ND HIS GAMES.

BY REV. JOHN T. WILDS, D.D.

Being a boy in a crowded city and being a boy in a village are two
different things, though boys the world over are always boys. The
balance of fun and sport is, after all, in favor of the city lad, the
offspring of the tenement-house.

After spending my boyhood in a delightful mountain village, and after
being much of a boy, although a man, for years in the crowded tenement
section of the East Side of New York, I am inclined to believe that pity
is greatly misplaced when a youthful reader of the Round Table spreads
himself in summer days under a great tree, feels sorry for the poor
East-sider of New York, and says, "It's too bad he can't be here with
me." Right now, my delightful friend under the tree, shouts of merriment
ring in my ears from boys who last night slept in a close room, or
possibly on the fire-escape, whose breakfast was most meagre because
their parents are poor and honest. They are as happy as the day is long.
They are happier longer than the day, because they never go to bed until
ten o'clock, and they only go then because the hall light is turned out
at that hour, and they don't like to climb up to the top story, or go
through a long alleyway in the dark any more than you enjoy going
through a graveyard in the night-time.

Necessity keeps the East-sider active. If he lolls on the street the
police stir him; if he hangs about a store the keeper chases him away;
but they tolerate him when he is playing. Necessity also make him
inventive. They make their games and have them in season. They would as
soon think of wearing an ulster in summer-time as play top in July. I
don't know but that they have a code quite as reasonable as the
high-classed youth who patterns after the dude.

Our happy lad of the tenement, until he is fourteen when he leaves
school and goes to work, is compelled to play in crowded streets where
hundreds of children swarm like bees, and necessarily within a narrow
space. But he has broad ideas, and insists upon doing, accommodating the
space in some way, whatever others do. The asphalt pavements are of the
greatest blessing--far better than roof-gardens, and since we cannot
have many parks, they are of greater importance to all concerned than
the little squares that dot our city. At evening-time, when the
street-organs have not gathered all the girls of the block for a dance
and during the day on the sunny side of the street one may fi