And yet this boy who, when taken from his alley into the country for the first time, cries out in delight, "How blue the sky and what a lot of it there is!"--not much of it at home in his barrack--has in the very love of dramatic display that sends him forth to beat a policeman with his own club or die in the attempt, in the intense vanity that is only a perverted form of pride, capable of any achievement, a handle by which he may be most easily grasped and led. It cannot be done by gorging him _en masse_ with apples and gingerbread at a Christmas party.[7] It can be done only by individual effort, and by the influence of personal character in direct contact with the child--the great secret of success in all dealings with the poor. Foul as the gutter he comes from, he is open to the reproach of "bad form" as few of his betters. Greater even than his desire eventually to "down" a policeman, is his ambition to be a "gentleman," as his sister's to be a "lady." The street is responsible for the caricature either makes of the character. On a play-bill I saw in an East Side street, only the other day, this _repertoire_ set down: "Thursday--The Bowery Tramp; Friday--The Thief." It was a theatre I knew newsboys, and the other children of the street who were earning money, to frequent in shoals. The play-bill suggested the sort of training they received there. I wish I might tell the story of some of these very lads whom certain enthusiastic friends of mine tried to reclaim on a plan of their own, in which the gang became a club and its members "Knights," who made and executed their own laws; but I am under heavy bonds of promises made to keep the peace on this point. The fact is, I tried it once, and my well-meant effort made no end of trouble. I had failed to appreciate the stride of civilization that under my friends' banner marched about the East Side with seven-league boots. They read the magazines down there and objected, rather illogically, to being "shown up." The incident was a striking revelation of the wide gap between the conditions that prevail abroad and those that confront us. Fancy the _Westminster Review_ or the _Nineteenth Century_ breeding contention among the denizens of East London by any criticism of their ways? Yet even from Hell's Kitchen had I not long before been driven forth with my camera by a band of angry women, who pelted me with brickbats and stones on my retreat, shouting at me never to come back unless I wanted my head broken, or let any other "duck" from the (mentioning a well-known newspaper of which I was unjustly suspected of being an emissary) poke his nose in there. Reform and the magazines had not taken that stronghold of toughdom yet, but their vanguard, the newspapers, had evidently got there.