There is a large chapel, where the services are conducted on Sunday,
the girls having the gallery to themselves. There is, however, no
Catholic service. This, surely, is not right. At the Penitentiary on
Blackwell's Island they have service once a month for the Catholics. Of
the six hundred and eighty-two children committed from the Courts
during the year 1867, no less than four hundred and fourteen were
Irish, and in all probability a large proportion of these are Roman
Catholics. Institutions of this character should certainly be made as
unsectarian as possible.

One of the most interesting, and at the same time, one of the most
important features of the Refuge, is the workshop. On entering the
shop, the visitor is amused by finding a lot of little urchins occupied
in making ladies' hoopskirts of the latest fashionable design; nearly
100 are engaged in the crinoline department. In the same long room,
about 50 are weaving wire for sifting cotton, making wire sieves, rat
traps, gridirons, flower baskets, cattle noses, etc. The principal
work, however, is carried on in the boot and shoe department. The labor
of the boys is let out to contractors, who supply their own foremen to
teach the boys and superintend the work, but the society have their own
men to keep order and correct the boys when necessary, the contractors'
men not being allowed to interfere with them in any way whatever. There
are 590 boys in this department. They manage on an average to turn out
about 2,500 pairs of boots and shoes daily, which are mostly shipped to
the Southern States. Each one has a certain amount of work allotted to
him in the morning, which he is bound to complete before four o'clock
in the afternoon. Some are quicker and more industrious than others,
and will get their work done by two o'clock; this gives two hours' play
to those in the first division, the second division have to go to
school when they have finished till three o'clock, they only being