Max was a jolly good fellow and not very bad. He was popular and he
could tell a good story that made everybody laugh. Of course he was
vulgar, such jolly good fellows are usually vulgar. He would not go to
school, because he did not like it. He would not stay in evenings, for
he did not like that. He did not enjoy being talked to, but always
wanted to talk himself, and to talk to boys who would laugh at his
yarns. He would not work for he did not like it. He wanted to go
fishing, hunting, and trapping; so he left home early and took to the
woods.

Max liked nature. He thought he was lots better than town people because
he knew more about nature. He found a lovely spot on the border of a
beautiful lake in New York State, where the rocks are grand, the waters
lovely, the forest glorious. There was never a more charming place in
which to be good and to love God than this place where Max built his
shanty about 1750. But he did not go there to worship or to be good. He
went simply to get away from good people, to get where he would not have
to work, and where he would not be preached to, and this beautiful spot
became a notorious cradle of crime. Nature is lovely, but it makes all
the difference in the world how we know nature and why we love it.

In 1874 Richard L. Dugdale was employed by the New York Prison
Commission to visit the prisons of the state. In this visit he was
surprised to find criminals in six different prisons whose relatives
were mostly criminals or paupers, and the more surprised to discover
that these six criminals, under four different names, were all descended
from the same family. This led Mr. Dugdale to study their relatives,
living and dead. He gave himself up to this work with great zeal,
studying the court and prison records, reports of town poorhouses, and
the testimony of old neighbors and employers. He learned the details of