half
hours' watch at noon and in the evening a total of fourteen--ten boys and
a girl under ten years of age, and three girls between ten and fourteen
years, not counting a little boy who bought a bottle of ginger. It was a
cool, damp day; not a thirsty day, or the number would probably have been
twice as great. There was not the least concealment about the transaction
in any of the fourteen cases. The children were evidently old customers.

The law that failed to save the boy while there was time yet to make a
useful citizen of him provides the means of catching him when his training
begins to bear fruit that threatens the public peace. Then it is with the
same blundering disregard of common sense and common decency that marked
his prosecution as a truant that the half grown lad is dragged into a
police court and thrust into a prison-pen with hardened thieves and
criminals to learn the lessons they have to teach him. The one thing New
York needs most after a truant home is a special court for the trial of
youthful offenders only. I am glad to say that this want seems at last in
a way to be supplied. The last Legislature authorized the establishment of
such a court, and it may be that even as these pages see the light this
blot upon our city is about to be wiped out.

Lastly, but not least, the Church is to blame for deserting the poor in
their need. It is an old story that the churches have moved uptown with
the wealth and fashion, leaving the poor crowds to find their way to
heaven as best they could, and that the crowds have paid them back in
their own coin by denying that they, the churches, knew the way at all.
The Church has something to answer for; but it is a healthy sign at least
that it is accepting the responsibility and professing anxiety to meet it.
In much of the best work done among the poor and for the poor it has
lately taken the lead, and it is not likely that any more of the churches
will desert the downtown field, with the approval of Christian men and
women at least.

* * * * *

Little enough of the light I promised in the opening chapter has struggled
through these pages so far. We have looked upon the dark side of the
picture; but there is a brighter. If the battle with ignorance, with
misery, and with vice has but just begun, if the army that confronts us is
strong, too strong, in numbers still and in malice--the gauntlet has been
thrown down, the war waged, and