The central figure in this office, disentangling all the complicated threads in these various applications, and holding himself perfectly cool and bland in this turmoil, is "a character"--Mr. J. Macy. He was employed first as a visitor for the Society; but, soon betraying a kind of bottled-up "enthusiasm of humanity" under a very modest exterior, he was put in his present position, where he has become a sort of embodied Children's Aid Society in his own person. Most men take their charities as adjuncts to life, or as duties enjoined by religion or humanity. Mr. Macy lives in his. He is never so truly happy as when he is sitting calmly amid a band of his "lambs," as he sardonically calls the heavy-fisted, murderous-looking young vagabonds who frequent the Cottage place Reading-room, and seeing them all happily engaged in reading or quiet, amusements. Then the look of beatific satisfaction that settles over his face, as, in the midst of a loving passage of his religious address to them, he takes one of the obstreperous lambs by the collar, and sets him down very hard on another bench--never for a moment breaking the thread or sweet tone of his bland remarks--is a sight to behold; you know that he is happier there than he would be in a palace. His labors with these youthful scapegraces around Cottage Place, during the last fifteen years, would form one of the most instructive chapters in the history of philanthropy. I have beheld him discoursing sweetly on the truths of Christianity while a storm of missiles was coming through the windows; in fact, during the early days of the meeting, the windows were always barricaded with boards. The more violent the intruders were, the more amiable, and at the same time, the more firm he became. In fact, he never seemed so well satisfied as when the roughest little "bummers" of the ward entered his Boys' Meeting. The virtuous and well-behaved children did not interest him half so much. By a patience which is almost incredible, and a steady kindness of years, he finally succeeded in subduing these wild young vagrants, frequently being among them every night of the week, holding magic-lantern exhibitions, temperance meetings, social gatherings, and the like, till he really knew them and attracted their sympathies. His cheerfulness was high when the meeting grew into an Industrial School, where the little girls, who perplexed him so, could be trained by female hands, and his happiness was at its acme when the liberality of one or two gentlemen enabled him to open a Reading-room for "the lambs." The enterprise was always an humble one in appearance; but such were the genuineness and spirit of humanity in it--the product of his sisters as well as himself--that it soon met with kind support from various ladies and gentlemen, and now is one of those lights in dark places which must gladden any observer of the misery and crime of this city.