Trolling on the Lake.
The State makes no provision for these offenders, and, unless as in this instance they are separated by the individual action of the Warden, they would ere now be proficient in the lore of crime.
Crime is contagious, because thought is contagious.
By this it is not meant that you and I, if we mix with criminals, will become criminally inclined; because our ego—or soul—not having any prenatal defect or susceptibility to crime will be unresponsive to its influence.
But to a criminal, whether he be a first offender or not, the pernicious, indiscriminate companionship of fellow convicts who suggest crime in its various distorted shapes to his abnormal, defective mind, will plant seed-thoughts which thus sown thrive and grow until we have the confirmed criminal.
If a criminal is so receptive to suggestions of evil, and his criminal capacity is so strengthened and fixed by the ideas and emotions that he entertains, would not counter-suggestions have just as potent an effect on the individual?
A Marin Landscape.
(From the Original by Thad Welch.)