shamefulness of it.

I am conscious of having left out a great deal of it. I found as I went on
with this writing that the things to be said were restricted to a few
categories. First, the physical prison itself and the routine of life in
it must be stated. That is the objective part. Then must be indicated the
subjective conditions, those of the prisoner, and of his keepers--what the
effect of prison was upon them. Next was to come a presentation of the
consequences, deductions and inferences suggested by these conditions.
Finally, we would be confronted with the question, What is to be done
about it? Such are the main heads of the theme.

But I was tempted to run into detail. Here I will make a pertinent
disclosure. During my imprisonment I was made the confidant of the life
stories of many of my brethren in the cells. I am receiving through the
mails, from day to day, up to the present time, other such tales from
released convicts. The aim of them is not to get their tellers before the
public and win personal sympathy, but to hold up my hands by supplying
data--chapter and verse--in support of the assertions I have made. They do
it abundantly; the stories bleed and groan before your eyes and ears, and
smell to heaven; the bluntest, simplest, most formless stuff imaginable,
but terrible in every fiber. Before I left prison I had accumulated a
considerable number of these narratives, and had made many notes of things
heard and seen--data and memoranda which I designed to use in the already
projected book which is now in your hands. Such material, however, would
have been confiscated by the Warden had its existence been known, and none
of it would have been permitted to get outside the walls openly. The only
thing to do, then, was to get it out secretly--by the "underground
railroad."