Any tenement district will furnish its own tribe, or
medley of many tribes. Nor is it by any means certain that the children
when found will own their alien descent. Indeed, as a preliminary to
gaining their confidence, to hint at such a thing would be a bad blunder.
The ragged Avenue B boy, whose father at his age had barely heard, in his
corner of the Fatherland, of America as a place where the streets were
paved with nuggets of gold and roast pigeons flew into mouths opening wide
with wonder, would, it is safe to bet, be as prompt to resent the
insinuation that he was a "Dutchman," as would the little "Mick" the
Teuton's sore taunt. Even the son of the immigrant Jew in his virtual
isolation strains impatiently at the fetters of race and faith, while the
Italian takes abuse philosophically only when in the minority and bides
his time until he too shall be able to prove his title by calling those
who came after him names. However, to quarrel with the one or the other on
that ground would be useless. It is the logic of the lad's evolution, the
way of patriotism in the slums. His sincerity need not be questioned.

Many other things about him may be, and justly are, but not that. It is
perfectly transparent. His badness is as spontaneous as his goodness, and
for the moment all there is of the child. Whichever streak happens to
prevail, it is in full possession; if the bad is on top more frequently
than the other, it is his misfortune rather than his design. He is as
ready to give his only cent to a hungrier boy than he if it is settled
that he can "lick" him, and that he is therefore not a rival, as he is to
join him in torturing an unoffending cat for the common cheer. The penny
and the cat, the charity and the cruelty, are both pregnant facts in the
life that surrounds him, and of which he is to be the coming exponent. In
after years, when he is arrested by the officers of the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals for beating his horse, the episode adds
but to his confusion of mind in which a single impression stands out clear
and lasting, viz., that somehow he got the worst of it as usual. But for
the punishment, the whole proceeding must seem ludicrous to him. As it is
he submits without comprehending. _He_ had to take the hard knocks always;
why should not his horse?

In other words, the child is a creature of environment, of opportunity, as
children are everywhere. And the environment here has been bad, a