During the two years that this Home had been open eighty-two
girls had passed through it, and of these, the Matron informed me,
there were but ten who were not doing so well as they might. The rest
were in employment of one sort or another, and seemed to be in the way
of completely regaining their characters.
I visited this place late at night, and in the room devoted to
children, as distinct from infants, saw one girl of nine with a
curious history. This child had been twelve times in the hands of the
police before her father brought her to the Army on their suggestion.
Her mania was to run away from home, where it does not appear that she
was ill-treated, and to sleep in the streets, on one occasion for as
long as five nights. This child had a very curious face, and even in
her sleep, as I saw her, there was about it something wild and
defiant. When the Matron turned her over she did not yawn or cry, but
uttered a kind of snarl. I suppose that here is an instance of
atavism, that the child throw back for thousands or tens of thousands
of years, to when her progenitors were savages, and that their
primitive instincts have reasserted themselves in her, although she
was born in the twentieth century.
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