The mass of the boys come in nightly just to have a good time, and they have it. They play at parchesi and messenger-boy with an ardor that leaves them no time to care what visitors come and go. Like street boys everywhere, they have a special fondness for games that admit the dice as an element. Gambling is in the very air of the street, and is encouraged in a hundred hidden ways the police rarely discover. Small candy stores and grocery back-rooms harbor policy shops, lotteries, and regular gambling hells, where the boys are taught how to buck the tiger on a penny scale. In the club games the dice are robbed of their power for evil. It is the environment here again that makes the difference. It has made a vast difference in the boy who once stalked in, hat on the back of his head, and grimy fists in his breeches' pockets until Pop's stony eye caught his. Now he hangs up his hat upon entering, and goes to the wash-room without waiting to be asked by the Superintendent if there is no soap and water where he comes from. Then he gets the game or the book he wants, surrendering his card as a check upon him until it is returned. It is a precaution intended to identify the borrower in case of any damage being done to the club's property. Such a thing as theft of book or game is not known. In his business meetings the boy debates a point of order with the skill and persistence of a trained politician. The aptitude for politics sticks out all over him; but he has some lessons of that trade to learn yet, to his harm. He has not mastered the trick of betraying a friend. Any member of his club, the Superintendent feels sure, would stand up for him and take a thrashing, if need be, should he be found in trouble on his "beat." The "beats" that converge at St. Mark's Place and Avenue A cover a good deal of ground. The lads come from a mile around to the Boys' Club. Occasionally "the gang" calls in a body. One evening it is the Thirteenth Street gang, the next the Eighth Street gang, and again a detachment from Avenue A. By the first-comers it is sometimes possible to foretell the particular complexion of the _clientèle_ of the night; but the business character of the gang is left outside on the sidewalk. Within it is amiability itself, and gradually the rough corners are rubbed off, old quarrels made up, feuds forgotten in the new companionship; the gang is merged in the club, the victory over the street won. [Illustration: A BOYS' CLUB READING-ROOM.]