Page:First Annual Report of the Woodbury Hill Reformatory.djvu/14

 for what is forbidden—and the dropped apples are brought in for the pigs, as a matter of course. Anyone who knows to what extent such a boys belly is his God—and how fruit is its most choice offering, can estimate what moral strength this denotes. Many of our boys serve higher probations and walk for miles with money and goods.

The cases of the two boys mentioned above, one of whom before experience chose—the other on experience rejected, a Reformatory, only reasonably prove that boys enter them with false notions. Policemen and others, out of pity or for fun, seem to suggest extravagant ideas of the life they are to lead, and the provision that is to be made for them. The disappointment that ensues does but enhance, of course, the difficulty of the work. A full statement of the comforts to be expected, even though strictly true, is dangerous, because a boy exaggerates what he hears into something higher which he expects. The best way to represent a Reformatory beforehand is as a place in which repentance may be assisted and perfected—leaving all the rest to be discovered. These, which are only the more remarkable features of a juvenile criminal, are quite consistent with what an ordinary visitor would observe at our institution, namely:—great cheerfulness, activity, and promptness in answering to a wish or order—much expression of trust and personal attachment. They are adduced as helping possibly to a juster estimate of what credit is due to what such boys say or profess, when not under remedial but stimulating circumstances.

The objection against Reformatories that they afford better training and teaching than honest children receive, is not perhaps worth much refutation—as often stated, it reminds me always of an objection I once heard against extemporary preaching—that it was so unfair on those who could not employ it. In either case what is the low level beyond which it is wrong or inconsiderate to proceed? If however the superior advantages of a Reformatory, stimulated crime either in parents or children, there would be a decidedly evil result: the remedy being provocative of the very disease it aimed at curing. I can only say I have no experience of this result. Both the parents and boys consider a Reformatory as a place of discipline and restraint. Neither party ever loses the sense of loss of liberty and involuntary work. Generally speaking young thieves are no burden, often a profit, to their parents. Neither party, in the worst cases, has such an estimate of right conduct and sound teaching, as to value them beyond liberty and wage for labor. Even those parents, and they are many, who are grateful for the care taken of their children, regard it, more or less, as a punishment; whilst others, and those the most depraved, prove their dislike by conniving at escape.

The general opinion among a class of persons not exactly criminal, but just the persons in character and circumstances to take the