me journey? Almost
always in the end, if the child was young enough when it was sent out.
Sometimes a change has to be made. Oftener the change is of name, in the
adoption that follows. Some of the boys get restless as they grow up, and
"run about a good deal," to the anguish of the committee. A few are
reported as having "gone to the bad." But even these commonly come out all
right at last. One of them, of whom mention is made in the Society's
thirty-fifth annual report, turned up after long years as Mayor of his
town and a member of the legislature. "We can think," wrote Mr. Brace
before his death, "of little Five Points thieves who are now ministers of
the gospel or honest farmers; vagrants and street children who are men in
professional life; and women who, as teachers or wives of good citizens,
are everywhere respected; the children of outcasts or unfortunates whose
inherited tendencies have been met by the new environment, and who are
industrious and decent members of society." Only by their losing
themselves does the Society lose sight of them. Two or three times a year
the agent goes to see them all. In the big ledgers in St. Mark's Place
each child who has been placed out has a page to himself on which all his
doings are recorded, as he is heard of year by year. There are twenty-nine
of these canvas-bound ledgers now, and the stories they have to tell would
help anyone, who thinks he has lost faith in poor human nature, to pick it
up with the vow never to let go of it again. I open one of them at random,
and copy the page--page 289 of ledger No. 23. It tells the story of an
English boy, one of four who were picked up down at Castle Garden twelve
years ago. His mother was dead, and he had not seen his father for five
years before he came here, a stowaway. He did not care, he said, where
they sent him, so long as it was not back to England:

June 15, 1880. James S----, aged fourteen years, English; orphan; goes
West with J. P. Brace.

Placed with J. R----, Neosha Rapids, Kan. January 26, 1880, James writes
that he gets along pleasantly; wrote to him; twenty-sixth annual report
sent August 4th. July 14, 1880, Mr. and Mrs. R---- write that James is
impudent and tries them greatly. Wrote to him August 17, 1880; wrote again
October 15th. October 21, 1880, Mr. R---- writes that they could not
possibly get along with James and placed him with Mr. G. H----, about five
miles from his house. Mr. H---- is a good man and ha