6 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1890. 



increasing gravity of the oflfence. Sunday is especially selected 

 as oflfering a favorable opportunity to steal flowers and fruit ; 

 householders being presumed to be absent at church. 



The worst feature of the case, in my judgment, is the fact that 

 so many of the offenders are young girls — the female sex being 

 largely predominant in such form of trespass. In one instance, 

 upon my own premises, there was a party of five (5) girls and two 

 (2) boys busy picking and eating half-formed clusters of green 

 grapes. At another time, passing the estate of Mr. Charles L. 

 Pierce, on William Street, at an hour when he was away at his 

 business, I found another gang (!) of seven (7) girls and three (3) 

 boys busy as bees filling large baskets with apples and pears 

 from Mr. Pierce's trees. In neither instance did there appear to 

 be a child older than twelve (12) years. 



This evil is rapidly developing, as our city grows in popula- 

 tion, with a portion of whom it would seem to be an accepted 

 theory that there can be no private property in flowers or fruits. 

 Their cultivation will have to be abandoned, however reluctantly, 

 unless juvenile trespass and theft can be effectually arrested. 

 Sincerely, 



EDWARD WINSLOW LINCOLN, 



Secretary and Member of Committee. 



Reference to the next General Court was finally ordered, in 

 sheer inability or reluctance to decide what would be most advis- 

 able to do in the premises. It is doubtless your settled opinion 

 that some measures should be devised and enforced for juvenile 

 restraint or reformation. That parents are much at fault cannot 

 be disputed. Nor can they well plead in excuse for their short- 

 comings, that our hillsides are so thoroughly stripped of birch 

 that there can no longer be satisfactory application to the way- 

 ward child. Birch enough can be found by those who seek, 

 and, even if not, there is the weighty authority of the late Henry 

 Ward Beecher that a judicious selection from young quince twigs 

 will conduce to the just collocation of saplings. Meanwhile, 

 what is the parochial school doing to abate the nuisance, or, put- 

 ting it more emphatically, wanton mischief ? If the common 

 schools are godless ! and therefore exercise no moral restraint, 

 the same plea cannot be urged in defence or mitigation of pecca- 

 dilloes by students at institutions whose inculcation of the moral 

 law is the sole reason for existence ! 



