"Do you know how a man feels when he leaves an institution of this kind?" one of the Auburn prisoners, a third termer, once asked me. "I'll tell you how I feel at the end of my first term. I just hated everybody and everything, and I made up my mind to get even."

Imprisonment? The central of individual freedom? Is not only the greatest punishment that society can inflict on man, but you cannot go farther without ceasing to punish him in an impersonal way? The way of nature. The various forms of torture which we have from time to time added to imprisonment? The lash, the paddle, the head-cage, the straining up. The gill of water, the dark cell? All these are not the impersonal decrees of society? They are the personal, vindictive, arbitrary acts of some one or more individuals holding irresponsible authority over other human beings, a relation which has most disastrous effects in both directions; it not only turns the punished into wicked and revengeful wild beasts, but it turns the punisher? A good-intentioned man? Into an arbitrary and cruel tyrant.

Even where brutalities are not in evidence there is something about the prison discipline which prevails everywhere today that defeats its purpose. Let me describe a day at Auburn during my voluntary imprisonment. After the long and restless night the regular day's routine begins. Rising boll (and no man may rise any sooner); then dressing; then the iron-grated door is unlocked and the lever pushed down; each man shoves open his door and, joining the hurrying members of his company.  carrying their heavy iron buckets, traverses the long gallery and stands at the doorway. 