TE ORANGA HOME.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 12972, 27 November 1907, Page 7

TE ORANGA HOME.

_ ♦ ■ TO THE EDITO* 08 , "raj: PRESS. * ? Sir, —I have been waiting for some abler pen than mine to write a word for.the above Home. Does "Granny" know the correct name in Reformatory or Industrial School, and that no girl goes there unless beyond the control of her parents, or committed by a Magistrate for some offence, or rescued from ©vil eurroundings? As for "flogging," tho word is absur_d, but if the parents had' ueed the rod when the girle were younger there need be no Jdome and no flogging. I have had eeveral girls from the Home, and have got others for friends, and have heard nothing from them but praigo of, and affection for, the institution and staff. One girl tells mc "Any girl can be quite nappy if she chooses, and it is far and away better than their own homo ever was." Another girl came to mo crying from her situation, asking mo to help her get back to tho matron, and gave as her reason that her employers were trying to put her against the Homo and matron. She said:—"l love matron, and I cannot stay in a place where they say things against her."' The whole ton© of the girls' talk of tho Home is their pride in the conveniences and comforts, their flowor gardens, fancywork, hot and cold water service, eeptic tank, with which even the pig6tyo is connected, their asphalt paths, white quilted beds, and single desks, which tho public school children have not got yet. As for their clothes, the matron eaid to me:—"Advise the girls to buy themselves serviceable clothing, but let them have a trimmed hat, nice-looking boots, and a pretty blouse, because it increases a girl'e self-respect to have nice-looking clothes." One woman who applied for a Home girl said to me:—"Anyone would think those girls models of everything good, Matron is so particular about tho situations and how a girl is to be treated." And bo they would be only in many cases, for the fourteen or i>o years l>efore Matron got them, they had no teaching, moral or model. From what I have learned from Home girls, I am ttrre there is no woman at the head of a like institution who can have the real interest of tho inmates more at heart than Mrs i Branting. and anyone who writes as ■'Granny" does eimply knows nothing about it.—Yours, etc., MOTHER.