My background is crowded with robberies burglaries and thefts too numerous to recall. All manner of crimes against property. Arrests trials acquittals convictions escapes. Penitentiaries! I see in the background four of them. County jails workhouses city prisons Mounted Police barracks dungeons solitary confinement bread and water hanging up brutal floggings and the murderous straitjacket. I see hop joints wine dumps thieves' resorts and beggars' hangouts. Crime followed by swift retribution in one form or another. I had very few glasses of wine as I traveled this route. I rarely saw a woman smile and seldom heard a song. In those twenty-five years I took all these things and I am going to write about them. And I am going to write about them as I took them - with a smile.