“Like hero plays.”
“Like excitement and Indian plays best.”
*****
There were eleven different reports in regard to plays which boys liked. Uncle Tom’s Cabin is mentioned in five of them. Others, mentioned once or twice, are Great White Diamond, Queen of the White Slaves, Steeple Chase, Railroad Jack, White Eagle, Devil’s Island, Peggy from Paris, Girls from England, Under Southern Skies, Arnold the Traitor, Wedded in the Streets, Shaumus O’Brien, Limited Mail, The Power of the Cross, Paul Revere’s Ride, New York Day by Day, American Gentleman, Heart of Maryland, Why Women Sin, Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, Across the Rockies, Younger Brothers, Night before Christmas, Monte Cristo, Midnight in Chinatown, Rip Van Winkle, James Brothers in Missouri, Eight Bells, Across the Pacific, Way down East, McFadden’s Flats, The Blue and the Gray, Winchester.
The significant thing about these reports is the catholicity of the boys’ taste. When there is no bad and demoralizing play to be seen, they are entirely willing to attend a wholesome and elevating one.
Fighting
A very common and annoying form of activity of gang boys is fighting. The struggle for existence has, until very recent times, tended to select the men of a tribe who were the best fighters. So the boys come naturally by the fighting instinct. All grown-up persons feel that fighting should not be allowed in their presence, and at the same time, that it would have been far better for the boys if they had not appeared on the scene at that critical moment. Boys will fight to maintain personal rights, to defend their honor, to settle disputes, to defend the camp ground. The very slightest offense will arouse their combative instinct. In fact, they enjoy fighting so much that if they have no proper reason for a fight, they will guy or throw stones at another gang to furnish them a sufficient cause for battle. One gang went so far as to arrange yearly a battle for the seventeenth of June.
In forty-six gangs (78 per cent) we find records of fighting of four different kinds:—
1. Personal fighting.
2. Group fighting inside of gangs.
3. Fighting between gangs.
4. Fighting between groups of gangs.