e of you;
selected medical men will be retained to attend to your health; a
chaplain (of your own persuasion) will minister to your spiritual needs
and a librarian will supply you with books. And all this will be paid
for by the industrious men whom you live by robbing. In short, from the
moment that you adopt crime as a profession, we shall pay all your
expenses, whether you are in prison or at large.' Such is the attitude
of society; and I repeat it is that of a community of madmen.

"How much better and more essentially moral is my plan! I invite the
criminal to walk into my parlor. He walks in, a public nuisance and a
public danger; and he emerges in the form of a museum preparation of
permanent educational value.

"Thus I reflected and mapped out my course of action as I worked at what
I may call the foundation specimen of my collection. The latter kept me
busy for many days, but I was very pleased with the result when it was
finished. The bones were of a good color and texture, the fracture of
the skull, when carefully joined with fish-glue, was quite invisible,
and, as to the little dried preparation of the head, it was entirely
beyond my expectations. Comparing it with the photographs taken after
death, I was delighted to find that the facial characters and even the
expression were almost perfectly retained.

"It was a red-letter day when I put Number One in the great glass case
and took out the skeleton that I had bought from the dealer to occupy
its place until it was ready. The substitute was no longer needed and I
accordingly dismantled it and destroyed it piecemeal in the furnace,
crushing the calcined bones into unrecognizable fragments.

"Meanwhile I had been pushing on my preparations for further captures. A
large, mahogany-faced safe was fixed in the dining-room to contain the
silver; a burglar alarm was fitted under the floor in front of the safe
and connected with a trembler-drum that was kept (with the concussor and
a few other appliances) locked in a hanging cupboard at my bed-head,
ready to be switched on and placed under my pillow at night. I secretly
purchased a quantity of paste jewelry--bracelets, tiaras, pendants and
such like glittering trash--and when everything was ready I engaged two
new servants of decidedly queer antecedents. I was at first a little
doubtful about the cook, but the housemaid was a certainty from the
outset. Her character from her late reverend and philanthropic employ