, and curling down at night, as the animals do, in any corner they
can find--hungry and ragged, but light-hearted, and enjoying immensely
their vagabond life. Probably as a sensation, not one that the street
lad will ever have in after-life will equal the delicious feeling of
carelessness and independence with which he lies on his back in the
spring sunlight on a pile of dock lumber, and watches the moving life on
the river, and munches his crust of bread. It frequently happens that no
restraint or punishment can check this Indian-like propensity.

A ROVER REFORMED.

We recall one fine little fellow who was honest, and truthful, and
kind-hearted, but who, when the roving passion in the blood came up,
left everything and spent his days and nights on the wharves, and
rambling about the streets. His mother, a widow, knew only too well what
this habit was bringing him to, for, unfortunately, the life of a young
barbarian in New York has little poetry in it The youthful vagrant soon
becomes idle and unfit to work; he is hungry, and cannot win his food
from the waters and the woods, like his savage prototype; therefore, he
must steal. He makes the acquaintance of the petty thieves, pickpockets,
and young sharpers of the city. He learns to lie and swear; to pick
pockets, rifle street-stands, and break open shop-windows or doors; so
that this barbarian habit is the universal stepping-stone to children's
crimes. In this case, the worthy woman locked the boy up in her room,
and sent down word to us that her son would like a place in the country,
if the employer would come up and take him. We dispatched an excellent
gentleman to her from the interior, who desired a "model boy;" but, when
he arrived, he found, to his dismay, the lad kicking through the panels
of the door, and declaring he would die sooner than go. The boy then
disappeared for a few days, when his mother discovered him ragged and
half-starved about the docks, and brought him home and whipped him
severely. The next morning he was off again, and was gone a week, until
the police brought him back in a wretched condition. The mother now
tried the "Christian Brothers," who had a fence ten feet high about
their premises, and kept the lad, it was said, part of the time chained.
But the fence was mere sport to the little vagrant, and he was soon off.
She then tried the "Half-Orphan Asylum," but this succeeded no better.
Then the "Juvenile Asylum" w