The following pages are written under peculiar circumstances, perhaps the most peculiar that ever attended the birth of a literary work. Incarcerated in prison and awaiting trial for the most serious offense known to the law, it has been written only after mature deliberation, against the advice of my friends, and in direct opposition to the positive instructions of my counsel, who have attempted in every way to dissuade me from its publication; but the circumstances under which I am placed, in

Saturday Evening, November 24, 1894.—A week ago to-day I was placed under arrest in Boston, and after a preliminary hearing was brought here to Philadelphia, where I was confined at City Hall police headquarters. Yester-day p. m. I was placed in a crowded conveyance filled with a filthy lot of humanity, and after what seemed to me an endless drive reached the county prison, located at Tenth and Reed streets, which is known as Moyamensing. I was assigned to a thoroughly clean, whitewashed room, a

A Miss Van Tassand to the best of my knowledge I never saw. Certain it is that I hired no fruit store in Chicago, nor did I have a person of that name in my employ at any time. A Mrs. Lee, said to have disappeared some time in 1893, I do not know of ever having seen. Cora Quinlin is said by the newspapers to be alive. No insurance of any kind was ever caused to be placed upon the life of this child by me nor did I know that such had been placed by others. A Miss Cigrand was sent to me by the Nat

In 1883 there were conducted within my knowledge a series of experiments illustrative of the unreliability of photographic identifications, and other similar experiments have often been made. These consisted in calling upon ten students who had witnessed two skillful sign writers executing some work upon a street window to later identify them from photographs. An open album was first handed to the student who was told to choose which one of two pictures before him was the party in question, they

Had my early life and associations been such as to predispose me towards such criminal proceedings, still the want of motive remains. I can show that no motive did exist. Those who knew me personally can see that it could not have been avarice, for whenever I possessed even a small surplus of ready money, those whom I was owing or friends in need of same could always receive the most or all I possessed. Any ungovernable temper is excluded, for I do not possess it. Appetence cannot be ascribed as