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Page 13
It is characterized by a pure spirit for adventure, and the vicious
training really begins when they are arrested, or when an older boy
undertakes to guide them into further excitements. From the very
beginning the most enticing and exciting experiences which they have
seen have been connected with crime. The policeman embodies all the
majesty of successful law and established government in his brass
buttons and dazzlingly equipped patrol wagon.
The boy who has been arrested comes back more or less a hero with a tale
to tell of the interior recesses of the mysterious police station. The
earliest public excitement the child remembers is divided between the
rattling fire engines, "the time there was a fire in the next block,"
and all the tense interest of the patrol wagon "the time the drunkest
lady in our street was arrested."
In the first year of their settlement the Hull-House residents took
fifty kindergarten children to Lincoln Park, only to be grieved by their
apathetic interest in trees and flowers. As they came back with an
omnibus full of tired and sleepy children, they were surprised to find
them galvanized into sudden life because a patrol wagon rattled by.
Their eager little heads popped out of the windows full of questioning:
"Was it a man or a woman?" "How many policemen inside?" and eager little
tongues began to tell experiences of arrests which baby eyes had
witnessed.
The excitement of a chase, the chances of competition, and the love of a
fight are all centred in the outward display of crime. The parent who
receives charitable aid and yet provides pleasure for his child, and is
willing to indulge him in his play, is blindly doing one of the wisest
things possible; and no one is more eager for playgrounds and vacation
schools than the conscientious charity visitor.
This very imaginative impulse and attempt to live in a pictured world of
their own, which seems the simplest prerogative of childhood, often
leads the boys into difficulty. Three boys aged seven, nine, and ten
were once brought into a neighboring police station under the charge of
pilfering and destroying property. They had dug a cave under a railroad
viaduct in which they had spent many days and nights of the summer
vacation. They had "swiped" potatoes and other vegetables from
hucksters' carts, which they had cooked and eaten in true brigand
fashion; they had decorated the interior of the excavation with stolen
junk, representing swords and firearms, to their romantic imaginations.
The father of the ringleader was a janitor living in a building five
miles away in a prosperous portion of the city. The landlord did not
want an active boy in the building, and his mother was dead; the janitor
paid for the boy's board and lodging to a needy woman living near the
viaduct. She conscientiously gave him his breakfast and supper, and left
something in the house for his dinner every morning when she went to
work in a neighboring factory; but was too tired by night to challenge
his statement that he "would rather sleep outdoors in the summer," or to
investigate what he did during the day. In the meantime the three boys
lived in a world of their own, made up from the reading of adventurous
stories and their vivid imaginations, steadily pilfering more and more
as the days went by, and actually imperilling the safety of the traffic
passing over the street on the top of the viaduct. In spite of vigorous
exertions on their behalf, one of the boys was sent to the Reform
School, comforting himself with the conclusive remark, "Well, we had fun
anyway, and maybe they will let us dig a cave at the School; it is in
the country, where we can't hurt anything."
In addition to books of adventure, or even reading of any sort, the
scenes and ideals of the theatre largely form the manners and morals of
the young people. "Going to the theatre" is indeed the most common and
satisfactory form of recreation. Many boys who conscientiously give all
their wages to their mothers have returned each week ten cents to pay
for a seat in the gallery of a theatre on Sunday afternoon. It is their
one satisfactory glimpse of life--the moment when they "issue forth from
themselves" and are stirred and thoroughly interested. They quite simply
adopt as their own, and imitate as best they can, all that they see
there. In moments of genuine grief and excitement the words and the
gestures they employ are those copied from the stage, and the tawdry
expression often conflicts hideously with the fine and genuine emotion
of which it is the inadequate and vulgar vehicle.
As in the matter of dress, more refined and simpler manners and mode of
expressions are unseen by them, and they must perforce copy what they
know.
If we agree with a recent definition of Art, as that which causes the
spectator to lose his sense of isolation, there is no doubt that the
popular theatre, with all its faults, more nearly fulfils the function
of art for the multitude of working people than all the "free galleries"
and picture exhibits combined.
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