his is a large and useful charity, and is guided by two sisters of
great elevation of purpose and earnestness of character, who are known
as "Friends of the Poor" in all that quarter.

THE COLORED SCHOOL.

Here gather great numbers of destitute colored children of the city.
Some are rough boys and young men, who are admirably controlled by a
most gentle lady, who is Principal; her assistant was fittingly prepared
for the work by teaching among the freedmen.

The colored people of the city seldom fall into such helpless poverty as
the foreign whites; still there is a good deal of destitution and
exposure to temptation among them. The children seem to learn as readily
as whites, though they are afflicted with a more sullen temper, and
require to be managed more delicately--praise and ridicule being
indispensable implements for the teacher. Their singing far surpasses
that of our other scholars.

Among our other schools is a most useful one for a peculiarly wild
class, in the Rivington-street Lodging-house; one in West Fifty-third
and in West Fifty-second Streets, and a very large and well-conducted
one for the shanty population near the Park, called

THE PARK SCHOOL.

A very spirited teacher here manages numbers of wild boys and ungoverned
girls. The most interesting feature is a Night-school, where pupils
come, some from a mile distant, having labored in factories or
street-trades all day long--sometimes even giving up their suppers for
the sake of the lessons, with a hunger for knowledge which the children
of the favored classes know little of. Two other Schools shall conclude
our catalogue--one in the House of Industry (West Sixteenth Street), and
the other in the Eighteenth-street Lodging-house. Both Schools are
struggling with great obstacles and difficulties, as they are planted in
the quarter which has produced the notorious "Nineteenth-street Gang."
The teacher in the latter has already overcome most of them, and has
tamed as wild a set of little street-barbarians as ever plagued a
school-teacher.

A rigid rule has been laid down and followed out in these Schools--that
is, not to admit or retain pupils who might be in the Public Schools.
Our object is to supplement these useful public institutions, and we are
continually sending the children forth, when they seem fit, to take
places in the Free Schools. Many, however, are always too poor, ragged
and nece