extensive information and sound
opinions they display in commenting upon contemporaneous events. The

MORAL IMPROVEMENT.

which has been accomplished is still more extensive and sensible. At
first sight the visitor is enabled to draw a line between old and new
pupils by noticing the intelligent and clean appearance, quick
perception, and admirable behavior of the former, and the dull,
downcast, rough, and thoughtless countenances of the latter. It is
surprising that all these children were accustomed to wash their faces
only on Sundays, and it takes even now some time to induce them to do it
daily. Still, it is undeniable that, as a class, they possess an earnest
appreciation of good habits, only it is, to say so, an abstract idea as
yet with them, and needs development.

"When the School opened, and for some time after, the attendance was
generally composed of organ-grinders and beggars, which vocations they
indifferently acknowledged to follow, whenever asked, by analogous
gestures. To redeem them from those ignoble vocations was, in my
opinion, of paramount importance, and to that end I devoted part of my
time in visiting their parents, to impress them with a sense of
self-respect and human dignity, and talk them into the apprenticing into
trades their offspring. As, however, these boys brought home from fifty
cents to a dollar per day, it was quite a difficult task to persuade
them to give up this source of income for comparatively nominal wages.
With guardians and relatives my efforts remained entirely fruitless. I
then concluded that if we could show them practically that trades in the
end would pay better, it would become easy to accomplish our purpose. I
concentrated, therefore, my exertions on three families, the most
approachable, and succeeded. One consented to place a boy of fourteen in
the Printing Department of the American Tract Society; another soon
followed in the same line: the third, a boy of thirteen, entered a
machine-shop. All three did very well, and at the end of two years they
were earning five and six dollars per week. Their success caused a moral
revolution, and had I been able to place all, not one would at this day
be blacking boots, which many do for want of better employment. It is a
fact that speaks very highly of these Italians, that in every instance,
whenever one has been employed, Italians are preferred. I have seen
certificates given by manufacturers to so