“Rap on doors. Push and pull people. Play tick-tack on windows.” “Plague Jews and Italians. Tip the rag teams of Jews over. Take the rags and sell them to some other Jew.” “Have a dead rat. Throw it at a Chinaman. Fire things at men to get the chase. Hit men out of doors to get the chase. Put a rock in a paper bag for men to kick.” “Tie a rope across the street and trip people up. Throw eggs at people. Throw cabbages at people. Ring doorbells. Break windows, electric lights. Plague Chinamen. Bring them in a bundle of paper [to wash]. Throw potatoes at Chinamen.” “Call persons names to get the chase. Throw eggs at Chinamen’s doors. Plague policemen.” “Go round in wood yard. Throw wood in street to get the chase.” So the records run,--pure, wanton, useless mischief and cruelty. No wonder the gang is not popular. Yet we all did the same things in our day and have grown up to be very decent men. There is a time in the lives of normal boys when any form of distress--to other people--is instinctively amusing. Note also how frequently the boy annoys simply “to get the chase.” He has the hunting instinct; he has also the instinct for being hunted. Therefore he deliberately exasperates some adult beyond endurance, until the man “takes after” him, wrath in his eye and anticipation in the palm of his hand. The man, commonly, is the fleeter of foot; but the boy has the better wind and the advantage of a short start. As a last resort, he can dodge. The resulting game is, on the whole, the most thrilling experience of boyhood. Nine times in ten, the boy gets away; the penalties that follow being caught are a cheap price for the riotous delights of escaping with the skin of his teeth. Somewhat allied to plaguing people is stealing. The stealing instinct is strong in boys, so that even the good country gangs, with all they want to eat at home, devote part of their time to their neighbors’ orchards and vineyards. The impulse is closely connected with the instinct for property, and is so entirely normal at the gang age that the boy, otherwise of good character, who steals in company, is seldom at all depraved. The boy who goes off by himself to steal is a different case. That the crime of larceny reaches its climax before the age of twenty-one, shows that the predatory instincts and habits are early formed, or else that if the stealing instincts and habits increase in power after this age, the person becomes shrewd enough in stealing to escape the penalty of the law. The following reports of the boys in regard to stealing are instructive:--