One incident in connection with the investigation in this school is worthy of record. A lad of about 13 or 14 years of age in one of the highest grades, who had been reported as having had no breakfast, was seen in the principal’s office at noon. He seemed to be quite rugged and healthy, and the principal said that he was “the brightest boy in the school, and a good lad, too.” He showed us his lunch—a roll of bread and two small pieces of almost transparent cheese. “Isn’t that enough for a boy?” asked the principal, laughingly. The boy responded: “Yes, but I had no breakfast, and this has to do me all day. I don’t have any breakfast most times, and sometimes no lunch or supper. You know that Mr. B—— used to give me some very often.” And the principal confirmed this part of the lad’s story with a tender, “Yes, I know, sonny.” The boy told us a saddening story of a mother cowed down by a brutal husband, and of the latter’s vice. He is a cook and has often beaten his wife, who works in an embroidery factory. A year or so ago he went to Italy, leaving his wife here. Soon afterward he wrote to her for money to pay his passage back. She was penniless, but, the lad quaintly said, “she made a debt of a hundred dollars” to send to him. “Then she had to pay every week, and there wasn’t much food.” The rest of his tale of shame—shame of a father’s sin—need not be told. It is too horrible. “Why doesn’t your mother leave him and just take you with her? You are the only child, aren’t you?” asked the principal. “Yes, I’m the only one, but there are ten dead,” was the boy’s startling reply. It was, unconsciously, a significant comment upon the good principal’s theory of the survival of the fittest.