An arrangement is made by which the current is carried from the rail to the motor, which is in the truck of the passenger-car.

A great rate of speed can be gained with the third-rail system, ten miles having been made in thirteen and a half minutes.

It is rumored that the elevated road will most probably adopt the third-rail system, and if this is done the journey from Harlem to the Battery may be made in fifteen minutes.

The great drawback to this system is that the current is exposed, and persons crossing the tracks are liable to get a very severe shock.

The current used will be six hundred volts, and, while the company insists that this will not kill any one, they are of the opinion that it would be better to avoid the shock if possible.

* * * * *

A new school was opened the other day in East Twenty-first Street, New York City.

Though girls will be admitted into it, it is especially a school for boys, as you will understand when you learn that it is a Truant School.

It is one of the laws of our country that children must attend school.  Parents who do not send their children are fined, and children who play truant when they are sent to school are also punished.

For years it has been the custom to arrest all truants, or children who will not attend the public schools.  If the magistrate found that the culprit was a bad boy, who continually stayed away from school, he would commit him to a Reformatory.

Many people have felt that this was not the right thing to do, for, while boys who play truant are certainly very naughty, they are not necessarily wicked boys who need to be sent to a Reformatory.  The truant school has therefore been founded to prevent this.  This school is in fact a big boarding-school.  The truants who are brought in are housed and fed and taught.  They are treated with the greatest kindness, but are constantly under the eye of the teacher, and forced to study.

Any boy who misconducts himself in the Truant School is sent to a Reformatory; but the other lads are kept at their work for a certain period, and then allowed to go back to their homes, if they agree that they will attend school regularly in future.

Boys who behave nicely are given leave of absence to go home and see their parents from Saturday to Monday.

The boys are treated exactly as if they were at boarding-school, the only difference being that they are never allowed to go outside the walls of the school.

They have every comfort, with playrooms, and gymnasiums, and yards for exercising; but out into the street they cannot go.

On the upper floors are neat white dormitories and bathrooms, and washrooms.

Their only hardship is that they must study.  They cannot escape their daily lessons, nor the certainty of being sent to a Reformatory if they give trouble.