Whitechapel, in the filthy courts of Drury Lane, in the purlieus of St. Giles. Like perpetuates its like. The seed of the serpent is always venomous; the tiger’s cub is always thirsting for blood. There are gutter children in London who have risen to be merchant princes, but they have come of an honest good family stock. As to those of whom I write, there is a curse on them from their very birth. Happily for them, they are unconscious of it, and yet in some undefined way it treads upon their steps. Like Gray’s naughty schoolboys: They hear a voice in every wind, And catch a fearful joy. As I say, they are secretly conscious of a war between themselves and all that is deemed respectable. They feel that society, in the shape of the policeman, has its eye upon them. They have very restless eyes and very restless legs. They are as unlike the primitive ploughboy of the fat fields of Suffolk, of the swamps of Essex, of the fens of Lincolnshire, of the Sussex Downs, as can well be imagined. You can scarcely fancy they belong to the same species; yet, at the same time, the street boy of the city is the same all the world over. In Paris, in London, in Edinburgh, in Dublin, and Belfast, the dirty little ragged rascals are intrinsically one and the same—barring the speech. It is wonderful this oneness of sentiment, the bonds of brotherhood. The other day, on the pier at Boulogne, I lit a fusee for the purpose of having a smoke. Before I could say Jack Robinson, I was beset with hordes of ragged, shoeless, unwashed urchins, just the same as those you see in Cheapside; and it was only by bribery and corruption that I could emancipate myself. In London, as is to be expected, we have more of the commercial element; there is less freedom for them here. They must turn traders, and hawk _Echos_ and cigar-lights, or sweep crossings. As to miscellaneous and irregular talent, society fosters it no more in the ragged boy than it does in the well-clad man, and so we have got rid of the Catherine-wheel business and dangerous gymnastics of that kind. Many boys have the vices of their breed—the vices engendered by a life of poverty and of fear. They are afraid to be honest in their answers. They are afraid, when you talk to them, you have got some end in view. They will watch you, when you question them, to see how they can best please you. If you want to see what they are, catch them flattening their noses against the eating-house shop windows just about pudding time. That’s human nature, and a wonderful thing is human nature. It would be well if society would take the trouble to recognise that fact. It was the want of the recognition of that fact in the good old times, when wild lawlessness was tempered with Draconian severity, that has entailed on the present generation the difficult problem as to what is to be done with our street boys.