It was about this time that the newspapers were full of the daring escape of a convict from San Quentin prison. He was a ferocious man. He had been ill-made in the making. He had not been born right, and he had not been helped by any molding he had received at the hands of society. The hands of society are harsh, and this man was a striking sample of its handiwork. He was a beast--a human beast, it is true, but nevertheless so terrible a beast that he can be best be characterized as carnivorous

In San Quentin prison he had proved incorrigible. Punishment failed to break his spirit. He could die dumb-mad and fighting to the last, but he could not live and be beaten. The more fiercely he fought, the more harshly society handled him, and the only effect of harshness was to make him fiercer. Straight-jackets to restrain him, starvation, and beatings and clubbings were the wrong treatment for him; but it was the treatment he received. It was the treatment he had received from the time he was a pulpy, shapeable wolf in a San Francisco slum--soft clay in the hands of society and ready to be formed into something