This very imaginative impulse and attempt to live in a pictured world of their own, which seems the simplest prerogative of childhood, often leads the boys into difficulty.  Three boys aged seven, nine, and ten were once brought into a neighboring police station under the charge of pilfering and destroying property.  They had dug a cave under a railroad viaduct in which they had spent many days and nights of the summer vacation.  They had “swiped” potatoes and other vegetables from hucksters’ carts, which they had cooked and eaten in true brigand fashion; they had decorated the interior of the excavation with stolen junk, representing swords and firearms, to their romantic imaginations.  The father of the ringleader was a janitor living in a building five miles away in a prosperous portion of the city.  The landlord did not want an active boy in the building, and his mother was dead; the janitor paid for the boy’s board and lodging to a needy woman living near the viaduct.  She conscientiously gave him his breakfast and supper, and left something in the house for his dinner every morning when she went to work in a neighboring factory; but was too tired by night to challenge his statement that he “would rather sleep outdoors in the summer,” or to investigate what he did during the day.  In the meantime the three boys lived in a world of their own, made up from the reading of adventurous stories and their vivid imaginations, steadily pilfering more and more as the days went by, and actually imperilling the safety of the traffic passing over the street on the top of the viaduct.  In spite of vigorous exertions on their behalf, one of the boys was sent to the Reform School, comforting himself with the conclusive remark, “Well, we had fun anyway, and maybe they will let us dig a cave at the School; it is in the country, where we can’t hurt anything.”

In addition to books of adventure, or even reading of any sort, the scenes and ideals of the theatre largely form the manners and morals of the young people.  “Going to the theatre” is indeed the most common and satisfactory form of recreation.  Many boys who conscientiously give all their wages to their mothers have returned each week ten cents to pay for a seat in the gallery of a theatre on Sunday afternoon.  It is their one satisfactory glimpse of life—­the moment when they “issue forth from themselves” and are stirred and thoroughly interested.  They quite simply adopt as their own, and imitate as best they can, all that they see there.  In moments of genuine grief and excitement the words and the gestures they employ are those copied from the stage, and the tawdry expression often conflicts hideously with the fine and genuine emotion of which it is the inadequate and vulgar vehicle.

As in the matter of dress, more refined and simpler manners and mode of expressions are unseen by them, and they must perforce copy what they know.

If we agree with a recent definition of Art, as that which causes the spectator to lose his sense of isolation, there is no doubt that the popular theatre, with all its faults, more nearly fulfils the function of art for the multitude of working people than all the “free galleries” and picture exhibits combined.