I was talking once with an East Side boy, one of the keenest
and quickest fellows I have ever met. He told me the story of
his early years. There was no good reason why he should have
been a newsboy; his father was a fairly prosperous tailor; but
he loved the adventure of it, and used to play hookey from
school and from home to sell papers. Union Square was his
center, and from there down to Washington Square he ranged.
He was the quickest and the most fearless of the newsboys in
the neighborhood, and soon became a leader among them. His
brightness and wit won him entrance into most of the saloons
and restaurants thereabouts, when the other boys were excluded;
and in many of these the waiters or the barkeeper would save
the dregs of drinks for him. He stole when he could, just for
the excitement of the thing; and with great glee he told me how
he once had picked the pocket of Mr. Robert Graham, the general
secretary of the Church Temperance Society, as that gentleman
stood talking at the window of the society’s coffee-van in the
square. At the time he told me this, he and I both belonged to
a company of the Church Temperance Society which claimed Mr.
Graham as its adjutant commander. His story was not all of such
proud recollections, however. For after a pause he said, rather
slowly, “The boys I used to go with around here, my gang, have
all gone to the devil, and mighty fast.” “Well, John,” I asked,
“how is it that you didn’t go to the devil, too, with them?”
“Well, I’ll tell you. I belonged to a boy’s club down near my
house. It wasn’t much of a club; we used to steal and have rough
house all we pleased. But I was there every night.” And then he
added, with a momentary seriousness I shall not soon forget:
“Mr. Bartlett, if you want to save the boys, keep them off the
streets at night.” It was expert testimony; he knew whereof he
spoke. And what he said puts in a nutshell the whole philosophy
of the boys’ club, secular or spiritual, on its negative, but
a most important, side. If the club simply keeps the boys off
the streets at night, it does much more than enough to pay for
all it costs.--GEORGE G. BARTLETT, “Proceedings of the
Religious Education Association,” 1904.
(281)
=Boys Contrasted=--See EARLY HABITS TELL.