e thorough appreciation of all that can
be read and heard of it thereafter.

If this sympathy and understanding, coming from a vivid personal
experience, is desirable in the case of a foreign country, it is even more
necessary in the case of a group of men set apart by society, such as this
community of the prison; for in your case the conditions under which you
live are more unnatural and less easy for most people to grasp than those
of a foreign country. Moreover, most of the books that have been written
about you by so-called penologists and other "experts" are written, so far
as I can determine, from such an outside standpoint and with so little
intelligent sympathy and vital understanding that I am inclined to the
belief that very few of them are of any particular value. Indeed many are
positively harmful; for they are based upon the false and cruel assumption
that the prisoner is not a human being like the rest of us, but a strange
sort of animal called a "criminal"--wholly different in his instincts,
feelings and actions from the rest of mankind.

I am curious to find out, therefore, whether I am right; whether our
Prison System is as unintelligent as I think it is; whether it flies in
the face of all common sense and all human nature, as I think it does;
whether, guided by sympathy and experience, we cannot find something far
better to take its place, as I believe we can.

So by permission of the authorities and with your help, I am coming here
to learn what I can at first hand. I have put myself on trial in the court
of conscience and a verdict has been rendered of "guilty"--guilty of
having lived for many years of my life indifferent to and ignorant of what
was going on behind these walls. For this crime I have sentenced myself to
a short term at hard labor in Auburn Prison (with commutation, of course,
for good behavior). I expect to begin serving my sentence this week. I am
coming here to live your life; to be housed, clothed, fed, treated in all
respects like one of you. I want to see for myself exactly what your life
is like, not as viewed from the outside looking in, but from the inside
looking out.

Of course I am not so foolish as to think that I can see it from exactly
your point of view. Manifestly a man cannot be a real prisoner when he may
at any moment let down the bars and walk out; and spending a few hours or
days in a cell is quite a different thing from a weary round of weeks,
months, years.