o their clothes and
their manners, which were the manners of the street, they did not seem to
be very different in looks from a like number of boys in any public
school. Fourth of July was just then at hand, and when I asked the
official who accompanied me how they proposed to celebrate it, he said
that they were in the habit of marching in procession up Eleventh Avenue
to Fort George, across to Washington Bridge, and all about the
neighborhood, to a grove where speeches were made. Remembering the iron
bars and high fences I had seen, I said something about it being unsafe to
let a thousand young prisoners go at large in that way. The man looked at
me in some bewilderment before he understood.

"Bless you, no!" he said, when my meaning dawned upon him. "If any one of
them was to run away that day he would be in eternal disgrace with all the
rest. It is a point of honor with them to deserve it when they are
trusted. Often we put a boy on duty outside, when he could walk off, if he
chose, just as well as not; but he will come in in the evening, as
straight as a string, only, perhaps, to twist his bed-clothes into a rope
that very night and let himself down from a third-story window, at the
risk of breaking his neck. Boys will be boys, you know."

But it struck me that boys whose honor could be successfully appealed to
in that way were rather the victims than the doers of a grievous wrong,
being in that place, no matter if they _had_ stolen. It was a case of
misdirection, or no direction at all, of their youthful energies. There
was one little fellow in the Asylum band who was a living illustration of
this. I watched him blow his horn with a supreme effort to be heard above
the rest, growing redder and redder in the face, until the perspiration
rolled off him in perfect sheets, the veins stood out swollen and blue and
it seemed as if he must burst the next minute. He was a tremendous
trumpeter. I was glad when it was over, and patted him on the head,
telling him that if he put as much vim into all he had to do, as he did
into his horn, he would come to something great yet. Then it occurred to
me to ask him what he was there for.

"'Cause I was lazy and played hookey," he said, and joined in the laugh
his answer raised. The idea of that little body, that fairly throbbed with
energy, being sent to prison for laziness was too absurd for anything.

The report that comes from the Western Agency of the Asylum, through which
t