They are crowded into small, ill-ventilated, uncarpeted rooms, eighteen or twenty in each, and pass the night on the floor, with only a blanket to protect them from the severity of the weather.

In the mornings they are fed by their temporary guardian with maccaroni, served in the filthiest manner in a large open dish in the centre of the room, after which they are turned out into the streets to beg or steal until late at night.
"'More than all this, when the miserable little outcasts return to their cheerless quarters, they are required to deliver every cent which they have gathered during the day; and if the same be deemed insufficient, the children are carefully searched and soundly beaten.
"'The children are put through a kind of training in the arts of producing discords on their instruments, and of begging, in the whole of which the cruelty of the masters and the stolid submission of the pupils are the predominant features.

The worst part of all is that the children become utterly unfitted for any occupation except vagrancy and theft.' "You have the answer to your question, 'Where do all these little wretches come from ?'" said the missionary as he laid aside the paper from which he had been reading.

"Poor little slaves!".