that it should be given. I know of no institution more worthy of your generous consideration.

CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY OF NEW YORK.

I would call your attention to the Children's Aid Society in the city of New York. The object of this society is to afford shelter, food, clothing, instruction and protection to orphan, destitute, and homeless children. Its operations tend directly to check vagrancy, and to save the young from the evil consequences of the neglect and bad habits of intemperate and criminal parents, and the contact with vice, in all its forms.

The society has established thirteen schools in different parts of the city, which are under the charge of teachers in its employment. The agents of the society invite to the schools vagrant children, too poor, ill-clad, and ignorant to attend the public schools now provided. About 2,000 youthful vagrants are thus annually gathered into these schools, and partly fed, clothed, and instructed.

The society has also four lodging houses, in which they give shelter day and night, and some training, to nine or ten thousand children per annum. It is not probable that one-half of the ignorant and homeless find their way to these lodging houses. What a picture of disease, death, affliction, orphanage and destitution is presented in the fact that there are 20,000 children in the city, some of whom are left parentless and homeless, some driven into the streets by wicked and pitiless parents and guardians, and all of whom are compelled, by beggary, thieving, and street trades, to pick up a precarious and miserable subsistence !

Every child in the industrial schools is trained in habits of order, cleanliness, and obedience. The girls are taught to ply the needle and perform various household duties, and the boys are taught some handicraft.

The children are gathered in from lanes, cellars, docks, and markets by agents who search for them. Their mothers are propitiated by the offer of a meal or two each day, and by the hope that the child may be taught how to earn shoes and clothing. The manager of the First Ward school, in his report for 1867, says: "Some idea of the condition of the basements in which many of the people live, may be formed from the simple statement that some half dozen scholars were detained from school until noon, but a short time since, unable to leave their beds until the tide,

which had entered their rooms, and risen from two to three feet, had again receded."

Besides the usual elementary instruction of the common schools, the children have the advantage of the teaching and example of volunteer teachers; many ladies of character and position devote a few hours of every week to teaching these children of poverty, and from them the little girls get their first lessons of goodness, purity, and religion. The industrial branch of the school proves often in later life a great safeguard to the young girl, for she learns how to work.

Another feature of these schools is the reading room, supplied with newspapers, periodicals, and books, and kept open in the evening, affording a pleasant and safe place of resort and amusement, in contrast with the dram shops and drinking saloons to which they might otherwise be invited by curiosity, love of amusement, or the hope of gain.

A few figures from the last annual report of the Treasurer of the Society, will show how from small beginnings it has rapidly grown into a charity of magnitude and usefulness. In 1853 its receipts were $4,732.77, and its expenditures $4,191.55. In 1866 its receipts were $93,577.07, and its expenditures were $92,408.37. During the past year it has supported 13 Industrial Schools, with 2,258 pupils, at an expense of $18,395.29. Its Newsboys' Lodging House has cost $11,637.86; its Girls' Lodging House $6,893.68; its Eleventh Ward Lodging House for Boys $3,703.76; its Refuge for Homeless Children (corner 24th street and 8th avenue) $6,205.48; it has purchased clothing for children at an expense of $6,272.97; and the cost of sending 1,664 children to homes in the Western States has been $21,688.39. The number of boys lodged in the Newsboys' Lodging House has averaged 135 each night; the whole number of girls who have sought shelter in the Girls' Lodging House has been 1,357; the number of boys who have lodged at the Eleventh Ward House has been 527; and the Refuge for the Homeless has received 738 boys and 109 girls, of a class utterly destitute, ragged, wretched, and hungry, who have been washed and fed, and taught to aspire to self respect and to help them. selves.

The causes that produce orphanage and poverty, ignorance and destitution, are common to all large cities, and are in constant action. If their consequent evils cannot be wholly averted and cured, they may be lessened and alleviated; and every society that

makes it a special duty to prevent and remove such evils deserves the pecuniary aid of the State.

For many years past your predecessors have annually appropriated sums varying from $500 to $25,000, annually, to orphan asylums, dispensaries, and benevolent societies; and I trust that in making up your list of beneficiaries, the Children's Aid Society and other societies doing the same benevolent work, economically, prudently, and zealously, may not be overlooked.

NORMAL SCHOOLS.

There are in operation the State Normal School, in this city, and the Normal and Training School in the city of Oswego. Four other Normal Schools have been located under authority of chapter 466, of the laws of 1866, one at each of the following places: Potsdam, St. Lawrence county; Cortland Village, Cortland county; Brockport, Monroe county; and Fredonia, Chautauqua county. It is expected that two of these will be prepared for the reception of pupils within the current year.

During the past year, embracing the forty-third and forty-fourth terms of the State Normal School, 207 candidates for admission were examined, of whom 194 were admitted. The average age of these pupils was eighteen and one-fourth years. Some of them had had practice as teachers before entering upon the Normal The average time thus devoted was eighteen months and a half each. Forty-four completed the full course of instruction and received diplomas, of whom nine were males and thirty-five were females. Nearly all of the counties were represented in the schools.

course.

The whole number of graduates up to the present time is 1,532; the whole number admitted to the school during the same time is 4,308. Over 35 per cent have therefore graduated; a fact which in view of the severity of the course, the infirmities of some, and the limited pecuniary ability of others, is deemed creditable to the general conduct of the school.

For the present year there are one hundred and seventy-four pupils, whose course of instruction is two years. For a profitable division of labor among the teachers, and for advantage in study and recitation, they are divided into four classes. The number of female pupils, for the last few years, has greatly exceeded that of the males, and no marked change in this respect will probably take place until a greater compensation is given to teachers, and

the call for young men becomes less imperative in other occupations.

A number of changes have taken place during the year in the corps of teachers. The present organization of the Faculty is as follows:

OLIVER AREY, A. M.,

Principal, and Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy.

FREDERICK S. JEWELL, A. M.,

Professor of the English Language and Literature.

RODNEY G. KIMBALL, A. M.,

Professor of Mathematics.

LE ROY C. COOLEY, A. M.,

Professor of Natural Sciences.

JOHN H. FRENCH, LL. D.,

Professor of Theory and Practice of Teaching, and Superintendent of the Experimental and Primary Departments.

ALBERT N. HUSTED, A..M.,

Teacher of Mathematics.

T. SPENCER LLOYD,

Teacher of Music.

LOUISA OSTROM,

Teacher of History and Drawing.

MARY E. BUTLER,

Teacher of Reading and Mental Arithmetic.

KATE STONEMAN,

Teacher of Arithmetic and Grammar.

JENNIE MARLETTE,

Assistant in the Experimental Department.

REBECCA JONES,

Teacher in the Primary Department.

There are two departments in this school, in addition to those devoted more especially to the acquisition of scholastic knowledge. They are the primary and experimental departments, and are designed to afford practice in the art of teaching. They are under the special charge of the "Professor of the Theory and Practice of Teaching," and afford all instruction necessary for a successful teacher. Although this is the chief object for which they are established and supported, they do, nevertheless, afford a better education than most of those schools of the same grade in cities,

proving that their relations with the Normal Schools proper do not detract from their effectiveness.

Fresh volumes have been added to the library to replace those worn out by use, and the building has been preserved in as good condition as its original construction would permit, without an expense not warranted by the annual appropriation.

I have no pleasure in reporting the resignation of the principal, Mr. Arey. His well-earned reputation as a successful teacher, and a pure and high-minded Christian gentleman, has attracted many pupils to the school, and I fear that it will be difficult to secure the services of a successor possessing his knowledge of the essential qualifications and duties of teachers in all grades of public schools.

A change has taken place in the executive committee, caused by the death of the Hon. Charles L. Austin, a well known and highly respected resident of this city. This occurred last spring, in the city of Mexico, where he had gone for the restoration of failing health. His place has been filled by the appointment of the Hon. Amos Dean,

For a detailed account of the expenses, you are respectfully referred to the report of the executive committee, who have the management of this school.

OSWEGO NORMAL AND TRAINING SCHOOL.

I have pleasure in reporting that the methods of instruction inculcated in this school are justly popular, and that the demand for teachers trained in them has been much greater than the supply, and at highly remunerative salaries.

At the time of making the last report, the building now occupied by the school was in process of completion. It was finished and occupied February 28, 1866. It is pleasantly located and admirably fitted for the purpose for which it is used.

"At the commencement of the last term, this school entered upon an extended course of instruction, and is divided into four distinct classes or departments. First, an elementary training department, for the preparation of teachers for the primary schools of the State, embracing, in its curriculum, instruction in methods of teaching all the elementary English branches, at every step of the child's progress, from the time of first entering school till the completion of these subjects. Careful instruction is also given in