may be supplied to a certain extent to the young child; and the judicious development of its faculties, with discipline of its passions and self-will, and loving culture of its affections, may prepare it well for the next stage-the juvenile department. But in this the want of the true home-training is especially felt, and cannot be supplied in a very large establishment. As we have already stated, the girl must be prepared for the varied duties of a home. The boy has his different faculties called out, and his individual powers and tastes developed in many ways in the industrial occupations which he may be engaged in, even if placed in a large institution. Agricultural work affords a boundless variety and exercise of his different powers; his natural energies, and even his destructive tendencies, may be so exercised on the materials of industrial work as to train them well and turn them to good account. He may be happy and do well. But a girl in a large institution is in a perfectly different position, and I would beg to lay great stress on this point. Her work is not varied in the same manner, and washing and house-work poorly take the place of gardening, carpentering, and other trades. If the institution is large, the managers usually endeavor to economise labor by the introduction of washing machines, wringing machines, drying closets, and other contrivances, which are most valuable if the object is to save labor, but most injurious if the object is to train the girl. She must leave such a laundry not only utterly incapable of going through the necessary processes in an ordinary house, but what is worse, with her mind quite unprepared to use its faculties in actual life. The dormitory work does not teach girls how to perform the housemaid's ordinary duties; and the cooking is necessarily on so large a scale, and so managed, that few comparatively out of only one hundred girls can learn it at all, and even these may be quite unacquainted with the way to boil a potato, or make a common family pudding. In a large school for several hundred girls I have seen the kitchen provided with such conveniences for cooking, that even the potatoes were steamed in large trays, and there was nothing in it to give one an idea of a common kitchen; the girls were not even employed to bake the bread,—an admirable industrial occupation, most useful to girls in many respects; the laundry was chiefly filled with women, who of course could get through the work quicker than girls, and thus they lost the opportunity of learning; even needlework, the woman's special and peculiar art, loses in these large establishments. In the one I have alluded to, a contract was entered into for the clothing; and though the girls made their own clothes and the shirts of the boys, they never learnt to mend either, or acquired the valuable art of keeping themselves neat and tidy with old and patched clothes,-a most important one for young persons in the humble walks of life. In another large boarding-school for girls, very fine needlework is taught; and thus it may be supposed that a means of earning a livelihood is put in the girl's hands; first-rate

needlework is produced in the school, which adds to its funds; but yet the girls are not trained to be good needlewomen, because, in order to procure more quickly well-made articles, each girl learns one part of it only, and may thus be entirely confined to making the wristbands of shirts without learning to make the other parts or to put together a whole garment. All experienced visitors whose opinions I have heard respecting the first institution of which I have spoken, have all been much struck, as I have myself, with the heavy, dull look of the girls in it, nor have I ever been able to hear that they are sought for or valued as servants, admirable as is the order and arrangement of the institution. Neither of the two is a Workhouse School; both are under the exclusive management of gentlemen. All girls then, from the time they leave the infant school until within a year of their being likely to go out to service, should be placed in schools not too large to admit of a distinct family feeling and family management. Nor should these schools be mere subdivisions according to age, learning, &c., of a large number. If it is necessary to congregate many in one locality, let them be divided (as is done with full success at Lancaster, U.S.) into genuine family homes, where the different ages and varieties of temper of the girls may prevent the injurious monotony; where there may be real home duties which even the youngest may learn to perform, and where home affections may be cherished. With such an arrangement all the separate homes might unite in one common schoolroom, and thus all the advantages of economy and superior classification be obtained. The size of these homes may vary from twenty to thirty, but should not exceed forty girls. After the girls have gone through this ordinary home and school training, it would be highly desirable that they should be placed where they can obtain more special training for their future work in life-in separate homes, where they should have somewhat more liberty, and have more preparation for the particular mode of life they are intended for. Mrs. Way has admirably carried out this plan in her Brockham Home for Workhouse Girls of about fourteen years of age. In some districts homes connected with factory work might be valuable, but they should still exercise a parental tutelage over the girls. In all cases where the girls are actually put out to earn their own living, a friendly interest in them should still be maintained; and there should be a home to which they can return during temporary loss of employment, as in Miss Twining's Industrial Home. These prove that girls must still feel that they have friends, that they are not uncared for; that there are those who grieve when they do wrong, and rejoice at their successful career.

Such, I believe, is a brief statement of what ought to be the education of workhouse girls. I need not say that it is not of this character in our country. There are doubtless some few and exceptional cases, where the country workhouse, under the management of some benevolent and judicious guardians, aided by lady

visitors, becomes a true home. But these exceptions only prove the rule. Even in well-managed workhouse schools, quite separated from the adult paupers, the girls look listless, and in a very inferior condition to the boys: this I have myself observed; nor, if the principles here laid down are admitted, is it at all difficult to assign the reason for this. If there is any connexion between the workhouse for adult paupers and that for children, none can tell what contamination is the consequence; what influences are imbibed, even by young children, who are placed for care with female paupers, it may be of the lowest character. A pauper element is infused into them from earliest childhood,- -an element devoid of all that is good, or would defend from evil in the female sex. Hence the appalling fact which was revealed in a recent Parliamentary return, that during the ten years ending December 31, 1860, 1,736 young girls returned to the workhouse-being double the number of boys; and 1,896 returned, not from misconduct, but to become a burden on the country. In January, 1859, there were (as stated in the Poor Law Report, p. 189) 12,353 illegitimate pauper children. This awful fact speaks for itself. Are we going to rear up these twelve thousand infants as we reared their mothers? and as we reared the multitudes of wretched girls who did not return to the workhouse, but found their way to penitentiaries and gaols? Such facts ought to be widely known by the country, and then we believe that the country would demand an entire alteration of the whole system. No palliatives will avail to cure a system which is based on an entirely false principle. No home feeling can exist in any institution in which voluntary Christian effort does not infuse some of that love which was appointed by the Creator to be the very atmosphere of childhood. No guardians appointed to administer poors' rates ought ever to manage schools for the children. No men, however wise and good, ought to superintend institutions for young girls. The children ought all to be separated from adult paupers, and begin life anew free from reproach; and the management of them should be committed to benevolent and enlightened women, under whose direct control all officials should be placed.

We shall be told that it will be impossible to find voluntary workers among the female sex who will undertake so enormous a work, as that of managing schools for all the pauper girls in the country. A similar difficulty was made ten years ago, when we, the voluntary workers, asked the Government to give into our care the criminal children, who were becoming an increasing burden to the country in gaols. The Government gave us the needed authority and pecuniary aid, and there has been no lack of managers or teachers adapted to the work. Women have been making a rapid advance during the last ten years in the power of working for themselves and others. Numbers of ladies have already devoted themselves to workhouse visiting, and will doubtless be ready to

take the less painful and difficult work of managing the schools for young girls.

Now, such a change in the present order of things may be effected, I stated in a paper read before another section of this Association last year, entitled "What shall we do with our Pauper Children?" I also stated it in my evidence before the Poor Law Committee last year. It does not fall within the province of the present paper to discuss it; but only, after considering the principles of the education of pauper girls, to express the strong conviction that this cannot be carried out efficiently, either as regards the country or the children, except by voluntary benevolent and Christian agencies, combined, as in the case of schools for juvenile delinquents, with inspection and pecuniary aid from the Government.

The Lodge House, May 12, 1862.

CA BODI

DOMIN

LXIV.-ANNALS OF NEEDLEWOMEN.

CHAPTER IV.

ANNE AND HER SISTER.

I HAVE selected the following narrative from among the many records of adversity left upon my hands by those who have passed through our establishment, not so much as a proof of the satisfactory results which followed the interference of our Society, as to warn those who, entrusted with the care of young people, shake off their own responsibilities, and, without sufficient inquiry, depute to others the most sacred duties of life.

When we read of or visit the asylums provided for the protection of the erring, when we commiserate the position of the overcrowded tenants of our unions, or glance our eye over the paragraphs in print, where large figures announce the amount of our pauper population, we do not, I think, sufficiently realize what a large proportion of these numbers are drawn from the educated and upper classes of society. There are hundreds, nay thousands, whose sin and misery may be traced to the neglect of careless parents, educated (as it is termed) without one true element of education in their training. Young people quit childhood and enter on youth strengthened by no single principle by which temptation may be overcome. Left to themselves, they fall into folly, or worse, into crime; and then, instead of being plucked from the danger by the gentle hand of love, pride stands between them and their natural protectors, and with no opening for accepted repentance they become outcasts from home, and have no resource but to plunge into the full gulf of glittering but deceitful sin.

To such parental neglect I fear must be traced the following sad history of two young girls, the daughters of a deceased clergyman. They came under my notice within the last two years under peculiar circumstances. Sad indeed was the position in which they were found, sadder still the unavailing result of the assistance rendered them, as far as the elder was concerned; although I trust our Society was instrumental in saving the younger sister from (I may almost say) the brink of crime. Well indeed may the stale, oftquoted remark, that "truth is stranger than fiction," be applied to their history, for a more complicated story of folly, romance, and misguided trust in others, cannot well be imagined.

of

My interest was first excited in their behalf by a lady who called upon me one morning, premising her interview by stating that "she feared the story she had to tell was so improbable I should scarcely credit it; but at the same time she had herself good grounds for believing its veracity, and she hoped I would take the case into consideration." Mrs. D-- then proceeded to tell me that some weeks before, her brother, a youth of eighteen, had begged her to accompany him to see two young ladies who were in the deepest poverty, and whom, he said, he had often met at a friend's house, but who were now in lodgings not far off. After some explanation, in which he owned that he was himself paying for the apartments out of his small salary as a clerk, but gave his sister the assurance that both the young ladies were undoubted respectability, she consented to go; not thinking it at all right that her brother, at his age, should thus install himself as protector to two girls, although, from her knowledge of his character, she was convinced that he was thus acting from pure charity. Mrs. D- found only one of the young ladies at home, and requesting the young man to leave them together, she hoped at once to put an end to the acquaintance by representing to the lady that their position having come to her knowledge, she had called to show her the impossibility, for the sake of the good name of both parties, that her brother could continue to act as their guardian, and to beg them to leave their present quarters at once. She also offered to render them any assistance in her power to seek out their friends. The young girl, whom we will here designate by the name of Anne, seemed to feel much the awkwardness of her position, and cried bitterly when her visitor made personal inquiries as to where her friends resided. She first replied that she had no friends-none in England; then owned that she and her sister had run away from school, though she would not say why or from whence. She told Mrs.

that she would do anything for her living if she would only help her to employment; but as they could not go to the workhouse and had no money, she hoped her friend (Mrs. D- -'s brother) would not break his promise to take care of them until they could get some situation in which to earn an independence. During