found studies in municipal government, from
which largely had sprung such a flawless and perfect type as that of
East Haven, he was also interested in public charities, and the
existence of many of the beneficial organizations throughout the State
had been largely due to his persistent and untiring efforts. The
municipal reforms, as has been suggested, worked beautifully, perfectly,
without the grating of a wheel or the creaking of a joint; but the
public charities--somehow they did not work so well; they never did just
what was intended, or achieved just what was expected; their mechanism
appeared to be perfect, but, as is so universally the case with public
charities, they somehow lacked a soul.

It was in connection with the matter of public charities that the tramp
question arose. Colonel Singelsby grappled with it, as he had grappled
with so many matters of the kind. The solution was the crowning work of
his life, and the result was in a way as successful as it was
paradoxical and unexpected.

Connected with the East Haven Public Library was the lecture-room, where
an association, calling itself the East Haven Lyceum, and comprising in
its number some of the most advanced thinkers of the town, met on
Thursdays from November to May to discuss and digest matters social and
intellectual. More than one good thing that had afterward taken definite
shape had originated in the discussions of the Lyceum, and one winter,
under Colonel Singelsby's lead, the tramp question was taken up and
dissected.

He had, Colonel Singelsby said, studied that complex question very
earnestly and for some time, and to his mind it had resolved itself to
this: not how to suppress vagrancy, but how to make of the vagrant an
honest and useful citizen. Repressive laws were easily passed, but it
appeared to him that the only result achieved by them was to drive the
tramp into other sections where no such laws existed, and which sections
they only infested to a greater degree and in larger numbers. Nor in
these days of light was it, in his opinion, a sufficient answer to that
objection that it was the fault of those other communities that they did
not also pass repressive laws. The fact remained that they had not
passed them, and that the tramps did infest their precincts, and such
being the case, it was as clear as day (for that which injures some,
injures all) that the wrong of vagrancy was not corrected by merely
driving tramps over the limit