A REFORMATORY 77 



practised tlieir unlicensed trade, reformatories should 

 be nowadays established. One of them, called by 

 the prettier name of the ' Feltham Industrial School,' 

 is placed just to the south of the road, near East 

 Bedfont. It houses and educates for honest careers 

 the young criminals and the waifs and strays brought 

 before the Middlesex magistrates. The neighbour- 

 hood of this huo;e institution is made evident to 

 the traveller across these widespreading levels by the 

 strange sight of a full-sized, fully-rigged ship on the 

 horizon. The stranger who journeys this way and 

 has always supposed Hounslow Heath to be anything 

 rather than the neighbour to a seaport, feels in some 

 doubt as to the evidence of his senses or the accuracy 

 of his geographical recollections. Strange, he thinks, 

 that he should have forg-otten the sea estuarv on 

 which the Heath borders, or the ship canal that 

 traverses these wilds. But if he inquires of any 

 one with local knowledge whom he may meet, he 

 will learn that this is the model training-ship built 

 in the grounds of the Industrial School. The 

 ' Endeavour,' as she is called, if not registered Al 

 at Lloyd's, or not at all a seaworthy craft, is at any 

 rate well found in the technical details of masts and 

 spars, and the rigging appropriate to a schooner- 

 riofo-ed Blackwall liner. Those amonof the seven 

 hundred or so of the young vagabonds who are being 

 educated here in the way they sliould go — those among 

 them who think they would like a life on the bounding 

 main, are here tauo;ht to climb the rio-o-ino- with the 

 agility of cats ; to furl the sails or shake them free, 

 or to keep a sharp look-out for the iron reefs that 



