as applied to, and the lad was admitted; but
here he spent but a short probation, and was soon beyond their reach.
The mother, now in desperation, resolved to send him to the Far West,
under the charge of the Children's Aid Society. Knowing his habits, she
led him down by the collar to the office, sat by him there, and
accompanied him to the railroad depot with the party of children. He was
placed on a farm in Northern Michigan, where, fortunately, there was
considerable game in the neighborhood. To the surprise of us all, he did
not at once run away, being perhaps attracted by the shooting he could
indulge in, when not at work.

At length a chance was offered him of being a trapper, and he began his
rovings in good earnest. From the Northern Peninsula of Michigan to the
Rocky Mountains, he wandered over the woods and wilds for years, making
a very good living by his sales of skins, and saving considerable money.
All accounts showed him to be a very honest, decent, industrious lad--a
city vagrant about to be a thief transformed into a country vagrant
making an honest living.

Our books give hundreds of similar stories, where a free country-life
and the amusements and sports of the farmers, when work is slack, have
gratified healthfully the vagrant appetite. The mere riding a horse, or
owning a calf or a lamb, or trapping an animal in winter, seems to have
an astonishing effect in cooling the fire in the blood in the city
rover, and making him contented.

The social habits of the army of little street-vagrants who rove through
our city have something unaccountable and mysterious in them. We have,
as I have described, in various parts of the city little "Stations," as
it were, in their weary journey of life, where we ostensibly try to
refresh them, but where we really hope to break up their service in the
army of vagrancy, and make honest lads of them. These "Lodging-houses"
are contrived, after much experience, so ingeniously that they
inevitably attract in the young vagabonds, and drain the quarter where
they are placed of this class. We give the boys, in point of fact, more
for their money than they can get anywhere else, and the whole house is
made attractive and comfortable for them. But the reasons of their
coming to a given place seem unaccountable.

Thus there will be a "Lodge" in some out-of-the-way quarter, with no
special attractions, which for years will drag along with a
comparatively small number of lodg