Many parents are equally indifferent, and to tell them that it is their duty, as it ought to be their pleasure, to see that their boys have a suitable start in life almost staggers them. The amount of joy and thrilling happiness that is lost to parents by this one fault alone cannot be conceived; the amount of misery, sorrow, and crime that is substituted is also immeasurable. Worst of all parental vices, most certain in its results, most deadly in its consequences, is the growing one of indifference with regard to their children. Our reformatories are full because of it, countless agencies are called into existence, and vast sums of money are expended in the vain endeavour to undo the evil that it has created. ‘Don’t care’ always comes to a bad end, but ‘don’t care’ in parents is doubly cursed, for it curses both parents and children. If parents would but understand that it is a natural law; from which there is no exemption, that with the measure they mete to their children it shall be measured back to them! But a voice from the dead is almost needed to wake some parents from their gross apathetic idleness with regard to the culture of their children. Were it different, we should not have thousands of boys and girls leaving home at fifteen and sixteen years of age, going to doubtful lodgings and following doubtful occupations. Can any good come if young girls earning six shillings a week leave home and essay to live on their earnings? The worst is sure to happen; it does happen, and ere long they join the ‘unfortunate’ class, and are met with by the score at our police courts. Can any good come if a lad of sixteen, earning twelve shillings a week, leaves home and goes to a men’s lodging-house? Yet thousands of them do it. The worst again is sure to happen, and it does happen: they graduate in crime, and we meet with these by the score at our police courts. Another course is often followed by these young people; with equally disastrous results, for boys and girls set up homes of their own and commence life on their own account, sometimes going through the form of marriage, oftener not. The home is invariably one room furnished on the hire system. The boy’s twelve shillings and the girl’s six enable them to live for a time, but a baby comes, the girl’s earnings cease, the furniture payments must be kept up. Then comes squalor, misery, and want. The rest can be imagined, and it lasts for life. A young couple of this description, who had lost their home, were found with two children sleeping in a van, and were charged. The husband was twenty-one and the wife nineteen; they had been married three years. They promised to go into the workhouse, and, on being discharged, were escorted thither by the constable who arrested them.