would only let the law alone, I'd be one of the happiest guys on earth. But, damn 'em, they won't let it alone. First, they put their heads together and frame up this blasted parole game on us. Just about the time we begin to think we're comfortably settled up the river, 'long comes some doggone home-wrecker and gets us out on parole. Then we got to go to work and begin all over again. Sometimes, the way things are nowadays, it takes months to get back into the pen again. We got to live, ain't we? We got to eat, ain't we? Well, there you are. Why can't they leave us alone instead of drivin' us out into a cold, unfeelin' world where we got to either steal or starve to death? There wouldn't be one tenth as much stealin' and murderin' as there is if they didn't force us into it. Why, doggone it, I've seen some of the most cruel and pitiful sights you ever heard of up there at Sing Sing. Fellers leadin' a perfectly honest life suddenly chucked out into a world full of vice and iniquity and forced--absolutely forced,--into a life of crime. There they were, livin' a quiet, peaceful life, harmin' nobody, and bing! they wake up some mornin' and find themselves homeless. Do you realize what that means, Mr. Strumpet? It means--" "Yollop, if you please." "It means they got to go out and slug some innocent citizen, some poor guy that had nothing whatever to do with drivin' them out, and then if they happen to be caught they got to go through with all the uncertainty of a trial by jury, never knowin' but what some pin-headed juror will stick out for acquittal and make it necessary to go through with it all over again. And more than that, they got to listen to the testimony of a lot of policemen, and their own derned fool lawyers, tryin' to deprive them of their bread and butter, and the judge's instructions that nobody pays any attention to except the shorthand reporter,--and them just settin' there sort of helpless and not even able to say a word in their own behalf because the law says they're innocent till they're proved guilty,--why, I tell you, Mr. Dewlap, it's heart-breakin'. And all because some weak-minded smart aleck gets them paroled. As I was sayin', the law's all right if it wasn't for the people that abuse it." "This is most interesting," said Mr. Yollop. "I've never quite understood why ninety per cent of the paroled convicts go back to the penitentiary so soon after they've been liberated." "Of course," explained Mr. Smilk, "there are a few that don't get back. That's because, in their anxiety to make good, they get killed by some inexperienced policeman who catches 'em comin' out of somebody's window or--" "By the way, Cassius, let me interrupt you. Will you have a cigar? Nice, pleasant way to pass an hour or two--beg pardon?"