Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/134



found “after four years’ experience that the judicious use of a few of these slang terms not only does not hurt the boy, but actually helps him, and wins his confidence,” and, since the boys are what he is after, he declares he will “continue to talk to the boys to a certain extent much the same as they talk with one another.”

As a matter of fact, it is an instinct with the Judge, a part of his simple naturalness and his native desire to understand others, which prompts him to say “ fellers”; “ ah, say, kids, let’s cut it out.” When he called in his burglars, it was no judge that asked them if they belonged to a gang. It was no fatherly elder, wisely pretending to a superior sort of interest in the habits and customs of their “crowd,” and the limits of their range or habitat. It was “one feller askin’ th’ other fellers, on the level now, all about swipin’ pigeons?”" The reason he, the Judge, and his gang robbed the coop was to get a certain variety of fan-tail pigeons which the old man wouldn’t sell, and he understood it when the boys explained that what they were after, really, was to get back some of their pigeons which had joined the old man’s bigger flock. Also, however, the boys understood the Judge when he reflected that it wasn’t right to go and “rob back” your pigeons; that it annoyed the old man, wronged him, and hurt the