"Put it there, jedge!" he said. "I'll go. Square and honest, I will."

And he went. I never heard of him again.

The evening classes are a sort of latch-key to knowledge for belated
travellers on the road. They make good use of it, if they are late, as
instanced in the class in history in the Duane Street lodging-house, which
the younger boys irreverently speak of as "The Soup-house Gang." I found
it surprisingly proficient, if it was in its shirtsleeves, and there were
at least a couple of pupils in it who promised to make their mark. All of
its members are working lads, and not a few of them are capitalists in a
small but very promising way. There is a savings bank attached to each
lodging-house, with the superintendent as president and cashier at once.
No less than $5,197 was deposited by the 11,435 boys who found shelter in
them in 1891. They were not all depositors, of course. In the Duane Street
lodging-house, out of 7,614 newsboys who were registered, 1,108 developed
the instinct of saving, or were able to lay by something. Their little
pile at the end of the year held the respectable sum of $3,162.39.[26] It
is safe to say that the interest of the Soup-house Gang in it was
proportionate to its other achievements. In the West Side lodging-house,
where nearly a thousand boys were taken in during the year, 54 patronized
the bank and saved up $360.11. I found a little newsboy there who sells
papers in the Grand Central Depot, and whose bank-book showed deposits of
$200. Some day that boy, for all he has a "tough" father and mother who
made him prefer the lodging-house as a home at the age of nine years, will
be running the news business on the road as the capable "boss" of any
number of lads of his present age. He neglects no opportunity to learn
what the house has to offer, if he can get to the school in time. On the
whole, the teachers report the boys as slow at their books, and no wonder.
A glimpse of little Eddie, in from the cart after his day's work and
dropping asleep on the bench from sheer weariness, more than excuses him,
I think. Eddie may have a chance now to learn something better than
peddling apples. They have lately added to the nightly instruction there,
I am told, the feature of manual training in the shape of a
printing-office, to which the boys have taken amazingly and which
promises great things.

There was one pupil in that evening class, at whose door the charge of
being "slow" could not be