A recent writer, well informed on the subject, says: "It is a cruelty to encourage these children with a gift of money, for instead of such gifts inuring to their benefit, they are extracted for the support of cruel and selfish parents and taskmasters." This is true, but the gift is a benefit to the child, nevertheless. These children have parents or relatives engaged in the same business, who require them to bring in a certain sum of money at the end of the day, and if they do not make up the amount they are received with blows and curses, and are refused the meagre suppers of which they are so much in need, or are turned into the streets to pass the night. The poor little wretches come crowding into the Five Points from nine o'clock until midnight, staggering under their heavy harps, those who have not made up the required sum sobbing bitterly in anticipation of the treatment in store for them. Give them a penny or two, should they ask it, reader. You will not miss it. It will go to the brutal parent or taskmaster, it is true, but it will give the little monkey-faced minstrel a supper, and save him from a beating. It is more to them than to you, and it will do you no harm for the recording angel to write opposite the follies and sins of your life, that you cast one gleam of sunshine into the heart of one of these children. A number of Italian gentlemen resident in New York have generously devoted themselves to the task of bettering the lot of these little ones, and many of those who formerly lived on the streets are now in attendance upon the Italian schools of the city. Yet great is the suffering amongst those who have not been reached by these efforts. Only one or two years ago there were several wretches living in the city who carried on a regular business of importing children from Tuscany and Naples, and putting them on the streets here as beggars, musicians, and thieves. They half starved the little creatures, and forced them to steal as well as beg, and converted the girls into outcasts at the earliest possible age. The newspapers at length obtained information respecting these practices, and by exposing them, drew the attention of the civil authorities to them. One of the scoundrels, named Antonelli, was arrested, tried, and sentenced to the penitentiary, and the infamous business was broken up. The police authorities are possessed of information which justifies them in asserting that some Italian children fare quite as badly at the hands of their own parents. There have been several instances where Italian fathers have made a practice of hiring out their daughters for purposes of prostitution, while they were yet mere children.