Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/200



“Billy,” said the Judge, “you are crying be- cause you are scared. What are you scared of? Me ? Why should you be afraid of me ? Haven’t I given you a square deal ? Haven’t I given you every chance I could, helped you every way to be a good boy at home ?”

“Yes,” Billy sobbed, “but-”

“You can’t be a good boy at home. You don’t get a fair chance at home. You want to move on all the time, and by and by you’ll just be a ‘vag.’ Now, you don’t want to grow up to be a bum; do you ? No, you want a chance to learn a trade and be a man.”

The Judge explained at length that Golden wasn’t a reformatory or a prison. It was only a school, a good industrial school, where a poor kid that hadn’t a chance at home could learn a trade. “Why,” said the Judge, “I’ve been there. I like to go there. And I tell you everybody up there just loves a kid that tries to do his best, and they help him. Nobody hates a kid at Golden. No, siree.”

By and by, the tears ceased to flow. The Judge described the school, its shops, its military organization, its baseball nines, and then, as the Judge relates, “when fear vanished, and interest began, I appealed to the boy’s nobility, to his honour, pride, his loyalty to me.