the question. While we urge the gathering into suitable Institutions of the homeless or neglected children of poverty or vice, we do not feel that Institution life, as such, is the very best for young children, who need always a home atmosphere and family influence, and a sort of brooding mother-love, that cannot be found where numbers are gathered, in even the best Institution. Let private homes be found for the children as fast as possible, and the tender mother-want crying in the heart of every little homeless child will be often answered by those who are only waiting a chance to fill the vacant chair and the empty heart. To seek out such homes and to fill them as well as the hungry child-heart, is a work of toil, but should be a labor of love to all interested in preventive work among children. Judge J. F. Lewis, of Tennessee: Mr. President—I have the honor to represent the Girl's Industrial Home, at Knoxville, Tennessee. In a short time that institution will celebrate its tenth anniversary. It is the offspring of a few of the excellent ladies in our city; I believe most all other similar institutions were originated by ladies. These ladies began upon a small scale, two or three associating to go and look for children or individuals; presently they asked the churches to appoint representatives from the congregations and /to form a co-operating body. These ladies went about doing good, hunting up children and bringing them to their private houses. This work increased, and they had to hire a large house, paying their expenses as they went without appealing for public aid. Some five years since these ladies were compelled to incorporate themselves as a private corporation, so they could protect themselves from imposition. Every now and then some mother who could no longer support her children would take them there to be cared for, and as soon as they became well fed and clothed, better than they were at home, they would take them home again to poverty and want. This ceased with the incorporation of the institution. These girls are treated as Mrs. Beveridge desires to have them treated, as if each were the child of the matron. As they grow up some are taken by our city ladies and some by strangers from other parts of the state. .

The result is that in Knoxville you will not find girls — unless where these ladies can not reach them— on the streets. They have taken up about one hundred girls, whom they have cared for, raised and sent forth into the world, not only reformed, but ladies. There is lying sick at home now, unless she has passed away, a lady who numbers her wealth by the thousands, the President of that institution, who has on several occasions bestowed the benefits of her purse to this and other charities.

While the distinguished Jew stood here and talked so eloquently, I remembered that while the majority of us are those who bow at that symbol, yet in that institution we have two ladies of his race who occupy the same position with us in our work. ' They have been*honored with office and position; they make no distinction there, and when they meet together they fall down and worship the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob.

CLASSIFICATION AND TRAINING OF CHILDREN, INNOCENT AND INCORRIGIBLE.

BY HON. W. P. LETCHWORTH, CHAIRMAN OF THE COMMITTEE ON PREVENTIVE WORK AMONG CHILDREN, AMD PRESIDENT OF THE NEW YORK STATE BOARD OF CHARITIES.

When in that land of lofty mountains and beautiful lakes where the traveler loves to linger, as I stood on the bridge a short distance below the city of Geneva,, watching the confluence of two rivers diverse in every attribute, I was struck with the effect of their contact. The one, clear, blue, limpid, as it flows gently from the cool depths of Lake Leman, on whose glassy surface are mirrored the snow covered summit of Mont Blanc, the vine clad slopes of Vaud, and the towers of the famous castle of Chillon; the other, originating more

directly in one of those stupendous glaciers that slowly grind their way down century-worn paths, is, as it rushes through the steeply descending valley of Chamouni, a fierce, turbulent torrent, filled with debris and discolored by the disintegrated soil lapped up in its rapid current. Below Geneva, where the waters of these two streams meet, the bold, captious, muddy current of the Arve dashes tumultously into the peaceful Khone, which at first seemingly shrinks from the contact, and holds itself aloof, keeping its waters a distinct blue line along the right shore. Farther on in the struggle for mastery, the purer element, having vainly endeavored to impart its crystalline clearness to its foul associate, or at least, to keep its own transparent waters untainted, gradually yields to an overpowering, defiling force — the blue stream grows narrower and narrower, until what a little before was so clear that through its crystal waters might be seen every pebble and boulder as readily as are discerned unuttered thoughts in the minds of guileless childhood, becomes uniformly contaminated, and changed into a yellowish, turbid river, and so continues through its long journey to the Mediterranean Sea.

This has seemed to me an apt illustration of the effect of forcing into association in one institution, children who should be trained and reared apart. Comparatively innocent but homeless or wayward children, who come upon the public by reason of misfortune, not from any crime of their own, thrown by a cruel fate in contact with the hardened youth of the reformatories, though &t first shrinking from the association, gradually become overpowered by the turbulent evil force that ever domineers, till, finally, like the Rhone after its defilement by the Arve, no trace is left of their original purity.

To dispose of the vast number of children that come upon the public so that the greatest good may be accomplished, is no easy task. To neglect to give the subject needful attention and leave their care and training to be regulated in a careless manner, is criminal. At present the want of a proper classification is urgently felt, yet the principle at least on which it should be based is plain. Nature teaches what that should be.

Everything developed by growth is susceptible to surroundings. This is strikingly true of life at its beginnings, whether in the tender plant or in the childhood of the human being. In family life we see with what care the training of the child is conducted and how carefully the susceptible being is guarded from vicious influences by the home. The more lax the discipline and the greater the freedom allowed to the child to wander away from the parental roof into evil associations, the more imminent the danger. What is true in# the family, is trug in institutions, which are, in a sense, but artificial substitutions for it, and which, through the faults and misfortunes of society and the various vicissitudes of life, have become a necessity. If, in conducting an institution, we disregard those principles which nave been universally recognized as essential to the highest moral and Christian development in the family, and allow the association of the pure with the corrupt, the gentle with the brutal, we defeat the ends sought, and must certainly suffer for our mistake.

In some of our States the fundamental principles of a proper classification have been entirely ignored. An illustration of this may be seen in one of our large juvenile reformatories in the State of New York, established nearly sixty years ago. To this institution from the outset were committed not only children from the felon class, but also those who were simply unfortunate and homeless. Although an attempt was made at classification by means of two separate departments, nevertheless the inmates came to knaw each other, realized that they were in the same institution; and the acquaintance thus formed was damaging to the cause of reform, and worked mischievously in after life.

Again, in like manner, in another juvenile reformatory in New York State, beginning its work as far back as thirty-five years, and designed primarily for felons and built like a State prison, with high surrounding walls and massive iron gates, older children were received up to the age of eighteen years. But strange as it may seem, one of the counties in the same judicial district as the reformatory was allowed to send its vagrant class, mainly homeless and unfortunate children, to this institution for hardened youth. While the expedient of brick walls to separate them from the others was at first resorted to, in a little time the importance of classification as to moral grade was lost sight of, and one as to age substituted.

Though permitted by law to receive girls as well as boys, the reception of girls was at first deemed incompatible with the true aims of the institution, and was reported against by the managers. Yet, notwithstanding this, commitments of this ineligible class were made from time to time, until finally a department for girls was erected, to which were admitted not only the most depraved, but even children who were simply homeless and in danger of falling. It is true the sexes were separated in,different buildings and yards, still the insufficiency of classification was evident, and their committal to an institution containing such a heterogeneous mass, who, in various ways, necessarily became more or less acquainted, was most disastrous.

So far from realizing these evils and endeavoring to correct them, as recently as the winter of 1882, a bill was introduced in the Legislature to further enlarge the scope of the institution — compel it to receive from five judicial districts of the state a comparatively innocent class, namely, those guilty of vagrancy, the abandoned, exposed or neglected, those found soliciting alms or charity from door to door, besides a few jother classes equally unsuitable for such a place.

Had this become a law, the institution would have formed a receptacle for a strange conglomeration of the innocent and debased, ranging all the way from the poor, neglected, and abandoned child to the felon and the street prostitute; and we should have witnessed, from a territory containing a population of over two millions, boys and girls of the comparatively innocent class, often those who by unnatural parents were thrust upon the streets to beg, forced into corrupting criminal associations and branded with the stigma of criminal commitment.

It is gratifying to state, however, that a proposition involving so grave a mistake, fraught with injustice and wrong, and entailing large subsequent public burdens, did not receive the sanction of the Legislature, and it is hoped the attention of the public has been sufficiently called to it to render the passage of any similar measure an impossibility in the state of New York.

Having exhibited some of the radical defects in our present system of classification, I will now endeavor to outline what seems to me to be the classification most in accordance with reason, humanity, and sound public polity. But first let me premise, that no classification is worthy of serious consideration whose fundamental idea does not recognize that the family is the natural and ultimate place for the homeless child. Therefore, while those who have been exposed to debasing associations and have acquired rough and indecorous habits, may be benefited under wisely directed institutional care and thus rendered more acceptable to good families, and even though the best means of reaching such families is concededly through the benevolent agencies surrounding orphan