ity life on
Saturday afternoon or Sunday. Family quarters are crowded. Tenements
and apartments have little spare space inside or outside. Children
find it decidedly irksome indoors and naturally gravitate to the
street, to the relief of their elders and their own satisfaction.
There they quickly find associates and proceed to give expression to
their restless spirits. It is the child's nature to play, and he uses
all his wits to find the materials and the room for sport. His
ingenuity can adapt sticks and stones to a variety of uses, but the
street makes a sorry substitute for a ball-field, and while the girl
may content herself with the sidewalk and door-steps, the boy soon
looks abroad for a more satisfying occupation. Among the gangs of city
boys no diversion is more enjoyable than the game of craps, learned
from the Southern negro. With a pair of dice purchased for a cent or
two at the corner news-stand and a few pennies obtained by newspaper
selling or petty thieving the youngster is equipped with the necessary
implements for gambling, and he soon becomes adept in cleaning out the
pockets of the other fellows.

249. =Young People's Amusements.=--Meantime the older boys and girls
are seeking their diversions. At fourteen or fifteen most of them have
found work in factory or store, but evenings and Sundays they, too,
are looking for diversion. The girls find it attractive to walk the
streets, while the boys frequent the cheap pool-room, where they find
a chance to gamble and listen to the tales of the idlers who find
employment as cheap thieves and hangers-on of immoral houses. From
these headquarters they sally forth upon the streets to find
association with the other sex, and together they give themselves up
to a few hours' entertainment. A few are contented to promenade the
streets, but amusement houses are cheap, and the "movies" and
vaudeville shows attract the crowd. For a few dimes a couple can have
a wide range of choice. If the tonic of the playhouse is not
sufficient, a small fee admits to the public dance-hall, where it is
easy to meet new acquaintances and to find a partner who will go to
any length in the mad hunt for pleasures that will satisfy. From the
dance-hall it is an easy path to the saloon and the brothel, as it is
from the game of craps and the pool-room to the gambling-den and the
criminal joint. It is the lack of proper means for diversion and
proper oversight of places of entertainment tha