The same feeling, developed but a trifle further, becomes national, and we call it patriotism. Play they must, or become loafers; and the round-shouldered, dull-eyed loafer is altogether more hopeless than the hooligan. It will be an inestimable blessing to the country, and will inaugurate quite a new era for us, when the minimum age for leaving school is raised to sixteen. The increase of intelligence, physique and morality, and order arising from such a course would astonish the nation. Supposing this were done, and for boys and girls of over twelve two hours in the afternoon were set apart for games--in separate playgrounds, of course--and that the evenings were devoted to school-work. The younger children going to school in the afternoon might easily have their turn in the public playgrounds from five to seven. This would allow the youths over sixteen to have the playgrounds for the rest of the evening. But, having provided for play, I would go one step further, and not allow any boy to leave school till he produced satisfactory evidence that he was really commencing work. Hundreds of boys leave school having no immediate prospect of regular work. A few weeks' idleness and the enjoyment of the streets follow, and they are then in that state of mind and body that renders them completely indifferent to work of any kind. For good or for evil, the old system of apprenticing boys has gone. It had many faults, but it had some virtues, for, at any rate, it ensured a boy's continuity of work in those years when undisciplined idleness is certain to be demoralizing. Once let boys from the homes I have described--or, indeed, from working men's homes generally--be released from the discipline of school, and the discipline of reasonable and continuous work not be substituted, and it is all over with them and honest aspirations. Now, this difficulty of finding decent and prospective employment for boys is another great factor in the production of youthful hooligans, but a factor that would be largely eliminated if the age for leaving school were raised to sixteen. The work of errand-boys, van-boys, or "cock-horse" boys is not progressive; neither is it good training for growing boys. To the boys of fourteen such work has its allurements, and the wages offered seem fairly good; but when the boy of fourteen has become the youth of sixteen or seventeen, the work seems childish, and the pay becomes mean. When he requires better wages, his services are dispensed with, and another lad of fourteen is taken on. This procedure alone accounts for thousands of youths being idle upon the streets of London. What can such youths do? Too big for their previous occupation, no skilled training or aptitude for better work, not big or strong enough for ordinary labouring, they become the despair of their parents and pests to society. Very soon the door of the parental home is closed upon them; the cheap lodging-houses