The children who come under the care of the society are between the ages of five and fourteen, and may for the sake of brevity be divided into two general classes. First, the truant and disobedient; secondly, the friendless and neglected. The first are either voluntarily surrendered by their parents for discipline, or committed by the magistrates for reformation. The second class found in a state of friendlessness and want, or of abandonment, or vagrancy, may be committed by the mayor, recorder, any alderman or magistrate of the city. The charter requires that, when such commitment shall have been made, a notice shall be forthwith served on the parent, if any can be found, and that the child shall be retained twenty days at the House of Reception, during which period, if satisfactory assurances or securities for the training of the child be given, the magistrate may revoke the commitment; but if not, it becomes the ward of the managers of the Asylum, who may indenture the same at discretion to a suitable person.

The House of Reception, No. 61 West Sixteenth street, is a broad, well-arranged, four-story brick edifice, with iron stairways, first occupied in 1859, and cost, including ground, $40,000. It accommodates comfortably one hundred and thirty children, and is always filled, as most remain here four or five weeks before they are sent to the Asylum. The first great lesson inculcated after admission is cleanliness, without which there cannot be self-respect, laudable ambition, or godliness. The child is stripped of its filthy garments, taken by a kind woman to a vast bathing tub, supplied with jets of hot and cold water, and thoroughly scrubbed, after which it is clothed with a new clean suit, retained alone until pronounced by the physician free from infectious disease, after which it is assigned to its appropriate class, and enters upon the study and discipline of the Institution. Bathing is continued regularly twice a week during the year, ample facilities being provided in both Houses.

The schools, long under the able Principalship of James S. Appley, Esq., are conducted by graduates selected for their skill in discipline, and the children make rapid progress in study while they remain in the Institution. The libraries of the Asylum contain nearly two thousand volumes. Fifty of the boys are at present instructed and employed in the tailor shop; thirty in the shoe shop, fifteen at a time; others toil in the gardens, supplying all the vegetables for the family; while others are made useful in cleaning halls, washing vegetables, sweeping yards, making the beds in the dormitories, etc. Hours are set apart for family and public religious instruction and worship, for lectures, instruction in music, temperance meetings, and other opportunities of culture. The children retire at a quarter before eight in summer, and at seven in winter, and are required to rise with the sun or before it. Nine or ten hours are thus given for uninterrupted sleep. The managers secured for a number of years for their Superintendent the services of Dr. S. D. Brooks, an educated physician and a gentleman of fine administrative talent, coupled with a long experience in training truant children. He has recently connected himself with the "New York Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb," and his place in the Asylum has been filled by Mr. E. M. Carpenter, late of the House of Refuge, at Rochester, New York, another gentleman of large and successful experience.

The sanitary interests of the Asylum have been so well conducted that of the fifteen thousand three hundred and thirty-six children admitted since its opening in January, 1853, only sixty-three have died, and during 1864-65 but one death occurred.

The correctives applied are mainly moral, the rod being very rarely employed; but the hundreds of unruly boys received annually make more and more necessary the erection of a high enclosure around the premises. The building was long poorly supplied with water from wells, and the danger of fire was a source of deep and constant anxiety, but the construction of the high-service reservoir has at last obviated this difficulty. A steam pump has recently been connected with the general heating apparatus, capable of throwing two hundred gallons of water per minute to any part of the buildings, with well-arranged iron pipe and hose for the speedy extinction of fire. The plan of the Institution is the early return of the children to their parents, or their indenture to responsible families in the country; hence few remain over six months. The State of Illinois, the garden of the West, was early selected as the place for the deportation and indenturing of the children, and over three thousand have been placed in these Western homes. A House of Reception, under charge of a resident agent, has been established at Chicago. This agent regularly visits the children and corresponds with the families in which they live, taking care that justice is done to all concerned: Children are not indentured without the consent of their parents, except in extreme cases. They are often placed in large numbers in a township or county, and thus allowed to continue their early acquaintance, and rival each other in attainments and worth. Clergymen and other persons of character are requested to instruct and otherwise care for them after their indenture, and very few have turned out badly. More than $250,000 have been contributed by private parties toward the support of this Institution since its establishment, its chief revenue being derived from the city government. It is admirably conducted, and ranks among the best institutions of the age.