"It would require a volume to tell of all his freaks and wanderings; his scaling of fences, and breaking out of impossible places. Towards the last of his New York life he began to add other vices to his original stock--such as drinking, smoking, and swearing; yet strange to say, he disdained to lie, and was never known to steal; and his face would glow with satisfaction when he could take charge of an infant. His mother hears, with trembling hope, the good accounts of him from the West, scarcely daring to believe that her wild and vagrant son will ever make a steady, useful man. "Truly yours, "Mrs. E. S. Hurley." The young rovers gradually became softened and civilized under the combined influences of warm dinners, carpentering, and good teaching; but we found the difficulty to be that we did not have sufficient hold over them out of school hours; we needed more appliances for such habitual vagabonds. What was wanted was a Lodging-house and all its influences, as well as School, for the former gives a greater control than does a simple Industrial School. We accordingly transferred the whole enterprise to a still worse quarter, where I had done my first work in visiting, and which I thoroughly knew, the region on East River, at the foot of Eleventh Street. Here was a numerous band of similar boys, who slept anywhere, and lived by petty pilferings from the iron-works and wood-yards and by street jobs. In this place we combined our carpenters' shop with Day-school, Night-school, Reading-room, and Lodging-house, and exerted thus a variety of influences over the "Arabs," which soon began to reform and civilize them. Here we had no difficulties, and made a steady progress as we had done everywhere else. At present, some gentle female teachers guide the Industrial School. We have dropped the carpentering, as what the boys need is the habit of industry and a primary school-training more than a trade; and we have found that a refined woman can influence these rough little vagabonds even more than a man. Subsequently, another school was founded in the quarter from which we removed this, and is now held in East Thirty-fourth Street. One of the benefactions which we hope for in the future is the erection of a suitable building for a Lodging-house, Reading-room, Day-school, and Mission, in the miserable quarter on East River, near Thirty-fourth Street. CHAPTER XVI. NEW METHODS OF TEACHING. A lady of high culture and position, who felt peculiarly the responsibilities of the fortunate toward the unfortunate, conceived the idea of doing something to elevate the condition of the destitute classes in the quarter of the city between the East River and Avenue B. She accordingly made the proposition to us of an Industrial School in that neighborhood.