he steam-pipes
in the newspaper offices that open their doors after midnight on secret
purpose to let them in. When these fail, there is still the lodging-house
as a last resort. To the lad whom ill-treatment or misfortune drove to the
street it is always a friend. To the chronic vagrant it has several
drawbacks: the school, the wash, the enforced tax for the supper and the
bed, that cuts down the allowance for "craps," his all-absorbing passion,
and finally the occasional inconvenient habit of mothers and fathers to
come looking there for their missing boys. The police send them there, and
sometimes they take the trouble to call when the boys have gone to bed,
taking them at what they consider a mean disadvantage. However, most of
them do not trouble themselves to that extent. They let the strap hang
idle till the boy comes back, if he ever does.

[Illustration: 2 A.M. IN THE DELIVERY ROOM IN THE "SUN" OFFICE.]

Last February Harry Quill, aged fifteen, disappeared from the tenement No.
45 Washington Street, and though he was not heard of again for many
weeks, his people never bothered the police. Not until his dead body was
fished up from the air-shaft at the bottom of which it had lain two whole
months, was his disappearance explained. But the full explanation came
only the other day, in September, when one of his playmates was arrested
for throwing him down and confessed to doing it. Harry was drunk, he said,
and attacked him on the roof with a knife. In the struggle he threw him
into the air-shaft. Fifteen years old, and fighting drunk! The mere
statement sheds a stronger light on the sources of child vagabondage in
our city than I could do, were I to fill the rest of my book with an
enumeration of them.

However, it is a good deal oftener the father who gets drunk than the boy.
Not all, nor even a majority, of the boys one meets at the lodging-houses
are of that stamp. If they were, they would not be there long. They have
their faults, and the code of morals proclaimed by the little newsboys,
for instance, is not always in absolute harmony with that generally
adopted by civilized society. But even they have virtues quite as
conspicuous. They are honest after their fashion, and tremendously
impartial in a fight. They are bound to see fair play, if they all have to
take a hand. It generally ends that way. A good many of them--the great
majority in all the other lodging-houses but that in Duane Street--work
stea