arise, and deal with them as best we may. We can hope to alleviate but never to cure them, until we change the nature and passions of man. Poverty is a fixed fact as much as wealth. They go together, and we destroy the one only by destroying the other. What shall be done with these children of want, thus turned loose to be educated in a school of vice-these news boys who infest our streets, pursuing a trade demoralizing to others as well as themselves? What can be expected of such an education, but a crop of thieves, pickpockets and murderers? A great question is thus presented to our municipal authorities, and one which they have, no doubt, well considered. One thing seems certain: that in dealing with poverty and vice, especial attention should be directed to children. If the parents cannot be reformed, let the children, as far as possible, be saved. A wealthy community can support an institution on a large scale, where the children of the destitute can be received and educated, and parents can be required to give up the care of those they are unable to provide for, except by turning them loose into the streets to earn a few coppers by the ruin of their morals. To carry out such a scheme without undue interference with parental authority and affection, and without an encouragement to idleness, and without diminishing the stimulus to exertion on the part of parents, is no doubt a difficult matter.

Still, with an efficient police to inquire into the condition of every family, it would seem as if something might be done to save these children from being educated for the State Prison and the gallows, from pursuing an occupation of all others the most demoralizing and dangerous. The city may prohibit this traffic at any moment, and may provide for the boys if their parents are unable to support them and willing to give them up. The expense of supporting one or two thousand boys and girls would be a small tax on a community like our own, and it would be refunded three if not ten fold to those who paid it. The noblest charity is that which rescues the young from the vice and temptations of poverty. The parents we can do but little with; for the children we may do much. We can dispense with our extra Herald, Despatch and Daily Times, with all their murders and horrible accidents, and do so gladly if we can thereby save these boys from a trade so demoralizing and so likely to turn the venders into the heroes of crime, and to make them in after-life figure in their own "extras" all about the great robbery, daring burglary, bold thefts, disgraceful riots, incendiary attempts, forgery, assassination, manslaughter and murders.

6*

AMUSEMENTS.

THE merchant, the trader, the mechanic, and all who inhabit a crowded city require to be amused. The heavy load of business, with its anxious cares, its sales to make, and its notes to pay, must be at times thrown off, and the mind relaxed and diverted from its daily channel of thought and exertion. We are made not only to labor, but to laugh and be merry. The bow snaps by too great tension; so the mind loses its vigor and elasticity by too absorbing interest in the pursuit of wealth. When a man, by force of habit, degenerates into a mere business machine, a machine for making money, he is no longer a man. He has taken his place among the cog-wheels that keep the machinery in motion. He becomes like steam, a mere motive power, to produce a certain result. Such a man is a most pitiable object. He falls far below the level of the day laborer in the open field, who, though unconsciously it may be, drinks in the influence of natural objects by which he is surrounded, the sun, the rain, the dew, and the flowers. The city drudge who condemns himself to unceasing,

unvaried toil in the same unending round, day after day and week after week, becomes like the horse in a treadmill; he is always moving, but never changes his place. His various faculties wither for want of food and nourishment. He loses the power of enjoyment, because he can never stop to enjoy himself. He is in haste to be rich, and so sets himself to work to destroy the capacity of deriving pleasure or benefit from his riches.

As a nation, we are sadly in want of amusement. Our holidays come too seldom; so seldom, indeed, that when they do come, we are at a loss how to use them, and feel relieved when they are over. They break in upon our business. The banks, insurance offices, and brokers' board are closed. The ledger and journal are at rest-trade suffers, and we miss the daily routine of business. We find amusement the hardest work we have ever undertaken. We feel as much out of our element as a fish out of water, and hail the returning sun that sends us back to our counting room or work bench, the store or the shop. All this is wrong, because it exalts business and the getting of gain into the only worthy pursuit of life. Man is made for labor, but also for something higher and better. He is not a machine, useful only as it turns out a certain amount of work, but a living soul with affections to be cultivated, tastes to be gratified, capacities for enjoyment to be developed. He has