st, was only trifling--in the proportion of fifteen dollars to one
hundred and fifty dollars, reckoning the latter as a year's cost for a
child's support in an Asylum. Furthermore, we held and stoutly
maintained that an asylum-life is a bad preparation for practical life.
The child, most of all, needs individual care and sympathy. In an
Asylum, he is "Letter B, of Class 3," or "No. 2, of Cell 426," and that
is all that is known of him. As a poor boy, who most live in a small
house, he ought to learn to draw his own water, to split his wood,
kindle his fires, and light his candle; as an "institutional child," he
is lighted, warmed, and watered by machinery. He has a child's
imitation, a desire to please his superiors, and readiness to be
influenced by his companions. In a great caravansary he soon learns the
external virtues which secure him a good bed and meal--decorum and
apparent piety and discipline--while he practices the vices and
unnamable habits which masses of boys of any class nearly always teach
one another. His virtue seems to have an alms-house flavor; even his
vices do not present the frank character of a thorough street-boy; he is
found to lie easily, and to be very weak under temptation; somewhat
given to hypocrisy, and something of a sneak. And, what is very natural,
_the longer he is in the Asylum, the less likely he is to do well in
outside life._ I hope I do no injustice to the unfortunate graduates of
our Asylums; but that was and continues to be my strong impression of
the institutional effect on an ordinary street boy or girl. Of course
there are numerous exceptional cases among children--of criminality and
inherited habits, and perverse and low organization, and premature
cunning, lust, and temper, where a half-prison life may be the very best
thing for them; but the majority of criminals among children, I do not
believe, are much worse than the children of the same class outside, and
therefore need scarcely any different training.

One test, which I used often to administer to myself, as to our
different systems, was to ask--and I request any Asylum advocate to do
the same--"If your son were suddenly, by the death of his parents and
relatives, to be thrown out on the streets, poor and homeless--as these
children are--where would you prefer him to be placed--in an Asylum, or
in a good farmer's home in the West?"

"The plainest farmer's home rather than the best Asylum--a thousand
times!" was alwa