Pg. 601

¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 Charles Dickens.] BOYS TO MEND. 601

¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 is a favorite employment. There is something to show, there, for one’s labour. A boy who has run away several times, is planting a gate-post in the ground (assisted by a smaller boy), and working with great energy. It is remarkable of most of the boys that they work, decidedly with a will, and “go at it” in a manner cheering to behold. In another field, passing the pond at which the boys have fixed hours for bathing, we come to a field of grass, in which some elder boys are mowing. To become a mower, is to graduate with honours in the Farm School.

¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 It is now full noon, and at half-past twelve the boys will dine; so, we cross fields, and stiles, and brooks, again, to find the dining- room. Meanwhile, the boys who are leaving work, run on before us, and gambol about, and roll over one another on the grass, with a confidence in meeting with no check while they do no wrong, which strongly inclines us then and there to embrace the chaplain. In a conversation relating to “Irish boys,” and the more errant of the sons and daughters of Erin in general, we learn, “O yes, by the by, we certainly have one steady careful Irish boy here.” On our expressing a desire to be introduced to this phenomenon, he is called up, but scarcely justifies his reputation; having, that morning, “lost” his boots, and provided himself with such an astonishing pair of dilapidated canoes from some dung­hill, that he drags a train of rotten leather, a foot or so in length, at each of his heels.

¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 The boys all dress like rustic labourers, in thick field shoes and corduroy trousers, which they learn to mend for themselves, in shoemaking and tailoring shops erected on the farm. They rise at the same time as the labourers in the surrounding country, and live on labourer’s fare; eating meat only twice a week. They are vigorous and healthy, thanks to sufficient, though coarse, food, exercise, and country air. About three cases of slight sick­ness in a twelvemonth are all the ills of flesh they know.

¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 1 Though moral discipline and kindness—a true spirit of religion—are relied upon for the main work of reformation, corporal punishment is not entirely taken from the code. It is administered only as a last resource; sometimes not once during six months, and only by the chaplain himself a week after the commission of the offence. The ordinary punishments consist in the sub­traction of reward. For all the labour done by them, the boys are paid a trifling price, at a fixed scale, according to the nature of the work; so that each earns from a penny to eight-pence every week. Out of his earnings he pays fines proportioned to the week’s offences. The balance in his favour is put down as cash to his account; but, if the balance be against him, he is put, according to the amount of deficit, in a fourth or a fifth class, and pays by eating bread instead of pudding, and by other changes in the character of his

¶ 6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 0 provisions. One week’s losses are not carried on against the next week’s gains. Each week is independent of all others. The money earned in this way is not, of course, given to the boy, but is spent in accordance with his wishes. He will buy with it, perhaps, treacle to improve his pudding, or the prerogative of setting up his knife, which is the schoolboy’s substitute for setting up a carriage. Sometimes he will ask leave to spend it on a visit to some rela­tive, or will save it up for months to pay his mother’s cost in coming down to see him at Bed Hill.

¶ 7 Leave a comment on paragraph 7 0 When offences pass beyond the fine and the fifth class, there is an alternative of solitary confinement for a short time, accom­panied with gentle admonition. Except in cases that demand immediate care, the record of the week’s misdeeds is kept, and the mis­deeds remain to be accounted for, till Saturday in every week; when, after dinner, the awards are made.

¶ 8 Leave a comment on paragraph 8 0 While waiting for the dinner-time, we visit the boys who are locked up in light separate cells, for a few hours of reflection. One of them is an Irish lad of sixteen or older, who, after a quarrel on the previous night, decamped from the establishment, and was recovered with a coat in his possession that did not belong to him. The coat he declared obstinately that he had picked up, and no kind of reasoning would make him tell another tale. We shared, for some minutes, his confinement; and though he was one of the most hopeless boys on the es­tablishment, he spoke kindly—in his absence —of the chaplain, and recognised the good feeling at Bed Hill. He would like it, he said, if there were not about three dozen boys, who teazed him because he was Irish. That was his view of the case. He was an orphan, who had been thirteen or fourteen years away from Ireland. His relatives were an uncle and aunt in Liverpool, about whose occupations he seemed unwilling to be communicative.

¶ 9 Leave a comment on paragraph 9 0 There is another boy, confined for general idleness, and lying all along (and very like an idle boy indeed) asleep on the cool floor, with his head at the door, like a mat. He is young —about ten—and small for his age. We have seen that head, in prisons, many a time. A sullen, lowering, overhanging, beetle-browed, heavy head, with confused eyes in it that will look anywhere rather than at other eyes. As the chaplain turns it up towards him by the chin, and says a word or two of gentle re­monstrance, there is no hope in it—very little accountability—no more power of straight thinking than there is of straight-walking in a twisted foot. Touching the difficulty into which this head has got itself and society, we would rather advise with our good friend Dr. Conolly, than with the quarter sessions.

¶ 10 Leave a comment on paragraph 10 0 There is another boy, for a graver offence. Being at work in the carpenter’s shop, he pocketed a knife, and so from good repute is brought to cellular disgrace. The carpenter to whom we spoke about it just now, as