e could lay hold of. It mattered not whether the
article was of any use to him or not. After stealing an article or
articles he would make very little effort to hide it, and when taken to
task and charged with having stolen an article he would acknowledge it
but would say that he did not know what made him take the article, only
that something told him to take it and when this thought came to him he
did not have the power to resist it, but felt that he was compelled to
take it. At the Training School we looked upon him as a rather peculiar
subject. We really never considered him insane except that his desire to
steal might be classed in that line."

It is somewhat difficult to get a coherent and full account of the
patient's delinquencies. His record at the National Training School is
as follows: "Rec. on September 4, 1906, sentenced by the D.C. Juvenile
Court charged with larceny, escaped August 30, 1907. Returned from
elopement September 5, 1907, special parole to father October 23, 1909.
Recommitted by D.C. Juvenile Court February 3, 1910, charge larceny.
May 2, 1911, escaped from Freedman's Hospital while left there for
treatment after operation. Returned on May 25, 1911, from Baltimore, Md.
July 13, 1912, escaped." During his various sojourns there he was noted
to be wilful and unprincipled. Every time he gained his freedom his
father attempted to keep him at school, thus he attended night school
and Law Department of Howard University for short periods. His father
likewise put forth many genuine efforts to reform the boy, plead with
him and begged him, supplied him with considerable spending money, but
his efforts were as fruitless as the various punishments he underwent.
The boy would behave well for a while, but sooner or later he would be
arrested for stealing. Patient states that he stole many times when he
successfully evaded the police, that he frequently took unusual chances
in his escapades, preferred to steal in the daytime and it was this that
led him to believe that God had chosen this particular mode of life for
him, and that as a result of this conviction he practices the habit of
giving one-fourth of his earnings to charity. He had learned from his
father that somewhere the Bible teaches to give one-fifth of the
earnings to charity, but owing to the manner in which he acquired his
possessions he felt that he ought to give more to charity, a rather
characteristic mode of rationalization for a man of hi