X.

CHILDREN'S GANGS, CLUBS, AND FRIENDSHIPS


"What a plague boys are!" sighed Mrs. Brown. "That White boy has
been getting our Harry into all sorts of mischief, and I can't make
Harry give up that gang."

Mrs. Green agreed that boys were a plague. Her Jack went with a lot
of boys, too, and they were always up to some sort of tricks which
she was quite sure _her_ boy would never do if it were not for
those other boys. And Mrs. Green was right. Any boy will do things
when he is with the gang that he never would think of doing alone--
and that he wouldn't dare to do alone, if he did think of them. Even
your boy--and mine, too, I hope. That's the way of boys.

What we mothers will have to do is to stop fretting about the other
boys in the gang who spoil our boys, and about the mischief and
noise and dirty boots and staying away late for meals, and get down
to a practical way of making all the boys in the gang as we find
them into a lot of decent young men. We shall have to stop trying to
make boys do what it is impossible for them to do; and we shall have
to stop trying to keep the boys from doing what it is absolutely
necessary that they should do, if they are to develop into the
decent young men we have in mind.

The modern way, the efficient way, of treating children is to find