Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/128

116 Although we said that the reform of criminals was not the chief objects of these clubs, nevertheless it is accomplished very frequently, and, what is even better, a higher and higher sense of honor and morality is developed in each boy every year of his club life. In most cases to have the intelligence to know what is right is to do right, and with growing perception, awakened by continually thinking, questioning, and reasoning, the most harmless act of one year appears to the boys a downright wrong-doing the next.

The success of the clubs in the public schools will depend very much on the help given by well-educated and sympathetic people of either sex. If three or four Junior Good Government Clubs could be established in the course of time in every school in New York, there would be less work for our political reformers to do twenty years hence. From the experience of several years it is safe to prophesy that boys who learn to run honestly and successfully their Junior Good Government Clubs are never going to try, in after years, to run dishonestly (but too successfully, in one sense) their city.



ARL CHRISTOPH VOGT, the eldest of a family of nine children, was born in Giessen, Hesse, July 5, 1817, the son of Dr. Wilhelm Vogt, professor of clinics in the university of that place, and Louise Follenius. Professor Vogt, the father, lived honored and beloved by the people of Giessen, but frowned upon in official circles on account of his independent democratic spirit. Of the family of Madame Vogt, the father was a judge highly esteemed for his probity and erudition, but mistrusted by the Government, while her three brothers went far to confirm that mistrust by being, besides jurists, soldiers, and poets, republicans who in time had to be expelled from the country. One of these brothers, Karl Theodor Christian Follenius, implicated in the assassination of Kotzebue, became known in this country as Prof. Charles Follen, of Harvard University, author of German text-books, poet, Unitarian minister, and one of the victims of the burning of the steamer Lexington on Long Island Sound in 1840.

Carl Vogt's boyhood exhibited no special features, but was much like that of other boys. He was fond of going with his younger brother Emil on pedestrian tours. Being rather fat, he was a little awkward in gymnastics, but attained great skill in sword combats, in which he usually came off victor.

The days of listless study and fencing came to an end, and Vogt 