tray ball, and that was
promptly paid for by those who broke it. But the boys who met there
under Miss Winifred Buck's management learned many a lesson of
self-control and practical wisdom that proved "educational" in the
highest degree. Her plan is simplicity itself. Through their play,--the
meeting usually begins with a romp,--in quarters where there is not too
much elbow-room, the boys learn the first lesson of respecting one
another's rights. The subsequent business meeting puts them upon the
fundamentals of civilized society, as it were. Out of the debate of the
question, Do we want boys who swear, steal, gamble, and smoke
cigarettes? grow convictions as to why these vices are wrong that put
"the gang" in its proper light. Punishment comes to appear, when
administered by the boys themselves, a natural consequence of
law-breaking, in defence of society; and the boy is won. He can
thenceforward be trusted to work out his own salvation. If he does it
occasionally with excessive unction, remember how recent was his
conversion. "_Resolved_, that wisdom is better than wealth," was
rejected as a topic for discussion by one of the clubs, because
"everybody knows it is." This was in the Tenth Ward. If temptation had
come that way in the shape of a push-cart with pineapples--we are all
human! Anyway, they had learned the right.

That was the beginning of a work of which shall, I hope, hear a good
deal more hereafter. It is all in its infancy yet, this attempt on the
part of the municipality to get the boys off the street and out of the
reach of the saloon. A number of schools were thrown open, where the
crowds were greatest, for evening play and for clubs, and sometimes they
laid hold of the youngster and sometimes not. It was a question again of
the man or the woman who was at the helm. One school I found that surged
with a happy crowd. It was over at Rivington and Suffolk streets, No.
160. Oh, how I wish they would soon stop this hopeless numbering of our
schools, and call them after our great and good men, as Superintendent
Maxwell pleads, so that "the name of every school may in itself be made
a lesson in patriotism and good citizenship to its pupils." There they
would be in their right place. One alderman got the idea during the
Strong reform administration, but they hitched the names to the new
parks instead of the schools, and that turned out wrong. So they have
the Ham Fish Park for Hamilton Fish, the "Sewer" Park fo