he boys are placed out on farms, that the proportion of troublesome
children is growing larger does not agree with the idea of laziness
either, but well enough with the idleness of the street, which is what
sends nine-tenths of the boys to the Asylum. Satan finds plenty of
mischief for the idle hands of these lads to do. The one great point is to
give them something to do--something they can see the end of, yet that
will keep them busy right along. The more ignorant the child, the more
urgent this rule, the shorter and simpler the lesson must be. Over in the
Catholic Protectory, where they get the most ignorant boys, they
appreciate this to the extent of encouraging the boys to a game of Sunday
base-ball rather than see them idle even for the briefest spell. Of the
practical wisdom of their course there can be no question.

"I have come to the conclusion," said a well-known educator on a recent
occasion, "that much of crime is a question of athletics." From over the
sea the Earl of Meath adds his testimony: "Three fourths of the youthful
rowdyism of large towns is owing to the stupidity, and, I may add,
cruelty, of the ruling powers in not finding some safety-valve for the
exuberant energies of the boys and girls of their respective cities." For
our neglect to do so in New York we are paying heavily in the maintenance
of these costly reform schools. I spoke of the chance for romping and
play where the poor children crowd. In a Cherry Street hall-way I came
across this sign in letters a foot long: "No ball-playing, dancing,
card-playing, and no persons but tenants allowed in the yard." It was a
five-story tenement, swarming with children, and there was another just as
big across that yard. Out in the street the policeman saw to it that the
ball-playing at least was stopped, and as for the dancing, that, of
course, was bound to collect a crowd, the most heinous offence known to
him as a preserver of the peace. How the peace was preserved by such means
I saw on the occasion of my discovering that sign. The business that took
me down there was a murder in another tenement just like it. A young man,
hardly more than a boy, was killed in the course of a midnight
"can-racket" on the roof, in which half the young people in the block had
a hand night after night. It was _their_ outlet for the "exuberant
energies" of their natures. The safety-valve was shut, with the landlord
and the policeman holding it down.

It is when the wro