ing power. The fact that tenants must
forever be "moving" in New York, is a preventive of some of the worst
evils among the lower poor. The mill of American life, which grinds up
so many delicate and fragile things, has its uses, when it is turned on
the vicious fragments of the lower strata of society.

Villages, which are more stable and conservative, and tend to keep
families together more and in the same neighborhoods, show more
instances of inherited and concentrated wickedness and idleness. In New
York the families are constantly broken up; some members improve, some
die out, but they do not transmit a progeny of crime. There is little
inherited criminality and pauperism.

A QUESTION.

Among these public influences on the young, it has been often a question
with some, whether the Public Schools did not educate the daughters of
the poor too much, and thus make them discontented with their condition,
and exposed to temptation.

It is said that these working-girls, seeing such fine dresses about
them, and learning many useless accomplishments, have become indifferent
to steady hand-labor, and have sought in vice for the luxuries which
they have first learned to know in the public schools. My own
observation, however, leads me to doubt whether this occurs, unless as
an exceptional fact. The influence of discipline and regular instruction
is against the style of character which makes the prostitute. Where
there is a habit of work, there are seldom the laziness and
shiftlessness which especially cause or stimulate sexual vice. Some
working-girls do, no doubt, become discontented with their former
condition, and some rise to a much higher, while some fall; but this
happens everywhere in the United States, and is not to be traced
especially to the influence of our Free Schools.

We have spoken of the greater tendency of large cities, as compared with
villages, in breaking up vicious families. There is another advantage of
cities in this matter. The especial virtue of a village community is the
self-respect and personal independence of its members. No benefits of
charity or benevolent assistance and dependence could ever outweigh
this. But this very virtue tends to keep a wicked or idle family in its
present condition. The neighbors are not in the habit of interfering
with it; no one advises or warns it. The children grow up as other
people's children do, in the way the parents prefer; th