person in the world who has seen his soul's nakedness.

The interesting feature of such confessions from a legal point
of view is that, no matter how circumstantial they may be,
they are not usually of themselves sufficient under our law to
warrant a conviction. The admission or confession of a
defendant needs legal corroboration. This corroboration is
often very difficult to find, and frequently cannot be
secured at all. This provision of the statutes is doubtless a
wise one to prevent hysterical, suicidal, egotistical, and
semi-insane persons from meeting death in the electric chair
or on the gallows, but it often results in the guilty going
unpunished. Personally, I have never known a criminal to
confess a crime of which he was innocent. The nearest thing
to it in my experience is when one criminal, jointly guilty
with another and sure of conviction, has drawn lots with his
pal, lost, confessed, and in the confession exculpated his
companion.

In the police organization of almost every large city there
are a few men who are genuinely gifted for the work of
detection. Such an one was Guiseppe Petrosino, a great
detective, and an honest, unselfish, and heroic man, who
united indefatigable patience and industry with reasoning
powers of a high order. The most thrilling evening of my
life was when I listened before a crackling fire in my library
to Joe's story of the Van Cortlandt Park murder, the night
before I was going to prosecute the case. Sitting stiffly in
an arm-chair, his ugly moon-face expressionless save for an
occasional flash from his black eyes, Petrosino recounted