Men go wrong and keep wrong for the lack of good fellowship; and the conditions which keep them struggling in a crowd hinder the fraternising of man with man. The man who is comfortably seated in a theatre has time and opportunity to look around him and to observe his neighbours if he choose. He will not be uncivil to them, even if he take no interest in them. Put him in a crush at the door, and in the effort to get into the place or out of the crowd, he will not have the chance, even if he had the will, to keep his elbow out of the ribs of his neighbour, though that neighbour were his dearest friend. How many are crowded together struggling to get out of the welter and too busy to take much interest in others! I do not forget that there are many good people who are interested in the poor and fallen; but it is those who are in danger of falling that get least attention. There are mothers who are struggling on to save their sons from the ruin to which they are tending, and children who are trying to redeem their wayward parents; in face of all failures striving with a patience as admirable as it seems futile; but there are few to help. Let a father turn his daughter out for her misconduct and shirk his duty as a parent; let her go headlong to the gutter; and when she is sufficiently stained there will be rescuers tripping over each other to aid her. The pity is that so often they should be more interested in trying to make people conform to their ideals than in helping men and women for their own sake. Most of us have not been so brilliantly successful in ordering our own lives that we are justified in directing the lives of others; but by interest in those who are having a harder struggle to live than has fallen to our lot we may not only encourage the individual to better effort, but we shall see more clearly what needs to be done by us as a community, not to make men, but to remove those conditions which tend to enslave them. CHAPTER V AGE AND CRIME The inexperience of youth--The training of boys--Case of a truant-- Another case--Intractability--The foolishness of parent and teacher-- The absence of mutual understanding--Recreation--Malicious mischief and petty theft--The cause thereof--The need for instructing parents-- Pernicious literature--The other kind--The modern Dick Turpin--The boy as he leaves school--Amusements--Repression--Blind-alley occupations-- The Adolescent--Physical strain of many occupations--Unequal physical and mental development--The street trader--Hooliganism--Knowledge and experience--The perils of youth--Old age.