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Lest I absorb valuable time better spent in conference and discussion, I will not detain you by elaboration of these topics beyond a mere presentation.

For the first oft-repeated: For what are you preparing the imbecile? As to returning him to his friends after a few years of training, as the law in some states provides, the objections are manifold. In many cases our waifs and strays have neither home nor friends and the short period, allowed hardly suffices for permanent practical results. After training they have no will to work unless apprenticed to people who understand how to govern without hurting them: and where are they? Again, the shifting conditions of American life forbid, often, any certainty as to locality of friends or stability of occupation. We cannot as they do in European institutions send the child out assured of that environment for which he has been trained. Indeed, we are assured of but one thing when he passes from our care; namely, that his return to the world in almost every instance insures an increase of population not conducive to national prosperity.

As to the second proposition: How can you secure the greatest happiness to the. greatest number? Whether within or without an institution, congenial employment that shall prevent deterioration and preserve the self-hood to which he has attained is the sine qua non. To him, as for the normal, must be given "honest work for the day, honest hope for the morrow " -- that brief to-morrow of completed toil without anxious care, which is all he may know.

The benefit of such a training as above outlined would be not only the perfecting of our work, but by commanding the attention and respect of the public, tend also to aid in their work of eliminating the feeble-minded from the common schools.

Already our ADVANCES along these lines has removed greatly the sense of obloquy formerly associated with institutions, and this appreciation must increase in proportion as the public comes to understand us. Thus in time we may find their "slow pupils" sifted out and tested in these unclassified ranks already past rudimentary work, coming to form our middle and high-grade classes, and we can then train competent artisans in the various trades and crafts in sufficient numbers to really reduce expenses, and solve in a natural way the problem of how to secure the greatest happiness to the greatest number? But this, you will say, concerns only the imbecile for whom in low, middle and high grades may be found such occupation, while the future condition of the moral imbecile, the idio-imbecile and the idiot, demands equally our consideration. For these last, who, together with the epileptics, crowd upon us and impede so largely our work, filling the places of the imbeciles who, as I have shown, working at trades might materially diminish our expenses, we trust the future may yet free us. It is to be hoped that the day is not far distant when they shall here, as in Europe, be gathered into asylums quite apart and distinct from training schools upon whom they are simply a burden, neither receiving nor contributing benefit.

As to the moral imbecile it has become an accepted fact that he cannot be trained or properly cared for without greater restraints than those belonging to the ordinary training school. To confine him with idiots far below his intellectual grade is equally an injustice to him and a cruelty to those weaker brothers for whom he makes life miserable. A scape-goat for the sins of others, an inevitable enemy of society who must be forever set apart, this unfortunate victim of heredity seems doomed to a life-long penitentiary. The question for us is, how to lessen this isolation and atone to him for the unremitting and rigid surveillance necessary.

Enlarged bounds, suitable amusement and constant employment, together with proper facilities for control, should constitute an important department for this class in every institution. Entirely separated, yet sharing to a limited extent -- conditional upon a good record -- in its general privileges, these unfortunates, while contributing by valuable labor to the support of the institution, might yet find compensations, and a life service of comparative happiness.

How best render the imbecile harmless to himself and to the world?

This question, so nearly akin to the case of the moral imbecile, touches also the whole race of weak-wills and animal propensities.

The consideration of this, above all others, marks advanced thought; the effects of heredity becoming recognized in theory at least, are fast maturing in Legislative enactments regarding marriage.

New York and Connecticut have taken steps toward forbidding the marriage of epileptics, and Pennsylvania records the following act of assembly: "No insane or feeble-minded person and no person who from natural causes as distinguished from accidental causes shall have been insane in the past, and no person who shall hereafter have been twice convicted of felony as defined by the laws of the Commonwealth, shall be capable of marriage in wedlock, and any clergyman or civil officer who shall knowingly solemnize such marriage, and any person who shall knowingly assist in procuring or abetting the same, including the parties to such marriages, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and shall be subject to imprisonment for six months and a fine of five hundred dollars, both or either, at the discretion of the Judge before whom the offence shall be tried."