Lest any one may charge me with extravagant optimism in regard to convicts, or may think that to me every goose is a swan, I wish to say that I have written only of the men—among hundreds of convicts—who have most interested me; men whom I have known thoroughly and who never attempted to deceive me. Every writer's vision of life and of humanity is inevitably colored by his own personality, and I have pictured these men as I saw them; but I have also endeavored, in using so much from their letters, to leave the reader free to form his own opinion. Doubtless the key to my own position is the fact that I always studied these prisoners as men; and I tried not to obscure my vision by looking at them through their crimes. In recalling conversations I have not depended upon memory alone, as much of what was said in our interviews was written out while still fresh in my mind.

I have no wish to see our prisons abolished; but thousands of individuals and millions of dollars have been sacrificed to wrong methods of punishment; and if we aim to reform our criminals we must first reform our methods of dealing with them, from the police court to the penitentiary.

Winifred Louise Taylor.

August 6, 1914.