“ The effort to express the modern attitude towards crime in the old phraseology is like putting new wine in old skins. Just as we no longer say that a man is "possessed of the devil," but use such newer words as "paranoia," "paresis" and so forth, we must give up such terms as "burglary in the second degree." It is a remnant of mediæval scholasticism and means nothing today. It is a dead concept of an act and gives no account of the live human being who is supposed to have committed it. "Murder," the code implies, "is always murder, just as oxygen is always oxygen." ”

“ The very first sight of her in the Tombs had stirred me, as the first sight of no other woman had ever done. It was not so much a desire for personal possession as a vague feeling that the man to whom she gave her love would be happy above other men. In the back of my brain, as I sat talking to her, was a continual questioning. She had said she was a socialist. I saw that she had the fearless, open attitude to life, which is the hallmark of the revolutionists. ”

“ My best efforts landed Jerry—innocent—in prison. The one time when I violated every rule I had laid down for my guidance in the Tombs, when I lied profusely, played dirty politics, compounded a felony, and went on a man-hunt, with hate in my heart, I disposed of the pimp Blackie, freed Nina, gave happiness to Norman. Marie is the result.
Certainly one of the best things in my life has been Ann's love. It came to me without any striving on my part, it has been in no way a reward for effort or aspiration. Step by step it has seemed to me wrong. I do not believe in free love. ”

“ I have always sympathized with the cud-chewing habit of the cow. The impressions of the hour are never clear-cut with me. For an experience to become real, I must mull over it a long time; gradually it sinks into my consciousness and becomes a vital possession.
Benson's sort of kindness was absolutely new to me. No one had ever done things for me as he did. And as it surprised me to have him take the trouble to send me a can of my favorite tobacco, so the affection, the intimate revelations of love, which Ann gave me, was a thing undreamed of. ”

“ Speeding into the city, to my grim task in the Tombs, from the sweet solace of her home, I found inspiration and hope for my daily grind. There was an entirely special sensation, experienced at no other time, when I found myself aboard the ferry, leaning over the fore-rail, watching the sky-scrapers struggle up through the morning mist. Perhaps all of us know some such exhilarating environment, which makes us exult in life and work and purpose. ”

“ I recall how strange seemed that first dinner in the Children's House with Norman. And then I think of Billy. Why! The knowledge of life those pioneer settlement workers were just beginning to discover are conversational commonplaces among Billy's friends. The abolition of poverty!
The vision comes to me of Margot, delicate, fragile, ignorant—too ignorant to be afraid. All the wisdom of the ages—past and future—seemed to her to be bound up in the King James version. I compare her with Marie. She is as strong as a peasant girl. I have given up playing tennis with her, she beats me too easily. ”

“ They kept up a brave attitude—to me it seemed a hollow pretense—that God was being very good to them, that he was releasing her from the bondage of life, calling her to joy unspeakable. However much she was attached to things known—the Father, her absent son, the graves of her other children, the homely things of the parsonage, the few pieces of inherited silver, the familiar chairs—it was incumbent on her to appear glad to go out into the unknown.
It was my first encounter with death. How strange it is that the greatest of all commonplaces should always surprise us! ”

“ I might accept these classic models and tell directly the story of my work in the Tombs. I might limit my narrative to that part of myself which was involved in friendship with Norman Benson. Or again, I might strip off everything else, ignore the flesh and bones and blood vessels, and write of myself as an "emotional system." In one of these ways I might more nearly approach a literary production. But certainly it would be at a sacrifice of verisimilitude. Perhaps some great writer will come who will unite the artistic form with an impression of actuality. ”

“ I was not in love with Ann. Her letters rarely interested me. It was a task to answer them. Our contacts with life were utterly different.
I kept to the "forms" of chastity. There are those who believe that there is some virtue in preserving forms. I have never felt so. It did not require much effort to keep to this manner of life. I was constantly observing prostitution from the view-point of the Tombs. And to anyone who saw these women, as I did, in their ultimate misery and degradation, they could excite nothing but pity. There is no part of the whole problem of crime so utterly nauseating. ”

“ Doesn't most of the prostitution come from the free love of weak girls? Even when the cadets go after them just to make money, isn't it love on the girl's part? What they think is love? We must fight and fight and fight to make women realize that they mustn't love just for themselves. That it isn't right towards the race for them to love blindly—that it's a sin, a social sin, for us to love until we're sure of ourselves, sure of the man, sure for the children. It's a sin for a woman to sacrifice herself to a man just because she loves him—a sin even to take risks. ”

“ Just look at the effect this sort of business has had on our politics! We Americans are dead. New ideas, discussion of fundamental political principles are fomenting everywhere but here. A Paris cab-driver thinks more about the theory of government than our congressman. We Americans sit back—our feet on the table—puff out our chests and say 'complete and absolute liberty for all time was decreed by the fathers in 1789.' How many men do you know who ever seriously questioned that proposition? How many Americans really believe that it takes 'eternal vigilance' to be free? ”

“ If Ann had been this type of a woman, she might have kicked over the traces, and have left her people to marry me, as carefully reared daughters have done in similar crises since the world was young.
But she had a very definite theory that love should not be allowed to interfere with life. Each of us, she held, has been given a distinct personality, a special job to do in the world, and the development of this personality, the performance of this individual task, is the great aim of life. Love should not distract one from the race to the appointed goal. Love is an adornment of life. ”

“ Norman whispered fiercely, "or is she beautiful?"
We tiptoed back to the library.
"Can you keep an eye on her for a while?" he said. "I had to have Guiseppe throw away her clothes—they were too dirty. I must get her some new ones. It won't take me long."
But he stopped at the door and came back.
"It's the way she smiles in her sleep, Arnold, that gets me." He hesitated a moment, trying to find words to fit his thought. He, who was usually so glib, had to search now. "You know, they say dreams are just a re-hash of waking experience. But—well—it isn't the kind of smile you'd expect from her. ”

“ Unless we can expect our judges to be omniscient—and no one of them is so fatuous as to believe himself infallible—we are asking them to gamble with justice, to play dice with men's souls. We give them the whole power of the state to enforce their guesses. The counters with which they play are human beings—not only individual offenders, but whole families, innocent women and children. Such an occupation—as a steady job—will necessarily degrade them. ”

“ I never joined any socialist organization. I don't care much for these soap-box people. They talk about reconstructing our industrial institutions, and most of them don't know how to make change for a dollar. They talk about overthrowing Wall Street, and they don't know railroad-stock from live-stock. They don't begin to realize what a big thing it is—nor how unjust and crazy and top-heavy. But sometimes I think I must be a socialist. I can't open my mouth and say anything serious without everybody calling me a socialist. ”

“ There is a period at the end of adolescence when if ever, you feel an exuberance of animal well-being, when it is a pride to be able to lift a heavier weight than your neighbor, when it is a joy to feel your muscles ache with fatigue, when your whole being is opening up to a new sensation for which you know no name. I remember glorious tramps in the deep winter snow, as I look back on them I know that the thrilling zest, which then seemed to me intimately connected with the muscles of my thighs and back, was the dawning realization of the sheer beauty of the world. ”

“ Much of my life has hinged on just such stupid, ludicrous chances. It poured—soaking and cold. It was a serious matter for us. We were traveling light, with nothing but our rucksacs nearer than Paris, no outer clothes except those we wore. Although we ran all the way we were drenched to the skin before we reached the hotel. The rain stopped as abruptly as it had commenced. We were too breathless to talk as we clambered up the stairs to our garret rooms.
After a hard rub, dry underclothes and pajamas, I wrapped myself in a blanket and lit my pipe. ”

“ The slap-stick comedians had finished their turn, the lights flared up and for the first time I noticed Nina's resplendent gown. It was really a beautiful dress. If her hair had been done up with a little more skill and if Norman had not set all his authority against an excess of powder and paint she would have looked quite like an uptown lady, of the Holland Houses or Rector's, like those who go up Fifth Avenue to a ball or like those who turn over to Broadway and strut about in the theater lobbies to attract the attention of some gentleman from out of town. ”

“ My title has been changed from county detective to probation officer, and I have been given some assistants. Certainly there has been improvement. The rougher edges of justice have been worn off. But the bandage is still over the eyes of the goddess. The names of the judges have changed, but the inherent viciousness of their situation is unaltered. There is now, just as when I started, ten times as much work as I can do to even alleviate the manifold cruelties of the place. It is still—in spite of the new building—called the Tombs. ”

“ One thing we all had experienced in common—the journey up to Albany to try and cajole our legislators into doing something, the value and wisdom of which no sane man could doubt. A new Acts of the Apostles might be written about the endless succession of delegations which gathered in the Grand Central Station, en route for the capital, fired with enthusiasm for some reform—a new tenement house law, some decent regulation of child labor, some protection against the crying evils of the fraudulent immigrant banks or the vicious employment agencies and so forth. ”

“ We must think not only of the few women, here and there, the giants like Ann, who are strong enough to stand alone, but of all the women—and the children. That's just the point. We're trying to learn how not to stand alone—how to stand together. We've got to ignore our own preferences and rights and learn to fight for woman's rights. ”

“ The soul of the slum was in his story. It was an interpretation of the ethics which grow up where the struggle for existence is bitter. An ethics which is foul with the stink of fetid tenements, wizened with hunger, distorted with fear.
The attitude of the people of the Tombs to this dual life of theirs, the insistence with which they kept separate their professional and personal life, was shown clearly when a young assistant district attorney broke the convention. He brought his wife to court! He was a youngster, it was his first big case, he wanted her to hear his eloquence. ”

“ Such stories had come to my knowledge before, they are the commonplaces of the police courts. But as Norman had said the first morning, such things must happen to someone near us, before we realize them. I took the handcuffs out of my desk, put fresh cartridges in my revolver. I had never set out after a man before in a like frame of mind....
When I think back to that evening's work, the Tombs and our convict prisons and all the bitter horror of our penal system, is no longer inexplicable. It is only crystallized anger. The electric chair is only a formal symbol of collective hate. ”

“ Norman bounced off the divan, as if someone had exploded a bomb under him.
"Oh, no," he said. "We're very much obliged to you. But Nina and I never go out in society,"—as Oliver looked a bit taken aback, Norman went on to explain. "You see our marriage was—well—picturesque. I've forgotten the date, but you can find the details in the files of any of our newspapers. Fortunately, my wife has no social ambitions, so we don't have to risk embarrassing people who are kind enough to invite us." ”