Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/186



The reference here is not to the parents of the poor “bad kids”; they also have their faults, and the Judge has had his troubles with them. But the poor have in poverty an excuse for neglect, and where one parent is vicious, the other is pathetically glad, usually, of help such as Judge Lindsey gave. The poor are “down on” the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Chil- dren, of New York; but for Judge Lindsey, of Denver, they will fight — even at the polls. He won over the poor easily enough.

His hardest honest battles were with the well-to- do father who “had no time to fuss with his boy,” except now and then to “lick him,’’and the vain and frivolous mother who “just knew that her nice little boy” or her “nicer” little girl “wouldn’t do such things.” Now, the Judge finds that all children are pretty much alike at bottom; they all are “nice,” but the Old Harry who is in their parents is in the kids, too; and the Judge doesn’t mind. The Judge has a sneaking, human preju- dice against “little prigs”; he rather favours husky lads and mischievous little girls who, if they can do wrong, can do right with equal energy. But the “nice” parents are forever making prigs and snobs of their children or proving to them their elderly assininity.

“I remember a gentleman,” the Judge relates.