During my career as a yegg I was arrested four times and stood trial in two of the cases and “beat” (was acquitted in) both. One case never came to trial, the other one brought me a State prison sentence of fifteen years. The crime was blowing open a safe from which we failed to secure a single penny. Such is the life of a yegg. I heard that sentence of fifteen years pronounced upon me with a feeling mixed with contempt and hatred. I hated society, I was antagonistic to religion, and the sentence of fifteen years but aggravated both. I pictured the bank thief, the respectable crook getting away with the savings of widows and children, with his paltry three years’ punishment. I saw the seducer of[Pg 84] chaste women come off the stand with a mere sentence of months. The pictures intensified my hatred and I entered prison to begin my sentence, a criminal in mind and nature.

Dante once wrote that he found this inscription over the doors of hell: “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.” This describes to a nicety the prison in which I was confined for nearly eight years. Over the thousand and one prisoners, a warden of the old school of penology presided. He was one who believed in and practiced the............