ake their own dresses, and run their own
meetings with spirit when the boys are made to keep their profaning hands
off. On occasion they develop the same rugged independence with an extra
feminine touch to it, that is, a mixture of dash and spite. I recall the
experience of a band of early philanthropists, who, a score of years ago
or more, bought the Big Flat in the Sixth Ward and fitted it up as a
boarding-house for working girls. They filled it without any trouble,
though with a rather better grade of boarders than they had expected. No
sooner were the girls in possession than they promptly organized and
"resolved" that the management should make no rules for the house without
first submitting them to their body for approval. Philanthropy chose the
least pointed horn of the dilemma, and retired from the field. The Big
Flat, from a model boarding-house became a very bad tenement, and the
boarders' club dissolved, to the loss and injury of a posterity that was
distinctly poorer and duller, no less for the want of the club than for
the possession of the tenement.

The boys' club was born of the struggle of the community with the street,
as a measure of self-defence. It has proven a useful war-club too, but its
conquests have been the conquests of peace. It has been the kernel of
success in many a philanthropic undertaking, secular and religious alike.
In the plan of the Free Reading-Room for Working Boys, of which I made
mention, it is used as a battering-ram in an attack upon the saloon. The
Free Reading-Room was organized some nine or ten years ago by the Loyal
Legion Temperance Society. It has been popular with lads of all ages from
the very start, not least on account of the club or clubs which they were
encouraged to found--literary societies they call them there. The
Superintendent found them helpful, too, as a means of interesting the
boys, by debate and otherwise, in the cause of temperance which he had at
heart. The first thing a boys' club casts about for after the offices have
been manned and the by-laws made hard and fast, is a cause. One of young
boys, that had been in existence a month or less at the College
Settlement, almost took the ladies' breath away by announcing one day that
it had decided to expel any boy who smoked or got drunk. The Free
Reading-Room gives ample opportunity for the exercise of this spirit of
convert zeal, when it manifests itself. The average nightly attendance
last year was sevent