It is much the same in the country. In every village and township in the land, I suppose, there are one or more groups of predatory boys and hoydenish girls whose mischief is only the result of ill-directed energy. If each of these could receive a little sympathetic attention from kindred but wiser spirits, at least half of the crime and vice of the next generation would almost certainly be done away with.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 283.

[13] Charities and the Commons, Aug. 3, 1907.

[14]

Antica lupa,
Che più che tutte l’altre bestie hai preda.

Purgatorio, XX, 10.

[15] 1 Samuel, 15:33.

[16] Vol. i, 540 ff.

[17] The City Wilderness, 116.