Accidents to boys employed at the mines are of frequent occurrence. Scarcely a day passes but the tender flesh of some poor little fellow is cut or bruised, or his bones, twisted and broken. It is only the more serious of these accidents that reach the notice of the mine inspector and are returned in his annual report. Yet, to the humanitarian and the lover of children, these annual returns tell a sad story. The mine inspector’s reports for 1887 show that in the anthracite region alone during that year eighteen boys fifteen years of age and under were killed while fulfilling the duties of their employment in and about the coal mines, and that seventy-three others were seriously injured, many of them doubtless maimed for life. These figures tell their own story of sorrow and of suffering. Yet with all their hardships it cannot be said that the boys who work in the collieries are wholly unhappy. It is difficult, indeed, to so limit, confine, and gird down a boy that he will not snatch some enjoyment from his life; and these boys seek to get much. One who has been long accustomed to them can generally tell the nature of their several occupations by the way in which they try to amuse themselves. The driver boys are inclined to be rude and boisterous in their fun, free and impertinent in their manner, and chafe greatly under restraint. The slate pickers, confined all day at their tasks, with no opportunity for sport of any kind, are inclined to bubble over when night and freedom come, but, as a rule, they are too tired to display more than a passing effort at jocularity. Door boys are quiet and contemplative. Sitting so long alone in the darkness they become thoughtful, sober, sometimes melancholy. They go silently to their homes when they leave the mine; they do not stop to play tricks or to joke with their fellows; they do not run, nor sing, nor whistle. Darkness and silence are always depressing, and so much of it in these young lives cannot help but sadden without sweetening them. We shall never see, in America, those horrors of child slavery that drew so passionate a protest from the great-hearted Mrs. Browning, but certainly, looking at the progress already made, it is not too much to hope for that the day will come when no child’s hand shall ever again be soiled by the labor of the mine.