Excerpt from The Man Behind the Bars 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 inevi tably 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 recall ing 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. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.