Between the outer gate of Birth and the inner gate of Individual Responsibility it has not only left open fields of temptation, but it has permitted the digging and maintaining of masked pitfalls of vice that the youth of the slums or of careless parents can scarcely escape. It is true that there is a theoretical protection offered through laws forbidding the entertainment of minors in saloons and other nurseries of vice, but many children roam at will among these pitfalls and cannot escape the influence, while all children, lads especially, no matter how isolated or protected, are sometimes drawn into these maelstroms by accident, or the allurements of the depraved ones already engulfed within them, who are eager for company to share their misfortune and disgrace. Society practically abandons its Apprentice Citizens to haphazard instruction during the most important period of character-formation, and confronts them with punishment when full-grown tendencies to idleness and evil may already have become habits. Within the past few years organized detachments of society have essayed to offer protection on humanitarian grounds and thereby have unconsciously helped to avoid the necessity of expensive correction by placing outposts as near to the gate of birth as possible, the crèche being the outer sentinel and the kindergarten guarding one of the inner gates of entrance into life, but the full benefit of protection cannot be felt, and there is in reality no quarantine at all until _no child can escape_ the care of these blessed institutions. * * * * * We are not pleading for an untried experiment but we are appealing for organized effort to utilize already successful and approved means to close up the last gap of neglect through which the germs of evil and discord and idleness and waste may enter, and thus derive, for a small additional cost, the tenfold benefit of complete over partial protection. We are pleading for support that shall enable us to find the waif of our story, and the only possible means of rescuing him is to "corral" all waifs in need of care. We are pleading that the conscience of our nation may not be soggy with the responsibility of one neglected, helpless one at home even while we fight in the cause of freedom abroad. QUARANTINE "When the old king demanded of the Spartans fifty of their children as hostages, they replied: 'We would prefer to give you a hundred of our most distinguished men.' This was but a fair testimony of the value of the child to any commonwealth and to any age. The hope of the world lies in the children. The hope of this nation lies in the little children that throng our streets to-day."--_Sarah B. Cooper, before the National Conference of Charities and Correction._ QUARANTINE Perfect protection rests only behind a strict quarantine.