ften
I've sadly watched my Indian corn in May, wondering whether such sickly,
half-eaten sprouts, could ever thrive up into the stiff, stately spear
of August."

"A most admirable reflection, sir, and you have only, according to the
analogical theory first started by our office, to apply it to that
thirtieth boy in question, and see the result. Had you but kept that
thirtieth boy--been patient with his sickly virtues, cultivated them,
hoed round them, why what a glorious guerdon would have been yours, when
at last you should have had a St. Augustine for an ostler."

"Really, really--well, I am glad I didn't send him to jail, as at first
I intended."

"Oh that would have been too bad. Grant he was vicious. The petty vices
of boys are like the innocent kicks of colts, as yet imperfectly broken.
Some boys know not virtue only for the same reason they know not French;
it was never taught them. Established upon the basis of parental
charity, juvenile asylums exist by law for the benefit of lads convicted
of acts which, in adults, would have received other requital. Why?
Because, do what they will, society, like our office, at bottom has a
Christian confidence in boys. And all this we say to our patrons."

"Your patrons, sir, seem your marines to whom you may say anything,"
said the other, relapsing. "Why do knowing employers shun youths from
asylums, though offered them at the smallest wages? I'll none of your
reformado boys."

"Such a boy, respected sir, I would not get for you, but a boy that
never needed reform. Do not smile, for as whooping-cough and measles are
juvenile diseases, and yet some juveniles never have them, so are there
boys equally free from juvenile vices. True, for the best of boys'
measles may be contagious, and evil communications corrupt good manners;
but a boy with a sound mind in a sound body--such is the boy I would get
you. If hitherto, sir, you have struck upon a peculiarly bad vein of
boys, so much the more hope now of your hitting a good one."

"That sounds a kind of reasonable, as it were--a little so, really. In
fact, though you have said a great many foolish things, very foolish and
absurd things, yet, upon the whole, your conversation has been such as
might almost lead one less distrustful than I to repose a certain
conditional confidence in you, I had almost added in your office, also.
Now, for the humor of it, supposing that even I, I myself, really had
this sort of conditional conf