Page:First Annual Report of the Woodbury Hill Reformatory.djvu/13

 In like manner there is a love of being individualised or distingnished no matter for what. Boys will undertake anything if it involves a selection, and decline the very same thing if many are to join. Poverty is not disclaimed if it is remarkable for its extremity—dullness in school—failing health and strength become sources of pride if they only are excessive and prodigious. Hence, and because great people are supposed to consume a large quantity, the fondness for physic. Happily Epsom salts are an exception.

Impatience under pain and fatigue is another characteristic especially in town boys.

On January 5th, a fine bright frosty morning, four big boys came home from the labour field crying lustily and begging they might not be sent to dig. Next day two of these ran away. The school was vaccinated lately. One boy fainted under the operation, another sixteen years old—had to be held during it, and would have fainted but for Sal Volatile.

Above all really criminal boys seem to be characterised by a wonderful want of self-mastery. As if their hands and feet did not belong to them but to somebody else—a sort of demoniacal possession. Our worst boys have been extremely marked by this. In one boy it ran into great extravagancies under recapture—great violence of conduct—seeming attempts at self-destruction—as well as most outrageous assertions. In fact the careful and intelligent friend who resides as master in our establishment, and verifies these traits, concludes, that the thing which no really criminal boy seems ever to have been taught at all, is self-denial—and the degree of criminality of any boy, in relation to that of any other boy, might be tested by the length, or, rather shortness, of time, which he could keep a piece of sugar candy in his pocket without eating it. The desire among them seems simply to acquire, rather than to possess, to have rather than to hold. Possession strips things of their value. This accounts for their real poverty under often abundant wealth by theft. In this particular of self-denial our experience is very cheering. The Governor of Worcester County Gaol—remarked the other day looking at our boys—"this is all very well now, where there is constant watching and no temptation, but what will they be when they pass out from being watched into constant temptation? " Little things test and form character. This time last year—an apple tree, or fruit of any sort, which abounds here, was a constant trouble. One day the whole of the boys went off to the garden to pilfer, and you could not turn your back walking to church or to bathe, but a boy had a shy at some pendant apples; the sense of chastisement for it wore out in a few hours. This year the cherries ripened in the play-ground without molestation. The garden is worked in constantly, without, seemingly, a wistful appetite