OUR ISHMAEL 845
who have long made a careful study of possibilities in the way of overcoming these precautions, is to stimulate invention in the same direction ; to put the boy who is proud of his ingenuity in foiling policemen and picking locks, upon his mettle. Far better is it to ignore such possibilities entirely ; to awaken the boy's interest in other directions ; to impress him with the idea that the club and all its furnishings are his, and can be best left intact for his use and that of his comrades.
One of the first things to be done is to win the leaders of "de gang," who always come to the front at once and act as spokesmen for the crowd. To circumvent the bully, and con- vert him from a jeering enemy to an applauding friend, may prove an arduous task, but it will always be worth while, from every point of view; and to make it apparent to him that you need his countenance and assistance in the conduct of affairs is usually the straight road to that result. You will often find that, under such responsibilities as you can impose upon him, he will after a white forget to snatch and crowd, and show him- self assiduous in generosity and untiring in labors for the general good. The bully is by no means sure to prove the worst boy in the club, and will often develop into the most promising.
In these hardy boys, scantily clothed, poorly fed, inured to hardships of heat, cold, and wet, we do not find that sexual precocity of which we hear so much in these days from the teachers and guardians of boys more tenderly reared. Profanity and unclean language, indeed, roll out of the street boy's mouth as they might out of a talking machine into which they had been generously poured ; but, in spite of this, he is really rather clean-minded than otherwise, and is noticeably free of those vices which sometimes wreck the boy whose life is far above his in point of privilege.
Here I may recount the significant fact that during my six years' service I encountered but one boy so persistently obscene in his language and conduct that even the janitor of the build- ing where we met demanded his expulsion. He was a bright, rosy, pretty boy of twelve, a visitor from a luxurious home near
