CE.
"NEW YORK, March 7, 1853.

"P. S.--I forgot to tell you the name we have chosen--'Children's Aid
Society.'

"Office, No. 683 Broadway, 2d floor, New York."

The following is the first circular of

THE CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY.

"This society has taken its origin in the deeply settled feelings of our
citizens, that something must be done to meet the increasing crime and
poverty among the destitute children of New York. Its objects are to
help this class by opening Sunday Meetings and Industrial Schools, and,
gradually as means shall be furnished, by forming Lodging-houses and
Reading-rooms for children, and by employing paid agents whose sole
business shall be to care for them.

"As Christian men, we cannot look upon this great multitude of unhappy,
deserted, and degraded boys and girls without feeling our responsibility
to God for them. We remember that they have the same capacities, the
same need of kind and good influences, and the same Immortality as the
little ones in our own homes. We bear in mind that One died for them,
even as for the children of the rich and happy. Thus far, alms-houses
and prisons have done little to affect the evil. But a small part of the
vagrant population can be shut up in our asylums, and judges and
magistrates are reluctant to convict children so young and ignorant that
they hardly seem able to distinguish good and evil. The class increases.
Immigration is pouring in its multitude of poor foreigners, who leave
these young outcasts everywhere abandoned in our midst. For the most
part, the boys grow up utterly by themselves. No one cares for them, and
they care for no one. Some live by begging, by petty pilfering, by bold
robbery; some earn an honest support by peddling matches, or apples, or
newspapers; others gather bones and rags in the street to sell. They
sleep on steps, in cellars, in old barns, and in markets, or they hire a
bed in filthy and low lodging-houses. They cannot read; they do not go
to school or attend a church. Many of them have never seen the Bible.
Every cunning faculty is intensely stimulated. They are shrewd and old
in vice, when other children are in leading-strings. Few influences
which are kind and good ever reach the vagrant boy. And, yet, among
themselves they show generous and honest traits. Kindness can always
touch them.

"The girls, too often, grow up even more pitiable and deserted. Till of
late no one has ever cared for the