He justly animadverts upon the unreasonableness of those who expect “a House of Refuge will accomplish, in a few months, what respectable and even religious parents find it difficult to do even in a series of years.” They have their children from the first hour of their existence, and through all that precious period of childhood, while they are comparatively strangers to evil habits and associations, and yet how often do they fail to secure their standing in good habits and sound principles? How preposterous then, must be the expectation that the House of Refuge will take them, when their moral and intellectual nature is so completely perverted and corrupted, and thoroughly reform them in a few months! Touching the employment of boys in the institution, and after they leave it, many difficulties are experienced. The modes of labor which are adopted, are, of course, fitted to the age and physical ability of such children, but are by no means calculated to prepare them for that sort of life, which most of them expect to lead. To remove them completely from the temptations and exposures of city life, is considered very desirable; and hence, to place them with farmers in the country, where the means of indulging vicious inclinations are supposed to be few and far between, is always preferred to placing them with mechanics, where they will be likely to find associates who will be the subjects or agents of corruption. But to bind a boy to a farmer till he is of age, is regarded by most parents as a very undesirable disposition to make of him, and when a boy is thus bound, he generally understands that his parents or friends will readily connive at his escape. The general wish is, that they should be bound to trades, if bound at all. It seems to be admitted that, as a general thing, city boys are not likely to make good farmers, unless put to it very young, and by degrees accustomed to hard work. “The routine of labor pursued in the Refuge, does not seem fitted to prepare boys for that kind of life, to which the greater part of them are destined. A boy here, works from five to seven hours a day at very light work, in a room that is warmed and made comfortable in winter, and sheltered from the wet and heat of summer. He has from one to two hours for play every day, and an abundance of playmates. After living in this way about one year, (sometimes a little less, and sometimes more than a year,) he is bound to a farmer, who makes him work, perhaps ten or twelve hours in a day, and at labor which is much harder than any thing he has been accustomed to before. He has, perhaps, repeatedly been told, while in the Refuge, to behave well, and he should soon have a good place, and it has been told in such a way, that to be with a farmer is, in his mind, to be in a kind of paradise. But when he finds hard work, no time for play, frequent exposure to heat and cold, few or no companions, it is not strange that some are disappointed and disposed to abscond.”