Pg. 600

¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 600 HOUSEHOLD WORDS. [Conducted by

¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 giving to those boys to whom the knowledge will be valuable—boys who will soon be emi­grants—some practical experience in bricks and mortar. Adjoining the dining-hall and school­room (one large-windowed rural hall serves both uses) is a neat and ample chapel in which the resident chaplain, the Reverend Sydney Turner, reads morning prayers, and officiates on Sunday before a congregation of remarkably attentive boys. The boys at Red Hill have faith in their chaplain. They live under his eye, and experience the kind spirit of religion which dictates his daily care on their behalf. They feel the genuineness of his admonitions, and are, therefore, notably attentive in the chapel.

¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 There are corn fields, and fields containing vegetables in so immature a state, that our ex­perience in agriculture declines to pronounce what they may be. In such fields, boys are hoeing. That is the work least agreeable to the young labourers. Here is a hay field. We have got over stiles, through hedges now and then, and over ditches. There is no sign of prison. It is all a simple farm scene; and the farm, being upon a hill, has, spread about it—under the eyes of the poor boys who have too often been bred to vice over the gutter of a miserable court—a wide rich woodland prospect.

¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 Here are the boys under the burning sun extremely busy with their long forks tossing up the hay. On this the hottest day, cut grass may, I suppose, be dried in half-an-hour; but I will not venture an opinion, lest I be laughed at, even by this very little boy of ten years old. He is a new comer, from prison in Liverpool. He never made hay before.

¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0 “What did you make?”

¶ 6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 0 “Nothin.”

¶ 7 Leave a comment on paragraph 7 0 “What had you been doing?”

¶ 8 Leave a comment on paragraph 8 0 “Walking about the streets.”

¶ 9 Leave a comment on paragraph 9 0 “Nothing else?”

¶ 10 Leave a comment on paragraph 10 0 “I went to school.”

¶ 11 Leave a comment on paragraph 11 0 That is the old story, the school and the street; the street getting the better of the school; a great deal learned in the street; a very little in the school.

¶ 12 Leave a comment on paragraph 12 1 The professor of haymaking has some conversation with us, apart from his class, concerning neighbour Bunter, whose hay had been spoiling for want of hands, and who had got it in by the help of half-a-dozen Red Hill boys. He had wished he might have twenty such to help him. Two other farmers in the like perplexity had asked for hands. The boys on such occasions feel proud of the trust put in their good behaviour. “You must be warned,” some of the boys are told, “how you behave at Farmer Mallow’s; he is a kind- hearted man, but he looks rough outside. Take care you don’t answer if he scolds, and mind you are very obedient!” One or two faces are lighted up with that shrewd look of comprehension, which small boys get, when they are cast upon the world to prey upon the weaknesses of human character.

¶ 13 Leave a comment on paragraph 13 0 It must not, be supposed that every de­praved boy who has been in jail and thence transferred to Red Hill, is transformed at the same time into a pattern of obedience and virtue. The truth is very different. In the first place, the authorities at Red Hill have not the advantage of applying their efforts to a single class of offenders. It wants the aid of other institutions with which it might divide the work that must be done. One institution might then take the class of offenders whose stay at the Reformatory is upon compulsion; another, might take those sent by their friends, as to a school; another, those who come of their own free will. One might take children, and another might take youths.

¶ 14 Leave a comment on paragraph 14 0 In the first instance it was attempted at Red Hill to part the boys into families;—to adopt the home system of discipline that has been so successful at Mettray. That plan failed for want of Englishmen competent—at any rate on the temptation of small salary—to administer it. The several heads of houses fell together by the ears. It was necessary to return to the old system of official and sub-official, and even then to make many changes. It is very easy to imagine that, if the experi­ment at Red Hill had been directed by anything less genuine than the sense, earnest­ness, and devotion of its present director, it would have been, at its beginning, a complete failure.

¶ 15 Leave a comment on paragraph 15 0 But, it has not failed. Four boys out of five are rescued by it. The fifth very often takes advantage of the unwalled grounds, and unbarred windows, to escape. They who escape, are almost invariably retaken. They elude detection while they roam the country; but, they come to London in the end, and there they come into the glare of the bull’s  eye. One boy who had escaped, was lost sight of, about the country, for a year. Then he thought he might venture upon London; in London he was seized immediately. The recovered boys are treated as their cha­racters require. The Society never dwells upon the topic of its outraged dignity; the object is to save as many boys as possible, and if a boy can be saved he is forgiven and re­stored to trust. In other cases, it is requisite to use the power of carrying him before the offended majesty of law. The one in five who cannot be reformed at Red Hill, certainly would not be improved for the purposes of free life by prison discipline. He might make a good prisoner, but be good for nothing else. He is a lost man to society. The other four, who would all be lost under the common system of neglect, are usually sent out to the colonies, where they obtain situations as farm servants or in other capacities; and— with the exception of a few who prove to belong, after all, to the unredeemed fifth part, —do well and live as honest men.

¶ 16 Leave a comment on paragraph 16 0 There has been some tree clearing, and there is a long ditch and fence made by the boys. Making a fence, though hard work,