auntily on
one side of the head is attractive, too, while the dragging of a
make-believe cannon through the streets may perhaps please others. But
Tom, Dick and Harry from below care for none of these things, for they
are "make-believes," and Tom, Dick and Harry want something real, even
if it is vulgar, something with a strong competitive element in it, even
if it is a little bit rough or wicked.

Besides Tom, Dick and Harry are not over-clean in person, nor nice
in speech, so they are not wanted. Boy Scouts and Boys' Brigades are
preached at, but Tom, Dick and Harry do not want to be preached at by a
parson, or coddled by a curate.

They want something real, even though it be punching each other's head,
for that at any rate is real. Give us play, play, real play! is the
cry that is everlastingly rising from the underworld youth. But
the overworld gives them parks and gardens, which are closed at a
respectable hour. But the lads do not go to bed at respectable hours,
for their mothers are still at work and their fathers have not arrived
home. So they play in the streets; then we call them "hooligans," and of
course they must be "put down."

There is a good deal of "putting down" for the underworld, but it is all
of the wrong sort. For there is no putting down of public playgrounds
for lads of fifteen and upwards open in the evening, lighted by
electricity, and under proper control. Not one in the whole underworld.
So they play in the streets, or rather indulge in what is called
"horse-play."

But there are youths' clubs! Yes, a few mostly in pokey places, yet they
are useful. But Tom, Dick and Harry want space, room and air, for they
get precious little of these valuable commodities at their work, and
still less in their homes. Watch them if you will, as I have watched
them scores of times in the streets, how foolish, yet how pitiable their
conduct is; you will see that they walk for about two hundred yards and
then walk back again, and then repeat the same walk, till the hours have
passed; they seem to be as circumscribed as caged animals. They walk
within bounds up and down the "monkey's parade."

How inane and silly their conversation is! Sometimes a whim comes upon
them, and one runs for a few yards; the whim takes possession of others,
and they do exactly the same. One seizes another round the body and
wrestles with him. Immediately the others begin to wrestle too; their
actions are stereotyped, silly and ob