laid, indifferent though his scholarship was in
anything but the tricks of the street. He was the most hopeless young
scamp I ever knew, and withal so aggravatingly funny that it was
impossible not to laugh, no matter how much one felt like scolding. He
lived by "shinin'" and kept his kit in a saloon to save his dragging it
home every night. When I last saw him he was in disgrace, for not showing
up at the school four successive nights. He explained that the policeman
who "collared" him "fur fightin'" was to blame. It was the third time he
had been locked up for that offence. When he found out that I wanted to
know his history, he set about helping me with a readiness to oblige that
was very promising. Did he have any home? Oh, yes, he had.

"Well, where do you live?" I asked.

"Here!" said Tommy, promptly, with just a suspicion of a wink at the other
boys who were gathered about watching the examination. He had no father;
didn't know where his mother was.

"Is she any relation to you!" put in one of the boys, gravely. Tommy
disdained the question. It turned out that his mother had been after him
repeatedly and that he was an incorrigible runaway. She had at last given
him up for good. While his picture was being "took"--it will be found on
page 100 of this book--one of the lads reported that she was at the door
again, and Tommy broke and ran. He returned just when they closed the
doors of the house for the night, with the report that "the old woman was
a fake."

[Illustration: THE "SOUP-HOUSE GANG," CLASS IN HISTORY IN THE DUANE STREET
NEWSBOYS' LODGING-HOUSE.]

The crippled boys' brush shop is a feature of the lodging-house in East
Forty-fourth Street. It is the _bete noire_ of the Society, partly on
account of the difficulty of making it go without too great an outlay,
partly on account of the boys themselves. They are of all the city's
outcasts the most unfortunate and the hardest to manage. Their misfortune
has soured their temper, and as a rule they are troublesome and
headstrong. No wonder. There seems to be no room for a poor crippled lad
in New York. There are plenty of institutions that are after the well and
able-bodied, but for the cripples the only chance is to shrivel and die in
the Randall's Island Asylum. No one wants them. The brush shop pays them
wages that enables them to make their way, and the boys turn out enough
brushes, if a market could only be found for them. It is a curious and
sadde