, under sixteen years of age, whose
"parents are dead, or, if living, do, from vice, or any other cause,
neglect to provide suitable employment for, or to exercise salutary
control over" them, may be sent by the court to the house of
reformation. By the late act, establishing the State Reform School, male
convicts under sixteen years of age may be sent to this school from any
part of the commonwealth, to be there "instructed in piety and morality,
and in such branches of useful knowledge as shall be adapted to their
age and capacity." The inmates may be bound out; but, in executing this
part of their duty, the trustees "shall have scrupulous regard to the
religious and moral character of those to whom they are bound, to the
end that they may secure to the boys the benefit of a good example, and
wholesome instruction, and the sure means of improvement in virtue and
knowledge, and thus the opportunity of becoming intelligent, moral,
useful, and happy citizens of the commonwealth."

The Massachusetts State Reform School is designed to be a "school for
the instruction, reformation, and employment of juvenile offenders." Any
boy under sixteen years of age, "convicted of any offense punishable by
imprisonment other than for life," may be sentenced to this school. Here
he may be kept during the term of his sentence; or he may be bound out
as an apprentice; or, in case he proves incorrigible, he may be sent to
prison, as he would originally have been but for the existence of this
school.

The buildings erected are sufficiently large for three hundred boys.
Attached to the establishment is a large farm, the cost of all which,
when the buildings are completed and furnished, and the farm stocked and
provided with agricultural implements, it is estimated will be about
one hundred thousand dollars. A citizen of that state has given
twenty-two thousand five hundred dollars to this institution, partly to
defray past expenses and partly to form a fund for its future benefit.

"In visiting this noble institution, one can not but think how closely
it resembles, in spirit and in purpose, the mission of Him who came to
seek and to save that which was lost; and yet, in traversing its
spacious halls and corridors, the echo of each footfall seems to say
that one tenth part of its cost would have done more in the way of
prevention than its whole amount can accomplish in the way of
reclaiming, and would, besides, have saved a thousand pangs t