s of Charities and Corrections."

[Picture: HOUSE OF REFUGE: RANDALL'S ISLAND.]

The southern portion is occupied by the "House of Refuge," which is under
the control of the "Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents."
The buildings are of brick, and are constructed in the Italian style.
They have a frontage of nearly 1000 feet, and were constructed at a cost
of about $500,000. They constitute one of the handsomest public
institutions in the city. The main buildings contain 886 dormitories,
several spacious and fully furnished school rooms, a handsome chapel,
which will seat 1000 persons, the kitchens, hospital, and officers'
quarters. The average number of inmates is about 700 boys and 150 girls.
Every child is compelled to labor from six to eight hours every day in
the week, and to attend school from four to five hours. The inmates
consist of such juvenile offenders against the law as the courts commit
to the Refuge in preference to sending them to prison. Some of them are
young people, whose parents, unable to manage them, and wishing to save
them from lives of sin and crime, have placed them in the hands of the
Society for reformation. The discipline is mainly reformatory, though
the inmates are subjected to the restraints, but not the degradation of a
prison.

"The boys' building is divided into two compartments; the first division,
in the one, is thus entirely separated from the second division in the
other compartment. The second division is composed of those whose
characters are decidedly bad, or whose offence was great. A boy may, by
good conduct, however, get promoted from the second into the first
division. As a rule, the second division is much older than the first.
Each division is divided into four grades. Every boy on entering the
Reformatory is placed in the third grade; if he behaves well, he is
placed in the second in a week, and a month after in the first grade; if
he continues in a satisfactory course for three months, he is placed in
the grade of honor, and wears a badge on his breast. Every boy in the
first division must remain six months, in the second division twelve
months in the first grade, before he can be indentured to any trade.
These two divisions are under the charge of twenty-five teachers and
twenty-five guards. At half-past six o'clock the cells are all unlocked,
every one reports himself to the overseer, and then goes to the
lavatories; at seven,