was solemnly hung up
by the feet to a post, till he promised reformation. This failing to
produce the desired effect, she placed him with "the Brothers," who put
him in a kind of prison, where he had to be chained by the leg to
prevent him from scaling the walls. Taking him from there, after some
months of pretty severe discipline, he very soon went back to his old
habits, when she had him sent to Randall's Island. Here he was
discovered in a plan to swim to the opposite shore (something of a feat
for a boy of twelve). Fearing he would attempt it and be drowned, she
took him away and put him in the Juvenile Asylum, where he remained
several months, and finally seemed so much tamed down that she ventured
on taking him out and sending him to a place which you procured for him
at Hastings. But, pretty soon, the ruling passion, strong as ever, took
possession of him, and he started on a tour through the surrounding
villages.

"Being brought home again, he told his mother very deliberately, one
morning, that she need not expect him home any more; he was going to
live with a soldier's wife. Knowing that if he went he would be in a
very den of wickedness, she came to the resolution to give him to your
care, and let him be sent to the West.

"It would require a volume to tell of all his freaks and wanderings; his
scaling of fences, and breaking out of impossible places. Towards the
last of his New York life he began to add other vices to his original
stock--such as drinking, smoking, and swearing; yet strange to say, he
disdained to lie, and was never known to steal; and his face would glow
with satisfaction when he could take charge of an infant. His mother
hears, with trembling hope, the good accounts of him from the West,
scarcely daring to believe that her wild and vagrant son will ever make
a steady, useful man.
"Truly yours,
"Mrs. E. S. Hurley."

The young rovers gradually became softened and civilized under the
combined influences of warm dinners, carpentering, and good teaching;
but we found the difficulty to be that we did not have sufficient hold
over them out of school hours; we needed more appliances for such
habitual vagabonds. What was wanted was a Lodging-house and all its
influences, as well as School, for the former gives a greater control
than does a simple Industrial School.

We accordingly transferred the w