We have already said that it is computed by well‐informed persons that we have in our midst some forty thousand vagrant children. Let us glance for a moment at their condition, and what is being done for them. It is difficult for any one to conceive the deplorable condition of these homeless children without personal observation. They tread the paths leading to moral destruction with such rapidity that hundreds of them are confirmed thieves and drunkards before they reach the age of twelve years. The day is passed in pilfering, and at night they sleep in some out‐of‐ the‐way place—under door‐steps, in wagons, or wherever they can store their diminutive forms. Some time since, a regularly organized band of boys were discovered to have constructed a shelter under one of the piers; and here they congregated at night, each bringing in his booty stolen during the day. A few days since, during a visit to one of the mission‐ houses of this city, the lady in charge pointed out to us a little girl, not more than nine years old, telling us that she never came to the house without being more or less under the influence of liquor, and a glance at the bloated features and nervous, trembling hands showed conclusively that it was her habitual condition. We understand that there are fiends in the shape of men and women in this city who will sell such children a penny’s worth of rum. Some persons have argued that these children are from bad parents, and under any circumstances, no matter how favorable, would be corrupt. Such an opinion is a libel on God and human nature. A certain proclivity to vice may be transmitted in the blood, but free‐will remains in the most degenerate, and is sufficient, with the aid of a good education and the grace of God, to overcome this obstacle to virtue. We know well the plastic nature of childhood, and, if educated from the first to honesty, morality, and sobriety, it will indeed be found a rare exception in which the developed man will not possess these virtues, and prove an honor to himself and society. But if the first lisp of the infant repeats an oath which is used more frequently than any other word by the debased mother, or if, as is the case with many, as soon as the babe can walk alone it is taught the art of begging and stealing, what can we look for in the same child simply developed to manhood? Are you surprised that he makes a thief? He has never been taught anything else, and he naturally looks upon the law as something that interferes with the right to take anything he desires, if he can only do so without being detected. Would you look for pure water from a stream whose bed is covered with filthy slime, and whose banks are the receptacle of disgusting, decomposed offal? Surely you would not drink of such, no matter how pure you knew the gurgling springs to be high up on the mountain‐side from whence it received its supply. Look at a babe as it is blessed with the first gleam