Accordingly, he did steal, and took French leave one fine morning with Madam Cookey, having previously strangled the young lady's favourite cat, just about to kitten, and having the night before he absconded told the young lady he had made a famous nest for pussy to kitten in, and that if she went to the cellar in the morning, she would find the cat on her nest.
The young lady thought nothing of what he said at the moment, but, after finding when the family got up that the cook and boy were off, she went to look at her kittens, found the cat strangled, frozen, and placed on the nest. A day or two afterwards, the little sister decamped with three suits of dresses. Now what use would there be in putting such a boy or such a girl at so tender an age, and with such principles, into a penitentiary?
Penitentiaries are not proper receptacles for infant villains. The very contagion of working with murderers, coiners, horse-stealers, and scoundrels of the deepest dye is enough alone to confirm their habits and inclinations; and I am not aware of any instance of an infant boy or girl coming out of the Kingston Penitentiary subdued or improved. They are more marked characters when they again join their former friends; for they seldom avoid their former haunts and those whose example first led them astray, but plunge again and again deeper into crime.
It is the same with beating a child to excess; spare the rod and spoil the child, says the Jewish lawgiver; but where slavery does not exist, the rod is not to be used to that extent, and it does not improve even slaves. No; as in the army and in the navy, it hardens culprits, and very seldom indeed acts upon their consciences.
Border population is usually of a low character, and I cannot think it can be worse anywhere than where the maritime, or rather _laculine_, if such a word is admissible, preponderates, and where that race are unemployed for at least five months of the Boreal winters of Canada. It is only a wonder that serious crime is so infrequent. Burglary was almost unknown, as well as highway robbery, until last year; but instances of both occurred near Toronto, and the former twice at Kingston. The only use to such a class that a war could be of would be to employ them; but it is to be predicted, if peace exists much longer, that the civil and criminal jurisprudence of towns and cities bordering on the great lakes must undergo very great revision, and a suitable police be employed in them.