Many of the boys are employed in making shoes. They not only make and mend all their own shoes, but manufacture for dealers, who contract for their labor. About eighty boys are employed in the tailor’s shop, where all the clothing, bedding, etc., used in the institution, are made and repaired. In the shops, no noise or confusion is allowed during working hours. The boys are arranged in divisions, to each of which there is a monitor, who has a slate on his bench, with the names of the boys, in his division, written upon it, and when one of them commits a fault, the disciplinarian gives notice of the fact to the monitor,—who makes a demerit mark opposite to the delinquent’s name.
A portion of the boys are employed upon the farm, which embraces nearly three hundred acres. Then, there is the laundry, in which some twenty boys do the washing and ironing, under the direction of a matron; and the kitchen, in which several boys do the cooking and baking, etc.
Boys, committed to the Reform School, are kept till they are reformed and discharged, or bound out as apprentices to mechanics and farmers, or sent to prison if they are found to be incorrigible. They cannot be committed to the institution for less than one year, or for a longer term than during their minority.
“Well,” said Mr. Davenport, after Clinton had finished reading the account, “now you can imagine in what sort of a place Oscar is living, and what he is about,—for I suppose he has been sent to the Reform School before this.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Clinton, “and I guess it will come rather hard to him, at first, to go to work, don’t you?”
“No doubt it will,—but I suppose, if he can be made to form habits of industry and obedience, it will be comparatively easy to save him, even now.”
“I hope he will get into the class of ‘Truth and Honor,’” added Clinton.
“Ah,” said his father, “what a pity it is that boys ever get out of that class! It is much easier to stay in it, than it is to get back again after a person has been once expelled from it. When you think of Oscar’s unhappy career, Clinton, I want you to remember what it was that led to it; and, beware, how you swerve a single hair from the line of TRUTH AND HONOR.”
Perhaps Mr. Davenport was thinking of Clinton’s entanglement in Jerry’s artful snares, the previous winter, when he uttered this warning; but he never directly alluded to that affair, since his son had given such unequivocal evidence of sorrow for his offence. Clinton, indeed, had already more than made up, by his exemplary conduct, what he lost in the good opinion of his parents by his unhappy connection with Jerry. He had the wisdom to profit by his experience, and the lesson which he learned from his temptation and fall, he will probably never forget. For the present, however, we must bid him good-by. Should the readers of this volume wish to know something further of his history, it is possible that I may be able to gratify their curiosity, some time or other.
VALUABLE WORKS FOR THE YOUNG.