Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1906-04-10

day before for gambling away her
 weeks earnings She has done every
 thing she could for him. she says
 but now that he is proving himself ] pse)ess she would rather have him
 taken away. There is no douot Ill tho officers mind that her story Is true and he makes arrangements to
 como apain the following day and have the boy committed to the truant school.
 Tho nayt case is entirely different. 1'he boy. who is twelve years Old, Has been very irregular in his atenoahce at school. His mother explains that he can't go to school because he mas no shoes and stockings. There are three children together. two glrls and q boy. The father is too SICK to work. but yet too stubbcn to go tc the hospital. The mother. in spite of heart trouble. supports the family; she does the best she can. she says. but the children must take turns go- ing to school. She can't give then all shoes and stockings; they must take turns The boy wants to go to school and when he has shoes and stockings he always does go.
 Now the law says that the boy must go to school until he is fourteen years old. and makes no allowances for a lack of shoes or stockings; SO what is to be done in this case? The officer promises to see that one os the charity organizations will keep the boy supplied with necessary art icles of clothing until he is old enough to be legally at work. He has in his pocket summons requir- ing the boy to appear in the child ren's court to answer complaint of truancy, but the summons remains unserved. Extenuating circumstance es cover this case. and unintelligent o1 unsympathetic action on the part Of the officer would simply make mat ters worse. The officer knows what to do, and as a consequence he makes his way down stairs followed by the thanks of the poor little boys family
 But there are not always extenuat- ing circumstances. The next name upon the officers list is that of a boy who told his teacher that the family was going to move and that he would have to go to another school. According to the rule, he gladly supplied the teacher with his new address; but he failed to re- pert at the new school, which was against the rule. The truant officer was suspicious from the moment he took up the case: and probably he was not surprised when he found that the address given by the boy vas an East river lumber yard. The officer had to drop the case but he did so with the conviction that soon- CT CT later either he or some other pursuer of truants would come upon the boy in the streets during school hours. When that juvenile rogue is caught he will be haled promptly to the chidren's court
 Next the officer stopped at little butcher shop. The butcher was en- gagged in shaving an East Side beef steak from an uptown beefsteak.
 Where's Adolph?" said the of fcer
 Oh, he no good," returned the man. He run away-go to society can't get him back.
 It happens in this case that Adolph has done precisely what the officer had intended to do for him. Adolph is an ophan, his parents having died in the old country: and his uncle, the butcher, thought nothing of keep. ing him at work from three o'clock in the morning until eight or nine o'clock at night. To be sure, he complied with the law to the extent of requiring Adolph to go 10 school during the day, but after a little sx. perience with his uncle. Adolph had probably decided that the ''institu- ton" would no doubt prove a com- paratively pleasant place.
 Of course, much depends upon the character of the institution. There are still some truant schools whose oldfashioned methods effect hardly any change in the wayward or neg l"cted boy. But altorether different is the system of reform-now grad nallv impressine itself unon people uho are concerned in the philan- thropic work of improving the con diticn of city waifs-in vogue at thn Juvenile asylum formerly in the city itself huf now npar nnhhc Eorrx, vp