allowed one hour for recreation. The authorities are very anxious to
make arrangements to have a Government vessel stationed off the island,
to be used as a training-ship for the most adventurous spirits. If this
design is carried out it will be a very valuable adjunct to the working
of the institution, and will enable the Directors to take in many more
boys, without incurring the expense of extending the present buildings.
The girls are also employed in making hoop skirts, in making clothes
for themselves and the boys, in all sorts of repairing, in washing
linen, and in general housework. The girls are generally less tractable
than the boys; perhaps this is accounted for by their being older, some
of them being as much as five or six and twenty. The boys average about
13 or 14, the girls 17 or 18 years of age. Nearly two thirds of the
boys have been boot-blacks, the remainder mostly what are technically
known as 'wharf rats.' Some of them are now in the house for the third
time; one, a lad only 15 years of age, has passed one year in a
juvenile asylum, four years in a reformatory, and is now at Randall's
Island. Another has been three times convicted of horse stealing; he
would, late at night, ask permission to sleep in a stable; he is a
complete cripple, and by attracting sympathy his request was often
granted; when every one had left the place he would quietly open the
door and lead out the horses. On each occasion that he was convicted he
managed to get off with three horses. Another little fellow, only six
years old, with a chum, broke into a pipe store, and stole 150
meerschaum pipes; he was however detected while trying to dispose of
them. There is a colored lad, about eighteen, who is very amusing; he
is a great orator, and addresses the others on all subjects, both
general and political. On one occasion, when the Principal ventured to
ask him whom he had adopted as his model for speaking, he grandly
replied, 'I will have you to know, sir, that I am no servile imitator.'
Some of the boys cannot overcome their thieving propensities, but will,