wonderworking cause, a manipulator of nature, a miracle worker. Hence
the vacant lots are often lighted up; barrels, boxes, and fences
disappear; and one almost believes that part of the charm of smoking is
in the very making of the smoke and seeing it unwind into greater
mystery as did incense from thousands of altars in the long-ago.

This elemental desire to be a cause and to advertise by visible,
audible, and often painful proofs the fact of one's presence in the
world is also basal. It is the compliment which noisy childhood and
industrious boyhood insistently demand from the world about. Even the
infant revels in this testimony, preferring crude and noisy playthings
of proportion to the innocent nerve-sparing devices which the adult
tries to foist upon him. The coal scuttle is made to proclaim causal
relation between the self in effort and the not-self in response more
satisfactorily than the rag doll; and the manifest glee over the
contortions of the playful father whose hand is slapped is not innate
cruelty but the delight of successful experiment in causation.

So of the noise and bluster, the building and destruction, the teasing
and torture so often perpetrated by the boy. He is saying that he is
here and must be reckoned with, and he wishes to make his presence as
significant as possible. If home, school, and community conditions are
such as to give healthful direction to both his constructive and
destructive experimentation, all is well, but if society cannot so
provide he will still exploit his causal relation although it must be in
violation of law and order. The result is delinquency, but even in this
he glories. It often gives a more pungent and romantic testimony than
could otherwise be secured. It is the flaring yellow advertisement of
misdirected effectiveness. Probably there mingles with this impulse the
love of adventure as developed in the chase. "Flipping cars,"