In a very instructive article, which every visitor should read, on "Child Study," [5] Professor Krohn says that "dull" children suffer from defective hearing in ninety-nine out of one hundred cases. He tells of one girl in a class who failed to answer correctly, and was said by the teacher to be the most stupid child in the {84} school. "After the class was dismissed, I told the teacher that I did not believe that the little girl was intellectually stupid; that there was probably some physical defect clogging the pathway to her active little brain; and I requested an opportunity to talk to the child at recess, when I found that she could not hear my stop-watch tick until it was within nine inches of her right ear, and eleven inches of her left ear. The average child, under the same local conditions, can hear the same watch tick at a distance of twenty-one feet. How could the poor child answer correctly when she could not hear what was asked? Every answer was a mere guess. After a time any child would become stupid under such conditions, believing it of no use to attempt to answer at all. This little girl was, at my suggestion, given a seat not far from the teacher's desk and especial pains was afterward taken to speak distinctly to her. . . . She has since manifested such marked improvement that, at the close of the last school year, she ranked second in her class." In puzzling cases of waywardness, the visitor {85} should seek the advice of the agent of the local children's aid society, who is often an expert, and glad to help one who is in earnest in such work. The Report of the Boston Children's Aid Society for 1896,[6] cites two cases of truancy due to physical defects. One was a girl of ten years, whose eyes were found to be defective. After fitting her with proper glasses, the Society's agent had her returned to school. Another was a boy of eight, with a slight impediment in his speech. No one had noticed that his schoolmates teased the child, until he told the agent. After the boy's teacher had been seen, there was no more laughing and no more truancy. Massachusetts has an excellent system of placing juvenile offenders on probation for a first offence. This same report contains illustrations of the work of the Children's Aid Society's probation officer. "A boy, fifteen years of age, already on informal probation, and apparently doing fairly well, was suddenly brought into court, charged with breaking and entering his employer's shop at night. On {86} account of his past good character, he was put on probation by the court under our agent's care. He told Mr. Lawrence that he got into this criminal state of mind by bad reading and by attending low theatrical performances. With the aid of the boy's Sunday-school teacher he has been encouraged to do his best, and is now working regularly, taking good books from the Public Library, and is doing very well."