Another suggestion came home to me with force while watching the drill of the Battalion Club at St. George's one night recently. It has long been the favorite idea of a friend and neighbor of mine, who is an old army officer and has seen service in the field, that a summer camp for boys from the city tenements could be established somewhere in the mountains at a safe distance from tempting orchards, where an army of them might be drilled with immense profit to themselves and to everybody. He will have it that they could be managed as easily as an equal number of men, with the right sort of organization and officers, and as in his business he runs along smoothly with four or five hundred girls under his command, I am bound to defer to his judgment, however much my own may rebel, particularly as he would be acting out my own convictions, after all, in his wholesale way. In any event the experiment might be tried with a regiment if not with an army, and it would be a very interesting one. The boys would have lots of chance for wholesome play as well as drill, and would get no end of fun out of it. The possible hardships of camping out would have no existence for them. As for any lasting good to come of it, outside of physical benefits, I think the discipline alone, with what it stands for, would cover that. In the reform schools, where they have military drill, they have found it their most useful ally in dealing with the worst and wildest class of the boys. It is the bump of organization that is touched again there. Resistance ceases of itself and the boys fall into line. Too much can be made of discipline, of course. The body may be drilled until it is a mere machine and the real boy is dead. But that has nothing to do with such an experiment as I spoke of. That is the concern of reform schools, and I do not think they are in any danger of overdoing it.