dramatic
interest. Even the pictures and objects presented to him, as well as the
language, are strange.

If we admit that in education it is necessary to begin with the
experiences which the child already has and to use his spontaneous and
social activity, then the city streets begin this education for him in a
more natural way than does the school. The South Italian peasant comes
from a life of picking olives and oranges, and he easily sends his
children out to pick up coal from railroad tracks, or wood from
buildings which have been burned down. Unfortunately, this process leads
by easy transition to petty thieving. It is easy to go from the coal on
the railroad track to the coal and wood which stand before a dealer's
shop; from the potatoes which have rolled from a rumbling wagon to the
vegetables displayed by the grocer. This is apt to be the record of the
boy who responds constantly to the stimulus and temptations of the
street, although in the beginning his search for bits of food and fuel
was prompted by the best of motives.

The school has to compete with a great deal from the outside in addition
to the distractions of the neighborhood. Nothing is more fascinating
than that mysterious "down town," whither the boy longs to go to sell
papers and black boots, to attend theatres, and, if possible, to stay
all night on the pretence of waiting for the early edition of the great
dailies. If a boy is once thoroughly caught in these excitements,
nothing can save him from over-stimulation and consequent debility and
worthlessness; he arrives at maturity with no habits of regular work and
with a distaste for its dulness.

On the other hand, there are hundreds of boys of various nationalities
who conscientiously remain in school and fulfil all the requirements of
the early grades, and at the age of fourteen are found in factories,
painstakingly performing their work year after year. These later are the
men who form the mass of the population in every industrial neighborhood
of every large city; but they carry on the industrial processes year
after year without in the least knowing what it is all about. The one
fixed habit which the boy carries away with him from the school to the
factory is the feeling that his work is merely provisional. In school
the next grade was continually held before him as an object of
attainment, and it resulted in the conviction that the sole object of
present effort is to get ready for somet