Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/859

 OUR ISHMAEL 839

fertility of resource traits that make for success in the com- mercial world of today. You will find little of the primal sweet- ness of childhood here; all that innocent bloom and fragrance that adorns the homes where children are tenderly cherished is soon trampled under foot and lost, when the blossom is flung into the mire of the street. The virtues and the vices of the street boy are his own, and the most striking characteristic of both is their unchildishness.

In this commercial school of the street the boy is cruelly trained to look sharply after number one ; but in the poor home from which he comes he is taught, from the time he can run alone and voice his feeble battlecry upon the cross-ways, his obligation to others, more helpless than himself, if that be pos- sible. For the sick mother, the baby brother, the father, super- annuated in middle life by a process that is bringing him to the same goal, he works and denies himself, as a matter of course ; and his unfailing zeal in the service of his family is certainly one of his shining virtues, in spite of the fact that it too often shows itself in glibbest mendacity, deftest sleight-of-hand, and a gen- eral impudence of cunning before which the mind "indifferent honest" stands bewildered.

Pass apples or cakes about in a crowd of these boys, and the rapidity with which they will disappear will convince you that a goodly number have been crammed into dirty pockets so surrep- titiously that it would be impossible for the keenest eye to detect their passage. Subsequent investigation will show that very many of these goodies were taken home to younger brothers or sisters, or some sick or helpless member of the family to whom special consideration was due.

Boys who have apparently no disposition to take things from the club-room for their own use will not hesitate when tempted by an article which is needed at home ; thus one little fellow whom I knew, and trusted, with wonderful secrecy and cunning extracted the tacks from a piece of oil cloth, and, when his guilt was brought home to him, confessed that he had taken them for his mother, who needed them to mend a chair. Another abstracted the colored plates from a magazine, to the indignation