Book Description

Excerpt from Punishment and Reformation: A Study of the Penitentiary System To revise another man's book is like taking his place before a half-finished portrait at the easel, or wresting the conductor's wand from his hand while the orchestra is still playing the andante. In each instance, the interloper is likely to be the only person who gets any enjoyment from the change. A book that deals chiefly with facts and deductions from facts, however, like the present one, lends itself more readily to posthumous mutilation of this kind than does, say, a volume of poems or the diary of a man's life. One hardly cares to have another person voice his joy at the stars or the sunrise, or dress up an account of his life to suit himself. Facts, however, are impersonal and may be rearranged and added to with impunity. There are two ways of revising a book. One is to begin at the first page and go through to the last, meticulously scanning each sentence, toning down a generalization here, enlarging one there, and adding footnotes wherever the spirit moves and new information warrants. This may be called the mosaic, or crazy-quilt method. The other is to omit from the original in chunks whatever is unessential or out of date, and then at the end to pile the Ossa of new material upon the Pelion of old. This may be called the Procrustean method. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.