air was bad; the dark and ruinous building,
with its small close rooms, was quite unsuited
to the purpose; and a general supervision of
the scattered sleepers was impossible. I had
great doubts at the time whether, excepting
that they found a crazy shelter for their
heads, they were better there than in the
streets.

Having heard, in the course of last month,
that this Dormitory (there are others
elsewhere) had grown as the School had grown,
I went the other night to make another
visit to it. I found the School in the same
place, still advancing. It was now an
Industrial School too; and besides the men
and boys who were learning—some, aptly
enough; some, with painful difficulty; some,
sluggishly and wearily; some, not at all—
to read and write and cipher; there were
two groups, one of shoemakers, and one (in
a gallery) of tailors, working with great
industry and satisfaction. Each was taught and
superintended by a regular workman engaged
for the purpose, who delivered out the
necessary means and implements. All were
employed in mending, either their own
dilapidated clothes or shoes, or the dilapidated
clothes or shoes of some of the other pupils.
They were of all ages, from young boys to
old men. They were quiet, and intent upon
their work. Some of them were almost as
unused to it as I should have shown myself
to be if I had tried my hand, but all were
deeply interested and profoundly anxious to
do it somehow or other. They presented a
very remarkable instance of the general
desire there is, after all, even in the vagabond
breast, to know something useful. One
shock-headed man when he had mended his
own scrap of a coat, drew it on with such an
air of satisfaction, and put himself to so
much inconvenience to look at the elbow he
had darned, that I thought a new coat (and
the mind could not imagine a period when
that coat of his was new!) would not have
pleased him better. In the other part of the
School, where each class was partitioned off
by screens adjusted like the boxes in a coffee-room,
was some very good writing, and some
singing of the multiplication table—the latter,
on a principle much too juvenile and innocent
for some of the singers. There was also a
ciphering-class, where a young pupil teacher
out of the streets, who refreshed himself
by spitting every half-minute, had written
a legible sum in compound addition, on a
broken slate, and was walking backward and
forward before it, as he worked it, for the
instruction of his class, in this way:

Now then! Look here, all on you!
Seven and five, how many?

SHARP BOY (in no particular clothes).
Twelve!

PUPIL TEACHER. Twelve—and eight?

DULL YOUNG MAN (with water on the
brain). Forty-five!

SHARP BOY. Twenty!

PUPIL TEACHER. Twenty. You're right.
And nine?

DULL YOUNG MAN (after great consideration).
Twenty-nine!

PUPIL TEACHER. Twenty-nine it is. And
nine?

RECKLESS GUESSER. Seventy-four!

PUPIL TEACHER (drawing nine strokes).
How can that be? Here's nine on 'em!
Look! Twenty-nine, and one's thirty, and
one's thirty-one, and one's thirty-two, and
one's thirty-three, and one's thirty-four, and
one's thirty-five, and one's thirty-six, and
one's thirty-seven, and one's what?

RECKLESS GUESSER. Four-and-two-pence
farden!

DULL YOUNG MAN (who has been absorbed
in the demonstration). Thirty-eight!

PUPIL TEACHER (restraining sharp boy's
ardor). Of course it is! Thirty-eight pence.
There they are! (writing 38 in slate-corner).
Now what do you make of thirty-eight pence?
Thirty-eight pence, how much? (Dull young
man slowly considers and gives it up, under
a week). How much, you? (to sleepy boy,
who stares and says nothing). How much,
you?

SHARP BOY. Three-and-twopence!

PUPIL TEACHER. Three-and-twopeuce. How
do I put down three-and-twopence?

SHARP BOY. You puts down the two, and
you carries the three.

PUPIL TEACHER. Very good. "Where do
I carry the three?

RECKLESS GUESSER. T' other side the slate!

SHARP BOY. You carries him to the next
column on the left hand, and adds him on!

PUPIL TEACHER. And adds him on! and
eight and three's eleven, and eight's nineteen,
and seven's what?

——And so on.

The best and most spirited teacher was a
young man, himself reclaimed through the
agency of this School from the lowest depths
of misery and debasement, whom the
Committee were about to send out to Australia.
He appeared quite to deserve the interest they
took in him, and his appearance and manner
were a strong testimony to the merits of the
establishment.

All this was not the Dormitory, but it was
the preparation for it. No man or boy is
admitted to the Dormitory, unless he is a
regular attendant at the school, and unless he
has been in the school two hours before the
time of opening the Dormitory. If there be
reason to suppose that he can get any work
to do and will not do it, he is admitted no
more, and his place is assigned to some other
candidate for the nightly refuge: of whom
there are always plenty. There is very little
to tempt the idle and profligate. A scanty
supper and a scanty breakfast, each of six
ounces of bread and nothing else (this quantity
is less than the present penny-loaf), would
scarcely be regarded by MR. CHADWICK
himself as a festive or uproarious entertainment.