The treatment of such apprentices would be no different to that in force now on board ship for "boys" so called. They would probably live in the forecastle among the men, or with the petty officers. I know that some people will raise an outcry against the idea of boys being sent to live in the forecastle with the men, but from experience I am sure that this would not be detrimental to the boys at all. When a boy has spent two or three years on board a training ship (I do not mean a training college like the _Worcester_ or _Conway_, although I don't suppose all the boys there are unfledged angels), he has nothing to learn in the way of evil in a ship's fo'c'sle. Please, my good friends the officers in charge of these ships, don't imagine that I am casting _any_ reflections upon you. You do your best, but it is simply impossible for you to keep such a crowd of young rascals as you have to deal with like an ideal Sunday school. I have been shipmate with a great number of these boys--good, bad, and indifferent; but in one respect their education was never wanting: the knowledge of such evil as we do not write about, only hint at in conversation. I have heard--of course I do not assert it--that even our great public schools are not above suspicion in these matters. But there they are all sons of gentle parents; they have led a guarded life from their childhood, the foul innuendo and salacious gabble of the streets have never reached their ears. So that if they in the carefully-guarded precincts of these homes of education acquire a knowledge of the grosser forms of evil, we need not be surprised at the poor street boy who joins the _Arethusa_ or the _Cornwall_ being wiser even than they are. I have often seen a boy checked in a ship's fo'c'sle for using an expression that was not, well, fit for ears polite, although the man who checked him was constantly in the habit of talking in that strain. It is perfectly true that one occasionally finds a low-minded beast of man's age, who will deliberately encourage a boy to swagger in foulness for his private ear, but it is always in private; such a practice would never be tolerated in the midst of the watch. And such loathsome company will always be open to the boy, whoever he lives with on board.