trict, and made them into clubs,--Young Heroes, Knights of the
Round Table, and such like; all except one, the oldest, that had begun
to make a name for itself with the police. That one held aloof,
observing coldly what went on, to make sure it was "straight." They let
it be, keeping the while an anxious eye upon it; until one day there
came a delegation with this olive branch: "If you will let us in, we
will change and have your kind of a gang." Needless to say it was let
in. And within a year, when, through a false rumor that the concern was
moving away, there was a run on the settlement's penny provident bank,
the converted gang proved itself its stanchest friend by doing actually
what John Halifax did in Miss Mulock's story: it brought all the pennies
it could raise in the neighborhood by hook or by crook and deposited
them as fast as the regular patrons--the gang had not yet risen to the
dignity of a bank account--drew them out, until the run ceased. This
same gang which, the year before, was training for trouble with the
police!

The cry, "Get the boys off the street," that has been raised in our
cities, as the real gravity of the situation has been made clear, has
led to the adoption of curfew ordinances in many places. Any attempt to
fit such a scheme to metropolitan life would result only in adding one
more dead-letter law, more dangerous than all the rest, to those we
have. New York is New York, and one look at the crowds in the streets
and the tenements will convince anybody. Besides, the curfew rings at
nine o'clock. The dangerous hours, when the gang is made, are from seven
to nine, between supper and bedtime. This is the gap the club fills out.
The boys take to the street because the home has nothing to keep them
there. To lock them up in the house would only make them hate it more.
The club follows the line of least resistance. It has only to keep also
on the line of common sense. It must be a real club, not a reformatory.
Its proper function is to head off the jail. The gang must not run it.
But rather that than have it help train up a band of wretched young
cads. The signs are not hard to make out. When a boy has had his head
swelled by his importance as a member of the Junior Street-cleaning
Band to the point of reproving his mother for throwing a banana peel in
the street, the thing to be done is to take him out and spank him, if it
_is_ reverting to "the savagery" of the street. Better a savage than a