Page:Picturesque Dunedin.djvu/228

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
204
PICTURESQUE DUNEDIN.

arrangement with the employers; and when they are boarded out, their schooling is carefully looked to. Music is one prominent feature of the instruction imparted, and about thirty of the boys in the Home form a remarkably good brass band, and practice daily under the leadership of Mr. Hugh Titchener (son of the Master of the Institution). That this training is not lost upon them is shown by the fact that some time ago, when Mr. Titchener, the Master, was on a furlough to Victoria, he met with several of his former band boys. They had grown to manhood, and were in various places connected with bands, one of them actually holding the position of leader of a musical association. If, however, that constituted all the proof of the success of the institution in producing good and useful men and women, it would not be much to boast of. But there is much more important and reliable evidence. The half-yearly reports from male and female inspectors, and quarterly returns from the masters and mistresses of those hired out, have already been noted; but in addition to these, and apart from innumerable and valuable letters from the boys and girls themselves, there are thousands of communications from employers and others, all bearing testimony to progress in well-doing; and, further, from the first separate records of all the young people who have passed through the school, from time of committal until final release, have been kept. In this connection may be mentioned an incident in the life of the late Dr. Guthrie, to whom allusion has already been made in this sketch. At a public meeting, the children of his Edinburgh Ragged School were spoken contemptuously of as "scum," whereupon the Doctor, under a fiery impulse, snatched up a clean sheet of note paper from before the Duke of Manchester, the chairman, and exclaimed with ringing eloquence, "This was once 'scum'—once foul, dirty, wretched rags. What is it now? In it—now white as the snows of heaven—may be seen an emblem of the material we send out, and of the work our school has achieved and is achieving!" As in the case of the old Edinburgh Ragged School, so in that of the young Edinburgh Industrial School—the results have exceeded the most sanguine expectations of its promoters. The writer has at hand a large number of returns of children found in the most unfavourable circumstances in