dred and forty-two (142) received out-door relief during an aggregate number of 734 years; 64 were in the almshouses of the county, and spent there an aggregate number of 96 years; 76 were publicly recorded as criminals, having committed 115 offenses, and been 116 years in jails and prisons. The crimes of the females were licentiousness, and those of the males violence and theft. But the record we have quoted is merely their public history of criminality, which is necessarily very imperfect. Great numbers of the offenses of this wretched family were never entered on any court records, and hundreds were never even brought to trial. It is well known that this young 'mother of criminals' and her sisters have poured a stream of disease, licentiousness, insanity, idiocy, pauperism, and crime over the county now for a hundred years. This fearful current has not yet ceased to flow, as some of the descendants in the sixth generation survive in our own House of Refuge.

"Fifty per cent. of all direct female descendants of Margaret became prostitutes, and of the whole stock, from the age of twelve upward, fifty per cent. are found to to be of disreputable character. Murder or attempts to murder appear among the males in every generation except the sixth, where the children are not older than seven years. Forgery is found but once on their records. Theft appears everywhere.

"Another appalling feature in this history of criminal inheritance is the disease spread through the county by these vagrant children, and the consequent lunacy, idiocy, epilepsy, and final weakness of body and mind which belong to inherited pauperism, transmitted to so many human beings.

"Mr. Dugdale has traced still further the line, and makes it probable that the aggregate of the descendants of these vagrant children reaches the large amount of 1,200 persons, living and dead. The cost of their almshouse relief he estimates at $15,ooo, and their out-door relief at $32,250, to Ulster County; the maintenance of the prisoners of this family, at $100 per annum, as

$14,000; the cost of arrest and trial, at $100 for each case, as $25,000; the amount of property stolen and destroyed by them as $15,000; and so on in various items, until he reaches the sum of $1,023,600 as the cost to Ulster County and the State of New York for neglecting one vagrant child and her miserable little sisters."

In no country or in any age has there been a single charitable enterprise productive of so much practical, permanent, far-reaching good moral, financial and political as the Children's Aid Society of New York, the great prototype of the Boys' and Girls' Aid Society of San Francisco.

The power of preventive work among the young in that great metropolis may be seen in the fact that while the population increased from a little more than half a million in 1855 to 1,200,000 in 1880, juvenile commitments have not increased in number, which is equivalent to an actual shrinkage of about 60 per cent. from the proportion of twenty-five years ago.

Mr. Brace, of the Children's Aid Society of New York, says in relation to the work of 1879:

"The average number in daily attendance in our twenty-one industrial schools was 3,632, and the annual cost for each child, $19.69. The cost in 1878 for each child in the city schools of New York, not including rent, food, or clothing, was $38.41. In our 'lodging-houses,' 13,652 boys and girls were fed, sheltered, and taught during the past year (1879), at an average cost to the public for each child for the year of $42.67. The total number placed out during last year, mainly in western homes, was 3,713. The average cost for railroad fares, clothing, food, salaries, etc., for each person, was $7.99+." [Any one of these children placed in the San Francisco Industrial School-the two years of preparation for the State Prison and a subsequent criminal career-would cost, according to the actual figures of the school, $601.10.] 2,912 children enjoyed the benefits of the New York Society's summer home, at an

average cost of $1.89. Since 1853, the Aid Society of New York has sent into homes, principally in the West, about 70,000 children, rescued from the streets, from the poverty which goes hand in hand with vice, and from crime itself-saved to themselves and society.

It is certain that very few of these children have since gone wrong. Two or three of the western members of the National Prison Congress, held in New York, 1876, asserted that the homeless children sent West by the Children's Aid Society of New York "were filling western prisons and reformatories." The Society's experienced western agent was at once set to thoroughly examine the prisons, houses of refuge, and reformatories of the three States indicated-Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana. After thorough investigation in Illinois and Michigan, where over 10,000 children were sent, not a single boy or girl, nor any record of one, sent out from the New York Society could be found in all their prisons and reformatories. In Indiana, where some 6,000 had gone, one girl was found in a reformatory, and four boys, the latter only sentenced for vagrancy, and not considered very bad boys. Several of the western members afterwards wrote to Mr.

Brace that their assertions were on mistaken information, and expressed their entire approval of the society's plan.

The Boys' and Girls' Aid Society is seek ing to prosecute this great work on a basis proportioned to its veritable breadth and importance. If the State will take the work in hand, and render the existence of such a private charity unnecessary, of course the friends of the society can wish for nothing better-the end of their ambition will be happily reached. In the absence of this, the enterprise should be given either State aid, or such liberal private endowment as will insure it a certain and more adequate income. Grant it this essential to stability, breadth, and permanency, and there will be seen at once achievements which will gladden the hearts of all good people (taxpayers and philanthropists alike) in a steady and marked diminution of juvenile criminality, and of the rampant "hoodlumism which is our peculiar curse, giving us a criminal population of extraordinary magnitude-an element of the greatest danger to society and to the material welfare of the State.

E. T. DOOLEY,

Supt. Boys' and Girls' Aid Society.

THE revival of The Overland MONTHLY was made the occasion of the first purely literary dinner on the Pacific coast. To the thoughtfulness and generosity of Mr. Irving M. Scott of this city, the contributors to the magazine are indebted for the exceptionally pleasant entertainment of December 22nd. The fifty or sixty invitations issued were to those who, both as contributors and as helpers in other ways, constituted the bodyguard of the magazine; the majority were active contributors. Some of these were at a distance, and the whole gathering was the impromptu work of a few days; nevertheless, some forty guests were present on a drizzling and disagreeable evening. The invitations read as follows:

Mr. and Mrs. Irving M. Scott, desiring to celebrate the revival of the Overland Monthly,

request your presence at Dinner
at their residence,

507 Harrison Street,

Friday, December twenty-second, 1882, at half-past five o'clock.

The dinner, it may be confidently said, was one of the pleasantest things of the kind-if not altogether the pleasantestthat has ever taken place on the coast. The geniality and delightful tact of the host; the mutual liking of the guests, some of whom had never met before, and others of whom were old companions in arms; the remarkable good management, by which, in

magazine meet on an occasion like this originated, and since that time what you see here to-night has been accomplished by the energy of its editor; and I think the fact that forty-two contributors have responded in less than one week shows the in.terest that the people of California take in the magazine. This dinner is a fraud: it is only a pretext to get you together in intellectual companionship, rather than to eat. There is nothing in it except what California has produced: everything at this table is truly Californian. We have met here to night that the contributors might meet each other, and if possible place that magazine where it belongs-in the front rank of our local literature. If there is a big pumpkin or a large crop of oranges, or a new strike in the mines, to be celebrated, or if some of the corporations of the country are to be attacked, we are always ready to respond, especially if it is a big dinner and a rich man giving it. Now, I think the time has come when we in California should place something else upon the pedestal to be worshiped besides gold, big pumpkins, and large crops of grain; that we should worship the intelligence which enables us to raise big pumpkins rather than the pumpkins. With this sentiment we meet here tonight; and I hope that every year may find us together, making our very best efforts to lift up this magazine, and make it the representative of the ideas of the people of the Pacific coast. I want you all to feel, as contributors to the magazine, that the place belongs to you now; and to take part in these exercises with the view of what it is to bring forth in the future.

The first regular toast of the evening is "THE OVERLAND MONTHLY," to be responded to by Mr. Bartlett.

REMARKS OF W. C. BARTLETT.

Ladies and Gentlemen-I am reminded, by this early call, of an anecdote related in "Punch." An English parson, catechising some boys, put the question, "What is your duty to your neighbor?" One of the boys answered, "To keep your eye on him."

While I was keeping my eye on Judge Boalt, my nearest neighbor, the other eye should have been kept on my neighbor opposite, who, behind a barricade of flowers, crowned by this bear, which was the symbol of oldtime prosperity, has brought me to my feet for picket duty in advance of the "regulars." The occasion which has brought us together reminds some of us of another, eight or ten years ago, when President Gilman invited friends and contributors to the OVERLAND to an informal meeting at his house, to consider ways and means for perpetuating the magazine. He took a deep interest in its prosperity, regarding it as an exponent of the best thought and literary life of this coast. His judgment was concurrent with that of others, that the OVERLAND should not cease because its early editor had gone to the other side of the country. The contributors who had done so much for it were still here. Not underrating what the first editor had done, these also had given it that distinctive literary character which gained for the monthly a reputation at home and abroad. It needed a foundation of capital. I am free to say that it never would have been discontinued had there been an endowment equal to the price of one racehorse in California! And the cost of a single race-horse would be sufficient to carry the OVERLAND on now for at least five years more. Horse literature is well enough in its way; but we need another kind of literature for dessert, at least. I take a languid interest in hearing that a ten-thousand-dollar horse has reduced the time on the turf by half a second. I should take an absorbing interest in the fact that ten thousand dollars had been contributed to make the OVERLAND run a little faster. No agency or instrument on this coast has ever done more for its honor. If some have been slow to recognize that fact, it is no less a fact for all that. We need some perpetual influence to mellow the hard materialism incident to the development of a new country. There is something more to be done than the slashing down of forests, the washing down of hills for gold, or the furrowing of the valleys

for wheat. It is well that the grapes turn to purple on the hill-side. It is even better that there should be a ripening of intellectual fruit, quickening influences, a noble inspiration, and high endeavor. Our gardens under sunny skies never cease to bud and blossom, neither ought this new garden of literature. Away up on the flanks of the Sierra, seven or eight thousand feet above the level of the sea, one may find the snowplant, in the early summer, coming out of a cold and barren soil close by the melting snow drift. When the mountains begin to put off their robes of white and take on those of emerald and purple, the snow-plant puts on its royal crimson-so rich in its local color, with such a poor environment, it never ceases to be an object of wonder and absorbing interest.

ous.

The OVERLAND has sprung, as it were, out of a new soil. It took on a local color and flavor, and it has never lost these. It won success in earlier and later times, because it maintained these characteristics. It took the unoccupied field in the commonwealth of letters. Men and women thought and wrote with the inspiration of a new environment-and the new was better than the old. Its literature was fresh, original, and vigorIt went into books. It was the medium by which one man at least made a national reputation in literature. There are some here who were present nearly fifteen years ago at the birth of the OVERLAND. They know the pledges that were made, the plans, hopes, and steadfastness of its early friends. They could tell some tales of pioneer literature if they would. These sponsors redeemed the pledge. They saw that child of literature grow in the grace of comeliness and good behavior; and they are here to salute it as one on the threshold of maturity. I see here a number of gentlemen connected with the University, an institution which from the first has had much to do in behalf of literature on this coast. There has at all times been a clear sympathy on the part of members of the faculty with the OVERLAND; it has, therefore, an honorable association with the University, not only

because a former president, whom we would but could not retain, planned and wrought for it, but because, from time to time, professors have contributed valuable papers, and have never ceased to be interested in its fortune. It was fitting that these two instrumentalities should thus be associated. It was most fitting that the literature and scholarship of the University should be represented here. The century plant blossoms here once in ten years. This century plant of ours ought to bloom, fruit, and renew its life, with increased vitality, every year. To this end we have met together. It is an occasion for congratulation. What has been done is rather the earnest of what may be done in the coming years. The south wind brings the fragrance of orange blossoms, and the north wind the balsam of the fir-tree. Let all breezes bring fragrance and prosperity for the OVERLAND. It has more than once been demonstrated in this State that the best honey is made from wild flowers. But whether from wild or tame, let the best, with strong, local flavors, be gathered for this magazine.

I ought, ladies and gentlemen, to congratulate you that our host has brought us together to enjoy his hospitality on so auspicious an occasion. It is the tribute of affluence and honorable citizenship to literature. It is a sign of the good time coming, when wealth shall be more freely enlisted in behalf of literature and art. There are great things to be done for both: the fortunes of both advance or recede together. We have not seen our best days in this respect. Every great fortune here which bestows nothing for the advancement of literature and art is a misfortune. The men of wealth have been slow to make their acknowledgments to the commonwealth which has so greatly enriched them. Here and there one has begun to plan munificently. When one sees in the desert on our southern border the palm-tree lifting up its fronded head amid the wastes of sand, he knows that water is not far off. The solitary palm is better than all the desert besides. Amid all the barrenness of its