ame an
increasing source of delight to the young vagabonds. Our diligent
superintendent was not content. He now built a green-house, and, though
no gardener, soon learned to care for and raise quantities of exquisite
flowers, which should brighten the building in the gloomy winter.

[Illustration: POOR CHILDREN AMONG FLOWERS (The Rivington Street
Lodging-House.)]

For the Industrial School we procured a teacher who taught as if life
and death depended on the issues of each lesson. She seemed to pour out
her life on "Enumeration," and gave an Object-lesson on an orange as if
all the future prospects of the children depended on it. Such a teacher
could not fail to interest the lively little vagrants of Rivington
Street.

Her sweet assistant was as effective in her own way; so it came that a
hundred and fifty of the young flibbertigibbets of the ward were soon
gathered and attempted to be brought under the discipline of an
Industrial School. But it was like schooling little Indians. A bright
day scattered them as a splash scatters a school of fish, and they
disappeared among the docks and boats of the neighborhood. No
intellectual attraction could compete with a "target company," and the
sound of the fire-bell drove all lessons out of their heads. Still,
patience and ingenuity and devotion accomplished here, as in all our
schools, their work--which, if not "perfect," has been satisfactory and
encouraging.

But this was only a part of our efforts. Besides the school of a hundred
and fifty children in the day from the neighborhood, might be found a
hundred boys gathered from boxes, and barges, and all conceivable
haunts, who came in for school and supper and bed.

Here, for some inscrutable reason, the considerable class of
"canawl-boys," or lads who work on the canal-boats of the interior, came
for harbor. Besides our Day and Night Schools, we opened here also a
Free Reading-room for boys and young men in the neighborhood, and we
held our usual Sunday-evening Meeting. In this meeting, fortunately for
its good effects, various gentlemen took part, with much experience in
practical life and of earnest characters. One, a young officer in the
army, whose service for his country fitted him for the service of
humanity; another, an enthusiastic and active young business man; and
still another--one of those men of calm judgment, profound earnestness
of character, and an almost princely generosity, who, in a foreign
country,