rom a good home in White Plains, and the rest from the tenements of New
York. Only one was really without home or friends. That was perhaps an
unusually--I was going to say good showing; but I do not know that it can
be called a good showing that ten boys who had homes to go to should
prefer to sleep out in the street. The boy who has none would have no
other choice until someone picked him up and took him in. The record of
the 84,318 children that have been sent to Western homes in thirty-nine
years show that 17,383 of them had both parents living, and therefore
presumably homes, such as they were; 5,892 only the father, and 11,954 the
mother, living; 39,406 had neither father nor mother. The rest either did
not know, or did not tell. That again includes an earlier period when the
streets were full of vagrants without home-ties, so that the statement, as
applied to to-day, errs on the other side. The truth lies between the two
extremes. Four-fifths, perhaps, are outcasts, the rest homeless waifs.

The great mass, for instance, of the newsboys who cry their "extrees" in
the streets by day, and whom one meets in the Duane Street lodging-house
or in Theatre Alley and about the Post-office by night, are children with
homes who thus contribute to the family earnings, and sleep out, if they
do, because they have either not sold their papers or gambled away the
money at "craps," and are afraid to go home. It was for such a reason
little Giuseppe Margalto and his chum made their bed in the ventilating
chute at the Post-office on the night General Sherman died, and were
caught by the fire that broke out in the mail-room toward midnight.
Giuseppe was burned to death; the other escaped to bring the news to the
dark Crosby Street alley in which he had lived. Giuseppe did not die his
cruel death in vain. A much stricter watch has been kept since upon the
boys, and they are no longer allowed to sleep in many places to which they
formerly had access.

A bed in the street, in an odd box or corner, is good enough for the
ragamuffin who thinks the latitude of his tenement unhealthy, when the
weather is warm. It is cooler there, too, and it costs nothing, if one can
keep out of the reach of the policeman. It is no new experience to the
boy. Half the tenement population, men, women, and children, sleep out of
doors, in streets and yards, on the roof, or on the fire-escape, from May
to October. In winter the boys can curl themselves up on t