one can feel
young America is in a bad state." The pastor added that it was a comfort
to him to know that the "fellows" were Catholics; but I think he was
hardly quite fair to them there. Religious enthusiasm very likely had
something to do with it, but it was not the moving cause. The dirt was; in
other words: the slum.

Such diversions are among the few and simple joys of the street child's
life, Not all it affords, but all the street has to offer. The Fresh Air
Funds, the free excursions, and the many charities that year by year
reach farther down among the poor for their children have done and are
doing a great work in setting up new standards, ideals, and ambitions in
the domain of the street. One result is seen in the effort of the poorest
mothers to make their little ones presentable when there is anything to
arouse their maternal pride. But all these things must and do come from
the outside. Other resources than the sturdy independence that is its
heritage the street has none. Rightly used, that in itself is the greatest
of all. Chief among its native entertainments is that crowning joy, the
parade of the circus when it comes to town in the spring. For many hours
after that has passed, as after every public show that costs nothing, the
matron's room at Police Headquarters is crowded with youngsters who have
followed it miles and miles from home, devouring its splendors with hungry
eyes until the last elephant, the last soldier, or the last policeman
vanished from sight and the child comes back to earth again and to the
knowledge that he is lost.

If the delights of his life are few, its sorrows do not sit heavily upon
him either. He is in too close and constant touch with misery, with death
itself, to mind it much. To find a family of children living, sleeping,
and eating in the room where father or mother lies dead, without seeming
to be in any special distress about it, is no unusual experience. But if
they do not weigh upon him, the cares of home leave their mark; and it is
a bad mark. All the darkness, all the drudgery is there. All the freedom
is in the street; all the brightness in the saloon to which he early finds
his way. And as he grows in years and wisdom, if not in grace, he gets his
first lessons in spelling and in respect for the law from the card behind
the bar, with the big black letters: "No liquor sold here to children."
His opportunities for studying it while the barkeeper fills his growler