e again
deserted with all the clothes and things he could carry. A young lady
in the family had previously told him that her father would one day
take him to the penitentiary to show him what bad boys came to. "That
is the very place I want to get into," said the young ruffian, "for I
hear there is fine fun there; I will steal something by and by, and
then they will send me there."

Accordingly, he did steal, and took French leave one fine morning with
Madam Cookey, having previously strangled the young lady's favourite
cat, just about to kitten, and having the night before he absconded
told the young lady he had made a famous nest for pussy to kitten in,
and that if she went to the cellar in the morning, she would find the
cat on her nest.

The young lady thought nothing of what he said at the moment, but,
after finding when the family got up that the cook and boy were off,
she went to look at her kittens, found the cat strangled, frozen, and
placed on the nest. A day or two afterwards, the little sister
decamped with three suits of dresses. Now what use would there be in
putting such a boy or such a girl at so tender an age, and with such
principles, into a penitentiary?

Penitentiaries are not proper receptacles for infant villains. The
very contagion of working with murderers, coiners, horse-stealers, and
scoundrels of the deepest dye is enough alone to confirm their habits
and inclinations; and I am not aware of any instance of an infant boy
or girl coming out of the Kingston Penitentiary subdued or improved.
They are more marked characters when they again join their former
friends; for they seldom avoid their former haunts and those whose
example first led them astray, but plunge again and again deeper into
crime.

It is the same with beating a child to excess; spare the rod and spoil
the child, says the Jewish lawgiver; but where slavery does not exist,
the rod is not to be used to that extent, and it does not improve even
slaves. No; as in the army and in the navy, it hardens culprits, and
very seldom indeed acts upon their consciences.

Border population is usually of a low character, and I cannot think
it can be worse anywhere than where the maritime, or rather
_laculine_, if such a word is admissible, preponderates, and where
that race are unemployed for at least five months of the Boreal
winters of Canada. It is only a wonder that serious crime is so
infrequent. Burglary was almost unknown, as well as