Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/167



chambers or call at his house to “snitch up” that they are not doing well. And the boys who sit there and see this every two weeks, or hear all about it, they not only have forgotten all their old fear of the Law; they go to the Court now as to a friend, they and their friends. For Judge Lindsey had not been doing “kid justice to kids” very long before all Boyville knew it. The rumour spread like wildfire. The boys “snitched” on the Judge, “snitched on the square”; they told one another that the County Judge was all right.

The Judge tells many stories to illustrate the change that followed. Once as he approached a group of boys, one of them said: “There’s th’ Jedge, fellers, and two kids dived down an alley. The others gathered around the Judge.

“Who were those boys that ran away?” he asked.

Who ? Them ? Oh,” came the answer, “they’re kids from K. C.” (Kansas City); “they ain’t on to the game here.”

Another time the Judge was walking along the street arguing with me that stealing isn’t a heinous crime in a boy, and that it shouldn’t be treated with holy horror. Most boys swipe something at one time or another; and to prove his point, he halted before a “gang.”